Anti-Tablo Net group admits defeat

The cybercalumny of hip-hop singer Tablo, who has battled for months viciously false online rumors that he faked his academic record, is reluctantly winding down.

The Internet community SangJinSe, a Korean acronym for “A world where information is the truth,” closed membership of its site on Thursday with a grudging notice and an apology to the Canadian-Korean singer and his family. The site had 20,000 members. “Whether we like it or not, we have no choice but to accept the announced results of the public authorities’ investigation and verification,” the club said in its official announcement.

“We would also like to extend an apology to Tablo and his family for defamation statements that had been made toward them ... and we also ask for mercy on the Internet users who were sued,” said the statement. Tablo has sued 20 Internet users for defamation, who were called in for questioning by police this month.

The singer had been excoriated by netizens doubting his academic record since last year, but in June the Korea JoongAng Daily published his diploma and transcripts from Stanford University, and they were later confirmed by police to be official documents.

SangJinSe was smaller than the leading Internet community roiling up rumors about Tablo, TaJinYo, or “We Request the Truth from Tablo,” which had roughly 180,000 members before it was shut down earlier this month. The manager of that forum, a 57-year-old ethnic Korean with U.S. citizenship living in Chicago surnamed Kim, has an arrest warrant against him issued by the Seoul police.

However, the spite lives on. Several thousand former TaJinYo members have reconstituted themselves in a second club, known as TaJinYo 2. Yesterday, they posted a notice about SangJinSe’s decision to end membership, saying: “They must have been bribed by Tablo.”

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