[WHY] Turning pain into profit: How Korean society enabled the rise of ‘cyber wreckers’

Social Affairs

Published: 20 Jul. 2024, 07:00

[WHY] Turning pain into profit: How Korean society enabled the rise of ‘cyber wreckers’

[GETTY IMAGES]

In the animal kingdom, vultures feed off corpses, while in Korea, "cyber wreckers" feed off people's misfortunes — and humans' affinity for gossip.

Heartbreaking revelations by YouTuber Tzuyang surrounding four years of mental, physical and financial torture from her ex-boyfriend filled headlines ever since her emotional live stream on July 11. The horrible story quickly garnered reactions, ranging from sadness to rage. But what infuriated people more were the so-called cyber wreckers who learned of the news and demanded money from her in exchange for their silence.

Cyber wreckers are YouTubers who specialize in posting videos that target specific people, mostly celebrities but sometimes noncelebrities like infamous criminals, to attract viewers and ultimately make money.

Their tabloid journalism-like content has always been controversial, but the ever-growing presence of YouTube has revealed the real-world consequences of their actions, sparking a heated debate over the idea of online lynching in the name of justice.

YouTuber GooJeYeok attends the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office on July 15 in southern Seoul. [YONHAP]

The online vultures

The term cyber wrecker is said to have started in 2018 when a YouTuber used the term to describe how he and other YouTubers compete to upload entertaining content faster than others, just as private towing service operators eavesdrop on police radio broadcasts and compete to get to a car accident and tow the cars.

These days, the term is used to describe YouTubers whose primary content focuses on raising suspicions or spreading rumors about specific people, oftentimes exaggerating already-known facts or stating downright untrue stories to get viewers’ attention.

Seven out of 10 people have watched content created by cyber wreckers, mostly to “find information related to specific individuals or incidents fast,” according to a survey conducted by Yang Jung-ae, a senior researcher at the Korea Press Foundation. Among a pool of 1,000 respondents who took part in the survey earlier this year, 92 percent found cyber wreckers “a social problem,” mostly because “cyber wreckers only care about money.”

The three YouTubers who have been accused of blackmailing Tzuyang — Caracula, GooJeYeok and Jeon Gukjin — are modern-day examples of cyber wreckers, with videos boasting titles like Caracula’s “The truth about the female blackmailer of late actor Lee Sun-kyun,” GooJeYeok’s “Is Lee Sun-kyun’s drug scandal with chaebol children and celebrities true?” and Jeon Gukjin’s “A Korean and Japanese couple YouTuber make anti-Korean videos for views.”

YouTuber Jeon Gukjin explaining why he blackmailed Tzuyang in a video uploaded on July 15 [SCREEN CAPTURE]

They have been accused of demanding money from mukbang YouTuber Tzuyang in exchange for their silence on her experience of working at a hostess bar, something she was forced to by her now-dead ex-boyfriend. Jeon Gukjin admitted to extorting 3 million won ($2,172) from Tzuyang, while GooJeYeok claimed that Tzuyang “asked for risk management” and “gave him 55 million won.”

Tzuyang filed a report against three YouTubers, excluding Caracula, and another "anonymous blackmailer" to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office for blackmail.

GooJeYeok voluntarily attended a questioning session at the prosecutors' office on Monday, where he denied the blackmail accusation and said to reporters that the two parties had signed a contract. YouTubers Caracula and Jeon Gukjin each uploaded videos to explain their sides of the story. Caracula claimed he wasn't blackmailing but "joking around," while Jeon Gukjin apologized for taking 3 million won from Tzuyang because he had been going through a "financial crisis."

A captured image of Tzuyang with bruises in her past videos [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Justice or lynching?

Tzuyang’s case has brought cyber wreckers’ dealings into the spotlight, but their presence has been debated among society for years now, especially about whether these online vigilantes should be tolerated in the name of justice served.

Just last month, YouTuber Narak Bogwanso disclosed the identities of some of the perpetrators of the 2004 Miryang gang rape case, reigniting outrage over the incident 20 years ago that saw a group of high school students repeatedly sexually assault at least one teenage girl.

A total of 44 perpetrators were linked to the case, none of whom went to jail because they were minors. At the time, 10 of the assailants who directly took part in the sexual assault were indicted and sentenced to probation, 20 were sent to juvenile detention centers and 14 settled with the victim.

Netizens bombarded the assailants’ workplaces with angry comments and phone calls after the YouTube revelations, leading them to lose their jobs or shut down their businesses. Another YouTuber, named Panseung, even uploaded a voice recording of a phone call with someone he claimed to be the victim, along with the released judgment of the case.

