Power blogger seeks transparency

By Kim Tae-jong

Some popular bloggers deceive their followers with dishonest reviews praising products of some companies in return for financial rewards.

But Kang Won-goo, one power blogger says corrupt individuals will end up losing credibility and doing harm on their own blogs. Power bloggers can have thousands of visitors read their posts each day.

“Now people are smart enough to easily tell whether bloggers write favorable reviews for mere promotion, and they will turn their back on such blogs full of advertisements,” he said.

Kang advises bloggers should draw a strict line between advertisements and personal postings to maintain their popularity and reputation.

“It’s like running a newspaper company,” he said. “You should separate your articles from ads. You should not put in ads disguised as articles and mislead your readers.”

‘Like a tree’

Better known by his nickname Namucheoreom, meaning “like a tree,” Kang is one of many bloggers who have successfully developed their hobby into moneymaking venture.

Based on the popularity and reputation of his blog (https://blog.naver.com/treewg) and experience gained by running it, he has recently established a PR and marketing firm. But the current success all began in an unexpected way.

Kang, who had worked with major financial companies for 15 years, quit the high-income job in 2008 along with his wife, who had also worked long in finance. That was the time when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. They just wanted to spend more time together.

“I had no intention to either run a blog at that time nor make money out of it,” he said. “I didn’t even know anything about social networking services.”

He started with postings and photos about travel, culture and sometimes politics in 2009 as he simply enjoyed writing.

He studied blogging and analyzed popular sites, and was soon fascinated by its charms.

As he became more devoted, he was later chosen as a power blogger in the category of literature and essays in 2010 and 2011 by the nation’s biggest portal Naver. He now even shares his experience with other bloggers through offline lectures.

Although he now earns much less than he used to, he says he is much happier with his work.

Greater clout

Although a growing number of people here are moving from blogs to Twitter and Facebook, Kang still thinks they will continue to command a strong influence among local users for a while as they can have more in-depth stories than the emerging platforms.

With the increasing clout of blogs, Kang also says he feels an increasing responsibility.

“When I wrote about a candidate for the mayoral by-election last year, I had over 150,000 visitors in just a few hours,” Kang said. “It was really amazing, and in a way, I thought I should be more responsible for what I said.”

Though he was previously ordered to withdraw some of his politically-sensitive postings by the National Election Commission, he says he will remain frank.

“As my blog is basically a place where I can talk about what I want, I’m not too concerned about criticism about my postings or decrease of visitors because of my political views,” he said.

But he is critical of the recent move by many politicians who want to use SNS as a tool to communicate with young voters, arguing what’s important is not the new media but the content which is delivered.

“It’s a pity to see politicians struggling to use SNS as a tool to win votes,” he said. “But what they don’t understand is people are interested in what they say, not how they say it.”