Tom’s Pizza in Hongdae has been making the rounds in the foodie community because of its high quality New York style pizza. It’s now my go-to place for business meetings. It’s just a small operation with Tom and his wife running the place.
Tom messaged me last night, saying he was worried. He suddenly got 6,000 followers on his Instagram account. He felt that something was about the happen.
Then the robot attacks began. (Click to see the original size.)
The origin looks Korean or Korean-American, considering the content of some of the messages. Then again, it could be some expat who has nothing better to do than to pretend to be Korean–after almost 15 years of blogging in Korea, I wouldn’t be surprised. It could be a disgruntled customer or another restaurant playing dirty. I’ve mentioned in the past how difficult it is for foreigners to run businesses, especially restaurants, in Korea because of dirty xenophobic tactics by some businesses and government officials. I know a couple restaurateurs who left the country because they just got tired of fighting it.
Today, there are over 7,000 followers. Someone is paying a company to do a coordinated attack. I’m just posting this here for future reference.
From what I remember during my time in Korea, it is illegal to smear an individual or business this way.
Korea also has far less internet privacy and protection of users’ details. Please encourage Tom to investigate the IP adresses etc, report them to the internet provider and also possibly contact the police to file a report.
Fight back against these racists by unearthing them where they are hiding on the net.
This seems part of the anti-foreigner xenophobia/racism that is still an ugly reality among some backwards redneck Koreans.
Some Korean-Americans do this too online.
I’m not suggesting most Koreans would do this but those who would and indeed do this kind of smearing of foreigners deserve to be outed.