Liberation Day Korea-Japan cyber battle brews

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Liberation Day Korea-Japan cyber battle brews

A second cyber battle may be brewing this weekend between Korean and Japanese Internet users, following on the first round of volleys in March, according to recent posts on popular community boards in both countries.

Netizens on certain Korean Internet clubs and cafes are calling for attacks on one of Japan’s most popular Web forums, 2channel, tomorrow, when Koreans will celebrate the anniversary of their liberation from Japan in 1945. Users on 2channel are also expected to retaliate.

On March 1, the anniversary of the Korean independence movement, Korean Internet users flooded the site with data requests, eventually forcing it offline temporarily.

The action is known as a distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attack, because it relies on a large number of attackers to overload 2channel by any means they could.

Not all Korean netizens approve of the attacks. One anonymous user on a popular discussion board in Korea wrote, “Are all your heads empty? The attack will humiliate our country.”

The second round may not be as damaging because there has been no outright provocation by Japanese netizens, as there was at the beginning of the year. Preceding the March attack, 2channel users started threads sympathizing with Russians after a Korean college student was violently attacked in the street by three Russian youths and died from his wounds in February. The tension escalated after another Japanese 2channel user accused figure skater Kim Yu-na of bribing judges to get her Olympic gold medal, beating Japanese silver medalist Mao Asada.


By Christine Kim [christine.kim@joongang.co.kr]
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