Dog Poop Girl Revisited
South Korea is on the leading edge of internet defamation and attacks that have driven some to suicide. This is for real. You may or may not have heard of “Dog Poop Girl,” not her real name, before. She was a South Korean woman whose dog pooped on a subway car one day and who did not clean it up. Unfortunately, for her, someone with a camera phone snapped some pictures of her, the dog and the poop caper. Now South Korea is looking into ways in which they can mitigate defamation and libel attacks that come from the internet.
Dog poop girl is infamous in South Korea. The young woman was riding on the subway with her small dog. The dog defecated and she did not clean up after her pet. Someone caught the incident in pictures shot with a mobile phone. The photos were posted on the Internet with a brief description of what took place and shortly thereafter “dog poop girl” became the most-searched phrase among South Korean Internet users. The country is debating what needs to be done to protect privacy and free speech on the Internet while punishing people who commit libel and defamation in cyberspace. South Koreans were shocked by the incident but they were also stunned by the Internet witch hunt that soon followed. South Korea is the most wired country in the world and Internet witch hunts have been conducted with such ferocity that people have committed suicide, left the country in shame and taken new identities after being the subject of a cyber attack. The campaigns play on one of the most sensitive issues in Korean society — the feeling of shame. The close-knit nature of the society also means the campaigns can strike targets quickly. With most - more available
Dog+Poop+Girl, Internet, South+Korea, Libel, Slander, Defamation
tags: defamation, dog+poop+girl, internet, libel, slander, south+korea