Crowd crush article comment sections should be closed: Civic groups

Two civic groups formed following the Itaewon crowd crush asked the media and IT companies to close comment sections for news articles on the tragedy ahead of the memorial ceremony commemorating the 100th day since the disaster.

Families of the Itaewon crush victims break in to tears during a committee meeting held in the National Assembly on Jan. 12. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Two civic groups formed following the Itaewon crowd crush asked the media and IT companies to close comment sections for news articles on the tragedy ahead of the memorial ceremony commemorating the 100th day since the disaster.

The first group was established by 170 family members of the victims and the other by 188 civic organizations.

"We call on the media to cover the memorial ceremony with prudence so that it can be a time for sincere commemoration," the civic groups announced in a statement released on Thursday. "And we urge the media and IT companies to devise a forward-looking policy on comment sections, which have became hotbeds for secondary victimization."

The two groups asked the media to close the comment sections below online articles covering the Itaewon crush during the three-day long ceremony, which runs from Friday to Sunday. They asked Naver and Kakao to temporarily suspend the commenting services on their websites.

The groups asked for the closing of comment sections ahead of a memorial ceremony on Dec. 16 last year. Kakao closed its commenting service, but Naver kept its service open as it allows media outlets to have full control.

Commenting arose as a social issue when a survivor of the crush committed suicide after reading malicious comments online.

"Malicious comments broke my heart," the survivor's mother said when she was asked what hurt her the most.

The families of Itaewon crush victims urged the government to "devise detailed countermeasures against secondary victimizaiton" during a press conference at the National Assembly on Dec. 13.

"We closed comment sections of the almost all articles on the Itaewon tragedy from the beginning," a director-level KBS official said in a meeting with the viewers on December. "The interview with the victim's mother never had its open."

"Some families asked our reporters to close down the comment section for all articles because secondary victimization is prevalent," an official from YTN said in his meeting with viewers. "We are discussing whether we need the section at all."

BY SOHN DONG-JOO [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]