Let's look at cases of injury before the National Assembly in recent years. In addition, the efforts that society and the church should make to solve this problem, and how the church literature sees the ethical issues in cyberspace and the cases of damage caused by malicious comments.
On Feb. 4th, a volleyball player belonging to a famous club was found dead at his home. He received many messages and malicious comments after every game, difficult for him to accept. A woman active on YouTube made the same choice at the end of last month. She suffered severe depression from numerous malicious comments and rumors. Earlier in 2019, a singer and actress died by their own hand in succession.
Malicious slander on the Internet was the main cause and the ‘Malicious Comment Prevention Act’ was born. As criticism of the comments on entertainment news grew, large Korean portals removed comments on entertainment news in March and October 2019. As a result, the malicious comments seemed to have calmed down a bit, but it was not correct.
Rather, following the various social networking services (SNS): Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, malicious comments penetrated wider and deeper. In the past, it was mainly aimed at celebrities, but recently, sports players, YouTubers, and the general public are increasingly exposed to malicious comments.
To break the cycle of social harm caused by malicious comments, institutional changes are necessary. In the current law, only some of the seven types of cyberbullying can be punished severely. In a post on his Facebook page, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea said, "Cyberbullying as stipulated in the law is not just a problem for young people." We need to listen to the criticism to change the atmosphere and culture of society.
A professor, recently said in an interview: "The structural cause of social inequality, the social-psychological ways of expressing social dissatisfaction based on anonymity, and the media and political environment work in a complex way in online malicious slander." We need to resolve the conflicts in our society. Another professor viewed the psychology of people who habitually commented with malicious comments as a kind of pathological obsession and urged them to solve their problems. “People who use malicious comments excessively feel they have exceptional intellectual qualities. "But in reality come from inferiority or are negative defense mechanisms, interpreted as pathological symptoms."
In 2002, the Catholic Church emphasized the importance of proper use of new media and Internet ethics through two documents, 「Church and the Internet」 and 「Internet Ethics」.“Teaching about the Internet and new technologies means more than just teaching techniques. Young people must learn to behave properly in cyberspace, make sensible judgments based on sound ethical standards on what they find in cyberspace, and use new technologies for their own personal development and for the benefit of others”
Based on these documents, experts within the church said that the church should be more active in cultural ministry to change the culture of excessive malicious comments. The former president of the Korean Catholic Lay Apostolic Association, said, “If anything goes too far, it will hurt or inflict damage. We need to broaden the scope of our participation. The digital world is easily accessible due to anonymity. Expressions of anger appearing in malicious comments is a consequence of the culture of death."
