Fake news going rampant
In controversial video footage that was revealed to have been manipulated, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is seen to drink liquor in the middle of an ancestral ritual. / Screen capture from OBS
Ban claims he fell victim to false reports during campaigning
By Kim Se-jeong
Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claimed he had fallen victim to fake news.
“My pure patriotism was damaged by slander and fake news,” he said in a press conference Wednesday, shortly after announcing he would not run for the presidency.
He may have been referring to either of two incidents, one being faked video footage of him at a traditional ceremony; the other involving falsified comments from his U.N. successor.
Video footage shows him drinking liquor in the middle of an ancestral ritual ― drinking liquor during the ceremony is considered untraditional. As the video went viral, media outlets and critics mocked him as being out of touch with Korean society after 10 years in New York. It turned out the footage had been modified from the original version and was created to mock him.
In the other hoax, new U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was incorrectly said to have criticized Ban for his presidential ambitions. Ahn Hee-jung, one of the presidential hopefuls from the liberal party, cited the fake news story while putting Ban down, according to news reports. Ahn later apologized.
This wasn’t the first time Ban was a victim since returning home from New York, Jan. 12. Meeting with conservative ruling Saenuri Party members two weeks ago, he reportedly urged lawmakers to enact laws to protect people from fake news.
Park Ah-ran, a senior researcher at the Korea Press Foundation, said fake news is a big “threat to democracy” and should be dealt with seriously. But, Park asked, “What is fake news? And how do we know it’s fake news? These are difficult questions.”
Park added because the issue is so new, it is so much more challenging to talk about prevention.
There’s no law governing fake news alone. The only possible way to get it corrected and force the responsible party to take responsibility is when the victim, such as Ban, files a defamation suit.
The 2008 controversy over Minerva offers a meaningful case study.
Online pundit Park Dae-sung, called Minerva, was put on trial for spreading online rumors about Korea’s foreign currency policy. The court ruled Minerva didn’t have the intent to hurt the public interest by spreading the rumor, a point which prosecutors had claimed. The Constitutional Court also later said punishing Minerva could violate freedom of expression.
Fake news is currently threatening many other countries around the world, and some governments have vowed strong actions to curb it.
Following torrent of fake news during the recent presidential election last year, former President Barack Obama called for stern measures against it. U.S. President Donald Trump continues his threats against CNN, calling it “fake news.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany also vowed to crack down on fake news as the country faces an election later this year.
Prof. Kang Seok from the University of Texas at San Antonio said Korea should expect more rampant fake news in 2017.
Writing for the latest issue of the journal “Newspaper and Broadcast,” he said, “As fake news proved to work during the U.S. election, knock-on effects can happen in Korea. In other words, we shouldn’t rule out that fake news will explode during the election year in Korea.”