"Do Not Open 'Park Geun-hye Death' Article"…Police Officers Angry Over Impersonation Messages

Police Officer A Submits Investigation Request Petition
"Personal Discomfort Was Significant... To Understand the Intent Behind Writing"

A petition requesting an investigation into spam messages impersonating active police officers, which have been spreading for years and warn against opening foreign news articles related to former and current presidents, has been submitted.

According to the police on the 27th, the Suwon Jungbu Police Station in Gyeonggi Province received a petition on the 24th from Officer A, asking for an investigation on charges including defamation under the Information and Communications Network Act and violations of the Telecommunications Business Act. Officer A, affiliated with the Gyeonggi Nambu Police Agency, took this action after recognizing that spam messages impersonating his name had been spreading since mid-month.

Spam messages impersonating police officer A were circulated until mid-month. Photo by Yonhap News

Recently, messages titled "Urgent. Do not open the CNN article titled 'Park Geun-hye Death'" have been circulating mainly through messengers. The message contained statements such as "An email titled 'Worrisome Republic of Korea' related to the Choi Soon-sil case is being distributed," and "(This) is an email containing malware created in North Korea yesterday." It further warned, "The moment you open it, your phone will be taken over by North Korean hackers. Please inform those around you," and included the name of a specific police officer affiliated with the Gyeonggi Nambu Police Agency at the bottom. It was determined that this message was not officially sent by the police but was an impersonation.

Similar messages have spread in the past, prompting police warnings. In 2016, a similar message titled "Do not open the CNN article titled 'Park Geun-hye Resignation'" circulated. That message also appeared to be officially sent by the police, as it included the name of a police officer at the bottom. As these types of messages spread again, last year the police sent official letters to the three major telecom companies?KT, LG Uplus, SKT?and KakaoTalk, requesting that messages containing specific combined strings not be transmitted to prevent the spread of such messages.

Officer A stated, "It is difficult to identify the original author of messages related to former presidents due to the long period of spread, but we judged that it is possible to trace the author of messages related to the current president." He added, "Therefore, I submitted a petition requesting an investigation into messages related to the current president." He also said, "I have experienced significant personal inconvenience due to the impersonation messages, and I thought it necessary to understand the intent behind these messages, which led to this decision."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.