A captured image of so-called Miryang gang rape case assailants' identities revealed on YouTube [SCREEN CAPTURE]

A few days later, however, the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center said that the victim never agreed to the revelations, as opposed to the YouTubers’ argument that the victim’s family requested they make the videos.

Narak Bogwanso took down the videos and said that the channel would shut down in an apology video on June 26. Two days later, it came back with a video titled “So dumb,” covering an online post from May where a man claimed that he was being wrongly framed for rape.
Similar cases where cyber wreckers act as online police have been more than abundant.

So many YouTubers were present on the day that child rapist Cho Doo-soon was released from jail on Dec. 12, 2020, that police had to escort him to his house in Gyeonggi. Even Tzuyang’s alleged blackmailer, Caracula, uncovered the identities of the school students who bullied YouTuber Pyo Ye-rim, a victim of school violence who committed suicide last October. He also helped her recover from her previous suicide attempt.

There are, however, YouTubers whose sole purpose seems to be to attack or insult people.

A channel titled Sojang had over 80,000 subscribers before it was reported to police for defamation by girl group IVE member Jang Won-young in 2023. It had become infamous for targeting celebrities by making up love scandals and claiming that stars had plastic surgery. The channel was sued multiple times by different celebrities, but Jang’s agency Starship Entertainment’s meticulous preparation meant its case was enough to shut the channel down for good.

YouTuber Caracula, accused of blackmailing Tzuyang [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The thrill of justice

Many wreckers wreck for money, but for the viewers, it’s like scratching the itch from what the public considers an inept judicial system.

Almost nine out of 10 Korean citizens say that punishments for criminal cases are too lenient. According to a 2020 survey of 1,000 respondents conducted by Hankook Research, 87 percent said that punishments are too “weak” and 66 percent said they do not trust the decisions that come from courts.

Add this to Korea’s ever-growing IT infrastructure and the absence of real-world actors that retaliate against criminals, like in other countries, you get wreckers, says Bae Sang-hoon, a former profiler at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and an affiliate professor at the school of police administration at Woosuk University.

“People applaud the justice served by civilians because they believe that the state and the press are failing to bring justice to society,” he said.

“In fact, that’s what these wreckers claim in their interviews, and people buy that. This matter should have been dealt with long ago by the government but it just stood by along with the National Assembly. Google obviously won’t make a stance because they’re making money. These wreckers are ruining society by using the pretense of justice, but we’ve been failing to look deeper into where they get the support from.”

Google said Tuesday that it will ban the Caracula, GooJeYeok and Jeon Gukjin YouTube channels from making a profit off their videos based on the company’s creator responsibility policies. All content creators must agree to the policy when monetizing their YouTube videos, and the policy states that Google can suspend the monetization of a channel if the creator’s off-platform behavior is deemed harmful to YouTube’s community.

YouTube only removes content or blocks channels entirely if a video “includes threats, harassment, and hate speech,” according to the company’s community guidelines.

YouTuber Tzuyang, right, and her lawyer Kim Tae-yeon in a livestream on July 18. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Pulling the plug

An in-depth discussion and reformation of the legal system may be the fundamental solution, but a definite remedy should be made by the government, the National Assembly and social media platforms, especially Google, experts say.

“It may be inevitable that the law isn’t adequately managing the current situation because our legal system was created at a time when we didn’t have YouTube or wreckers,” said Kwak Joon-ho, an attorney at Law Firm Chung.

“But that doesn’t mean that measures can’t be taken at the moment. The government can make guidelines, the National Assembly can revise laws and Google can take down videos or channels that are obviously causing trouble in the real world. Google may have suspended monetization on the three Tzuyang blackmailers, but the videos are still there and the platform is still making money from people’s clicks.”

Google’s role is particularly important, according to Seo Hye-jin, the human rights director of the Korean Women Lawyers Association.

“It’s difficult for victims being blackmailed with their wrongdoings to speak out against the wreckers because they feel like people would just say they deserved to be blackmailed for whatever they did,” said Seo.

In fact, Tzuyang also paid her blackmailers instead of making a police report because it is true that she worked at a hostess bar — which would have been met with heavy criticism from Korea’s conservative Confucian society.

“So, the only way this situation can come to any kind of solution is if these cases, when they are uncovered, are firmly dealt with and punished so that similar crimes do not reoccur,” continued Seo. “Their money should be confiscated and YouTube should also take responsibility for the status quo. YouTube has the ability to take inappropriate videos down. They should use it properly.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]