They lost their families in a plane crash - then came the online hate

A plane crash in South Korea last December left Park Geun-woo an orphan. The 22-year-old had barely found space to mourn his parents when he came across a torrent of online abuse, conspiracies and malicious jokes made about the victims.

The Jeju Air plane, which was returning from Bangkok, Thailand, crash-landed at Muan International Airport on 29 December and exploded after slamming into a concrete barrier at the end of the runway, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.

Police investigations have identified and apprehended eight people who have been accused of making derogatory and defamatory online posts. These included suggestions that families were "thrilled" to receive compensation from authorities, or that they were "fake victims" - to the extent that some felt compelled to prove they had lost their loved ones.

Authorities have taken down at least 427 such posts.

But this is not the first time that bereaved families in South Korea have found themselves the targets of online abuse. Speaking to the BBC, experts described a culture where economic struggles, financial envy and social issues such as toxic competitiveness are fuelling hate speech.

Following Seoul's Halloween crowd crush in 2022, victims and bereaved families were similarly smeared. A man who lost his son in the incident had his photo doctored by hate groups - showing him laughing after receiving compensation.

People whose loved ones died in the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014 - a maritime disaster that saw 304 people killed, mostly schoolchildren - have also for years been the targets of hate speech.

The tragedy saw the government pay out an average of 420 million won ($292,840; £231,686) per victim - triggering comments that claimed this figure was unreasonably high.

"People who are living day by day feel the compensation is overrated and say the bereaved are getting 'unfair treatment' and that they are making a big deal when everyone's life is hard," Koo Jeong-woo, a sociology professor at Sungkyunkwan University, told news site The Korea Herald.

In later comments to the BBC, Prof Koo suggested that economic stress and a competitive job market - particularly in the wake of Covid - has left many people feeling socially isolated, exacerbating the issue of hate speech.

Many South Koreans, he says, now "view others not as their peers, but as adversaries", pointing to a widespread culture of comparison in South Korea.

"We tend to compare a lot... if you put someone else down, it's easier to feel superior yourself," Prof Lim Myung-ho of Dankook University told the BBC. "That's why there's a bit of tendency in Korea to engage in hate speech or make derogatory remarks, aiming to diminish others to elevate oneself."

Mr Park says the families of the Jeju Air crash victims have been characterised as "parasites squandering the nation's money".

By way of example, he refers to a recent article about an emergency relief fund of three million won ($2,055; £1,632) that was raised for the bereaved through donations. That article was met with a flood of malicious comments, many referencing the erroneous suggestion that taxpayers' money was used for the fund.

"It seems like the families of the Muan Airport victims have hit the jackpot. They must be secretly delighted," said one such comment.

Mr Park says these comments were "overwhelming".

"Even if compensation for the accident comes in, how could we possibly feel like recklessly spending it when it is the price of our loved ones' lives":[]}