It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone’s Server Goes Down

by Robert Koehler on March 2, 2010

Granted, it’s really, really hard to feel sorry for 2ch, but I hate news like this:

An army of Korean netizens apparently attacked the Japanese Internet forum 2ch for their anti-Korean postings, including those targeting Korea’s Olympic gold-medal-winning figure skater Kim Yu-na, causing the site to shut down on Monday.
[...]
The attacks were triggered by comments praising Russians for the killing of a Korean student in Moscow.

Some postings claimed that the killing was not racially motivated and Russians were doing “good deeds” after the event occurred.

The denizens of 2ch were also posting stuff claiming Korea had bribed Olympic figure skating judges. Online security officials estimate that more than 10,000 Korean netizens participated in the attack, according to the KT.

Some netizens operate under the impression that attacks like this are a “display of Korean power.” I wonder if they’ll be saying the same thing when it’s Chinese netizens crashing their sites…

UPDATE: See this for the play-by-play (HT to WangKon)

Tagged as: The Netizens

{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }

1 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 12:49 pm: Well,

I guess every country has snotty nosed teenagers with too much time on their hands….
2 jinu4ever March 2, 2010 at 12:54 pm: i remember a few years back, foreign journalists were criticising Korean society for use of words like “netizens” which are non-existent in the English dictionary. Look how widely the word is used now?
Now that’s a display of Korean power!
3 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 1:24 pm: This is both hilarious and insane at the same time!

http://inewp.com/?p=1086
4 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 1:28 pm: Especially this part:

1:44 PM-

All the board servers in 2ch were downed by the attacks from the South Korean users.

The main page of the Japanese website 2ch was decorated with the historical flags of Korea.

2:13 PM-
The main page of 2ch was replaced by historical flags of Korea.

2:50 PM-
Most of the Japanese users in 2ch were organized by a high school student and so the student waited for “reinforcements” until 5:00 P.M when they decided to attack DCInside.

However they were thwarted by the DCInside administrator’s total protection that was contributed by the Korean users.
5 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 1:31 pm: 6:00 PM -

A Korean ”spy” found out that one of the Japanese users had set up a plan to attack a meaningful site to Korean. He detected Japanese attacks were pointing towards the Korean presidential website.

President Lee Myung Bak- His nick name is ‘Osaka Myung Bak’ given by
However, none of the Korean users didn’t really care about the attack on the Presidential website, because the current President of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak is very unpopular to Korean netizens and a few of them had wanted to collaborate with the Japanese to attack the Korean presidential website, and most of the Korean users laughed at this because they considered President Lee to be too pro-Japanese.

There is a Zainichi fifth column!!!! ~Sweet!!!
6 Uri Onara March 2, 2010 at 1:33 pm: I can’t get worked up about 2-channeru going down.
7 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 1:35 pm: The Japanese resorted to retaliatory attacks!

6:11 PM -

The Japanese next targeted the VANK (Voluntary Agency Network Of Korea) website that provides accurate information about Korea to international textbook publishing companies and other publishers. Few Koreans expected the Japanese would attack a non-related site for this particular cyber war and thus reeled from the shock. VANK has shut down their website for more than 1 hour.

Round two!

7:00 PM-

There was a slugfest between the two belligerents, so many Korean users decided to put full effort into force and effort to attack 2ch at 8:00 P.M.
8:43PM-

Spokesman of 2ch urged to stop the attack on the Japanese side.

Direct Translation: “I know there are some guys’ who want to keep attacking, but since our command is totally lost, we should stop for now to attack them later when arrangements are made.”

9:35 PM-

2ch was shut down for nearly 8 hours, and MBC, one of the major news channels in Korea, reported about this epic cyber war on their news time.

I’m sorry… but it’s funny on many levels.
8 butt darts March 2, 2010 at 1:52 pm: I wonder if the folks hacking the site think that the entire 2ch-using demographic is made up of Korea-hating racists. The news-related threads are cesspools of all sorts of stupidity (including racism of course), and I guess those are the most vociferous 2ch users, but the majority of the site is devoted to personal interests that have nothing to do about hating Koreans.

I use the site to check out music-related rumors, so this is pretty annoying. Hopefully, people will eventually realize how stupid this is…
9 cm March 2, 2010 at 2:33 pm: Just stay out of it when two mad dogs want to attack each other.
10 keith March 2, 2010 at 4:29 pm: Not funny really, just downright stupidity on from both sides. Nationalists are always morons and this little episode illustrated that fact perfectly.

I guess at least the Koreans weren’t mutilating animals, calling in bomb threats, committing arson or some of the other crazy mischief they get up to, so that’s one positive to the silly little tale.
11 WangKon936 March 2, 2010 at 4:48 pm: Keith,

I guess at least the some Koreans weren’t mutilating animals, calling in bomb threats…

Fixed for you.
12 keith March 2, 2010 at 5:20 pm: ^ fair enough, I should have used a quantifier. I wouldn’t have used ‘some’ though as that would imply that other Koreans were getting up to crazy acts of destruction and naughtiness in real life. I don’t think any of the crazy nutizens were getting up to mischief anywhere, but the interwebs were they?
13 WeikuBoy March 2, 2010 at 7:23 pm: “All the board servers in 2ch were downed by the attacks from the South Korean users. The main page of the Japanese website 2ch was decorated with the historical flags of Korea. The main page of 2ch was replaced by historical flags of Korea. Most of the Japanese users in 2ch were organized by a high school student and so the student waited for “reinforcements” until 5:00 P.M when they decided to attack DCInside. However they were thwarted by the DCInside administrator’s total protection that was contributed by the Korean users.”

I don’t understand what any of that means. I feel so old.
The historical flags of Korea would be cool to see, though.

[P.S. The Hole keeps crashing our Explorer.]
14 chiamattt March 2, 2010 at 7:40 pm: The worst part, is that neither nation will seek out the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
15 KrZ March 2, 2010 at 11:04 pm: Chiamatt you’ve been on EFnet #rave for decade(s), you mean to tell me you never flooded or tried to ride a split for ops? It’s not like they DDOSed anything important.
16 bumfromkorea March 3, 2010 at 2:31 am: *whoosh* (sound of hacker stuff going over my head)

So what was the issue that triggered the attack? Murdered Korean student in Russia or Kim Yu-Na?
17 Liz March 3, 2010 at 7:38 am: The road runs both ways.

“While 2ch may seem like a victim in this case, we should remind you that Japanese netizens back in 2008 crashed the Korean VANK server when Asada defeated Kim at the Grand Prix final in Goyang, Korea. For East Asians, attacking a website in your rival’s country is just the way to celebrate figure skating victory — like tearing down the goalpost for Americans.”
18 beatnix March 3, 2010 at 8:01 am: Americans call knee-jerk reactions justice…
19 lmno March 3, 2010 at 8:05 am: Some netizens operate under the impression that attacks like this are a “display of Korean power.”

Which article is that “display of Korean power” quote from?
20 butt darts March 3, 2010 at 10:58 am: “The worst part, is that neither nation will seek out the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

How do you even prosecute 10,000+ people though?

Anyway, 2ch is back up now, so I can go back to killing time there when I’m bored at work and the nationalist idiots can go back to their retarded shenanigans (which hopefully won’t include attacking Korean websites).

I know that March 1 is a holiday there – is the hacking of 2ch going to be an annual tradition, or is this just a one-off incident? Oh well, I guess I can live with not having access to 2ch for a day or two.
21 lastnamekim March 4, 2010 at 1:53 pm: OMG..it’s a cyber geek war! This is the future, people. Geeks hacking each other’s websites to show their national pride! Be very afraid, people!