The video footage of ‘Line 5 Beer Girl’ has stirred the cyberspace once again. Korea’s subway culture has been incessantly put on the chopping board, making this incident, quite frankly, an ordinary ordeal. Just when the relentless gossip of ‘Line 5 Beer Girl’ was dying down, ‘Bundang Line Cigarette Lady’ emerged. Strikingly, the two ladies under different names were, in fact, the same person to begin with. With the target clear, Korean netizens, also known as Netizen Crime Scene Investigation (NCSI), swiftly started an investigation on the woman. Private details were made public, by posting photos and uploading her name, age, and even past criminal records.
Although the lady’s actions are socially unacceptable and downright outrageous, this does not legitimatize the actions of Korean netizens. This is evidently elucidated in the constitution of Korea. Article 17 of the constitution guarantees that “the privacy of no citizen may be infringed.” Article 21 also demonstrates that “all citizens shall enjoy freedom of speech and the press,” under the qualification that “neither speech nor the press shall violate the honor or rights of other persons nor undermine public morals or social ethics.” Thus violation of privacy should not be tolerated. What netizens often fail to see is the whole picture. They are given small pieces of information to work with in the beginning, from which they start sorting pieces of puzzle to create what they deem as truth. Now that people have access to the Internet by using smart-phones, it is only a matter of time the distorted truth makes it to the public. However, such rash actions call for dire consequences, as the truth itself loses its objectiveness after being meddled with. In fact, the lady at issue was later reported to have been suffering from mental illness. If this fact was publicized before netizens’ investigation and uploaded of videos, the public’s criticism may have waned and a few might have shown sympathy. Now that news travels at an unprecedented speed, it has thus become evident that publicizing certain people’s private information has become a new social issue. A couple wrong clicks made by NCSI might just put anyone’s life at stake.