Recently, under the influence of the Internet, culture created by netizens has developed rapidly. However, it demands netizen’s etiquette because people access information easily, and information is more likely to appear on the Internet. Because of the development and increasing use of the Internet, witch hunts are spreading on the Korean Internet. Witch hunts originated in the Middle Ages in Europe and referred to killing opponents of Christianity or women who committed a crime, but lately it means driving a person into a corner by writing bad comments on the Internet.

Three months ago, the group 2PM’s leader Park Jae-bum was involved in a scandal because he wrote on his My Space page criticizing Korea. As a result, he was reproached by many netizens, and he eventually left the group.

In March, a female Chinese university student went up on a statue of Mao Zedong, who was a famous politician, in Hunan, China. The student was cursed and threatened by Chinese netizens because of her act of going up on the statue.
On March 3, 2007, a woman brought her dog on the subway and left the subway after her dog defecated without clearing it away. The event soon spread on the Internet, so she got publicly scolded by many netizens, and her personal information like home address and phone number became known. As a result, she could not go outside, and she suffered from anxiety because she felt that people were attacking her.

Finally, Vera Hohleiter, a guest on the famous program Misuda, published a book called Schlaflos in Seoul. The book was translated by a Korean student studying in Germany. The Korean student insisted that the book contained content criticizing Korea, and he wrote his translation on the Internet. As a result, Vera was also denounced by netizens. Then, why do witch hunts occur?

The first reason is Internet development. Most people use the Internet, and information spreads fast. People can write on the Internet and access new information, so wrong information is easily accessible. Second, it’s from the problem of anonymity. People don’t know the writer, and people write without thinking. People attack people because they don’t feel that it is a wrong act. Because of this, the act causes a witch hunt.

Third, people sometimes make issues to get attention or to deliberately hunt others. If a person spreads false rumors on the Internet, the public becomes interested. The people who started the rumors are happy because of the attention or seeing someone become the target of a witch hunt. Like this, witch hunts happen frequently whether the information is true or not.

Witch hunts exist because the perception exists that it is okay to criticize things because most people do. However, such imitation leads to the misery of the sufferer, so he cannot live a normal life. Hence, witch hunts need to be eradicated through filtering ill-willed writings or baseless rumors, and then through making adequate systems to control them. We need to observe courtesies on the Internet and make an honest Internet culture.