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Online debate over president’s responsibility

Posted April. 29, 2014 00:03,   

한국어

The free bulletin board of Cheong Wa Dae`s website (www.president.go.kr) kept breaking down all day on Monday, which at some point led to a suspicion that the website might have been hacked. However, the cause of the breakdown was a surge in traffic. An official from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said, “About 7,000 people on average have accessed the site on a daily basis, but the current traffic is two to three times more than the average and the number of simultaneous log-ins is also high, so the speed got slow.”

The surge in traffic was due to the intense debate over if President Park Geun-hye should be held responsible for the Sewol ferry accident. In particular, the posting uploaded at 09:51 a.m. on Sunday by a person identified by his surname Jeong under the title of “Why you shouldn’t be a president” has recorded more than 400,000 hits. Other than this, there were many postings blaming the irresponsibility of the president and her administration. In response, rebutting postings such as “Park Geun-hye, why she should be the president” were also uploaded afterwards. Because of the heated debate, “Cheong Wa Dae” topped the list of popular search words at one Internet portal site.

As the posting was raising intense controversies, Jeong wrote on the board at 08:53 a.m. on Monday that he “wants the posting to be deleted.” Cheong Wa Dae advised that “the posting on the free bulletin board can be deleted only by its writer,” and Jeong deleted two postings that he wrote on the board, immediately.