By Kim Tong-hyung
A woman in Thailand commits suicide in front of a webcam broadcasting over the Internet. A student in New York jumps to his death after discovering his sexual encounter with another man had been streamed live by a roommate.
Now, Korea has its own incident to add to the disturbing examples of e-suicides. Song Ji-seon, a sports reporter for MBC television, had a massive amount of abuse directed at her from social networking sites that were exploding with rumors about her alleged relationship with Doosan Bears star pitcher Lim Tae-hoon. And this appears to have driven her to leap from 19th floor window Monday.
Social media services like Twitter, Facebook and Cyworld, by their very nature, are designed to be inclusive as possible. As a result, people are better connected than ever, but the cost of an expanded social circle is often the deterioration in the quality of relationships.
In this age of digital communication, you can’t open your doors to friends without clearing the path for random ill-wishers, who could leave you uncomfortable, offended, hurt, and ironically, lonely.
The tragic mistake of Song, who was one of the more popular television personalities here, was using Twitter like an online diary. She wrote numerously about her troubles with Lim and even confessed suicidal feelings in the weeks ahead of her death, which regrettably made her a magnet of cyber trash talks.
The social media boom has been fueled by the popularity of mobile Internet devices that provide connectivity anywhere at any time. In this environment, a popular Twitter user could reach out to millions in a matter of minutes. This also means users have absolutely no control over downstream discussions generated from their writings, which is why revealing something personal frequently becomes a mistake.
It remains to be seen whether Song’s death will prompt Korean media companies to establish stricter guidelines for their employees over blogging, tweeting and the use of social media, as their foreign counterparts like the Washington Post and Guardian are doing.
For public figures living under constant tension created by the public’s desire to know and be close to them, as Song did, it would be better to regard social media services as a media and marketing tool rather than an online extension of their real-life personalities.