"SKorean court ends law requiring real names online"

[koganbot]

Associated Press: SKorean court ends law requiring real names online

Paragraph 2:

The online naming law took effect in 2007 under a bipartisan push to curb libeling, the spread of false rumors and abusive comments in the cyber space. South Korea saw a flurry of celebrity suicides allegedly motivated by malicious online comments, which mobilized the move to control the Internet space.

Anybody know anything about these? This was a couple of years before I was paying any attention to South Korean celebrities, suicidal or not.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

FWIW there is some discussion of korean celebrity suicides here. No doubt there are far better resources out there but it is a start. I vaguely remember 'netizen' comments being partly blamed in the suicides of some of those celebs discussed; unee and choi jin shil i think.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090106235409AAP6kPA

Look at how tablo was harrasses by netizens - it could have destroyed some people. I wonder about the negative affects on people like eunjeong at the moment as she would no doubt be suffering from the fallout of this alleged bullying debacle.

[koganbot]

Thank you. This really is fascinating.

That said, it seems lazy of Korean legislators to think that they're helping to protect Korean celebrities from suicide by banning the use of pseudonyms on the Internet — as opposed to, say, committing funds for mental health care, encouraging people (celebrities, for instance) to talk publicly about their own struggles with depression and the like so that other sufferers can see that they're not alone, etc. Of course, it's lazy of me to assume that the AP story's two sentences about the bill's background are an adequate representation of what motivated the bill. And for all I know there's plenty of push in Korea for better recognition and better treatment of mental illness and depression and stress.

This is the first I heard of the Tablo controversy, which happened right before I discovered K-pop. Reading about it now, it is appalling what people tried to do to him. But knowing for sure that he was right and that it was the other people who were being 100 percent idiots might have helped him. A lot depends on the individual, and his/her friends and colleagues. For all I know, the pressure on Eunjung (who probably doesn't feel 100 percent in the right) is resulting in her strengthening bonds with some of her dearest friends, and discovering support from places and people where she wasn't expecting it, making new friends. Or maybe she's acting in destructive ways that are driving away even the strongest of friends. I have no idea, knowing little about her. Maybe Tablo used the situation to break free of some encumbrances and ties that weren't doing him any good.