Cheong Wa Dae homepage down with heavy traffic

By Ko Dong-hwan

Presidential house Cheong Wa Dae’s online homepage crashed for awhile Monday, as a web post ridden with personal antipathy toward the president drew numerous visitors.

According to presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook Monday, a netizen surnamed Jung posted on the webpage’s free bulletin board in Sunday morning a text entitled, “The reasons you shouldn’t be the president.” Min added the post attracted over 400,000 accumulated hits by the next morning.

Jung’s post was an acerbic denunciation of the allegedly incompetent government of President Park Geun-hye as proven in the process of dealing with the sinking of the ferry Sewol. It also criticized Cheong Wa Dae officials for irresponsibility.

Min said Jung asked a webmaster Monday morning to erase his popular post. Jung said in another post the text wasn’t his writing but was taken from Facebook. He also apologized for causing such a fuss, which he admitted he never saw coming.

Jung’s post was removed as of Monday 11:00 a.m. Min said all the posts on the free bulletin board can be erased by writers after having their names verified on the webpage. He assumed the post was deleted by Jung himself.

But the webpage, in the absence of Jung’s post, still experienced high traffic volumes. Recording two to three times the usual visitor volumes, its server could barely manage the expanded traffic loads for a while.

A staff member from the Government Information Agency Office, which manages the Cheong Wa Dae homepage, said it has been attracting three times the normal number of daily visit counts of 7,000 since late Sunday.

The Sewol tragedy delivered a massive blow to the image of the government due to its inept post-tragedy management.

According to a public opinion poll researcher Realmeter Monday, President Park’s approval rating on the 61st week of presidency was 57.9 percent, down 6.8 percent from a week before. The rating hit a whopping 71 percent on Apr. 18, a day after she had visited Jindo to condole families of the victims of the accident.