In South Korea, families of Halloween crowd-crush victims face ‘unspeakable’ online abuse

Internet trolls have latched onto outlandish conspiracies claiming the crush that killed more than 150 people was caused by vegetable oil or drugs

Some ruling-party lawmakers criticised the victims’ families in parliament, creating an ‘open season’ for online abuse in highly polarised South Korea

Reading Time:3 minutes

Cho Mi-eun cries as her husband Lee Jong-chul kneels down to comfort her in the alleyway where their 24-year-old son was killed in the crowd crush in Itaewon, Seoul, in October. Photo: AFP

Published: 12:18pm, 10 Apr 2023Updated: 12:19pm, 10 Apr 2023

First, he lost his child in Seoul’s Halloween crowd crush. Then came a torrent of online abuse, upending his family’s once-private life and making him an internet-wide figure of mockery.

In October, Lee Jong-chul’s 24-year-old son was among more than 150 people killed in the disaster in the city’s popular Itaewon district. Grief-stricken, he spoke to media, pleading with South Korean politicians to take action.

Then, as has happened after incidents from the Sandy Hook mass shooting to the disappearance of British woman Nicola Bulley, an internet mob formed: Lee and his family’s personal tragedy was mocked, belittled and misrepresented online.

From photos doctored to show Lee laughing after being offered compensation to attempts to link him to North Korea – two viral posts debunked by digital verification reporters – he and his family have become a virtual punching bag on Korean-language forums.

Police stand guard near cordons along a road lined with emergency services personnel and their vehicles after the crowd crush in Itaewon in October. Photo: AFP

“It’s unspeakable what some of these comments say,” said Lee’s daughter Ga-young, adding that the sheer volume of abuse was “overwhelming”, with any news report on them attracting hundreds of comments, almost exclusively negative, in minutes.