South Gyeongsang Province Governor Kim Kyoung-soo is taken into custody at Seoul Central District Court, southern Seoul, Wednesday, after receiving a two-year jail term for conspiring with a blogger to manipulate online public opinion ahead of the 2017 snap presidential election. Yonhap



By Lee Suh-yoon



South Gyeongsang Province Governor Kim Kyoung-soo was sentenced to two years in jail Wednesday, in a court ruling that found President Moon Jae-in's longtime political ally guilty of online opinion-rigging operations ahead of the 2017 presidential election.



Kim was taken into custody immediately after the verdict was read, as a shouting match erupted between conservative group members and the governor's supporters, many of whom broke down in tears.



If the court verdict is confirmed by a high court and eventually the Supreme Court, he will be stripped of the governorship.



The guilty verdict is also likely to tarnish the Moon administration which has called for the rooting out of corruption.



"Maintaining his relationship with blogger Kim Dong-won for 18 months, Kim Kyoung-soo took part in manipulating the order of online comments under 80,000 different news articles," presiding Judge Sung Chang-ho said at the Seoul Central District Court. "This is not a simple obstruction of business for online news portal sites; it damaged the proper generation of public opinion in the online sphere."



The ruling came five months after special counsel Huh Ik-bum indicted Kim and a team of bloggers led by Kim Dong-won, better known by his online nickname Druking.



Kim Kyoung-soo, also a former ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) lawmaker who aided Moon during his 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns, was accused of conspiring with the blogger to manipulate online public opinion by using automated software that could increase "likes" and "dislikes" of online comments to Moon's advantage in the months leading up to his presidential victory in May 2017. The software was used to produce over 99.7 million "likes" and "dislikes."



Citing the testimony of the blogger team, mobile messages and computer log files, the court said the governor was briefed regularly on the online comment manipulation of news articles, even sending Druking's team some article links himself if he wanted the same job done on them. Kim was also aware of the software, the court said.



Kim was also given an additional suspended sentence of 10 months on top of his two-year jail term for violating the Election Law. The court found Kim guilty of trying to continue the illicit dealings with the blogger team for the 2018 local elections, offering a consul general post in Japan to an associate of Druking.





Kim Dong-won, better known by his online alias Druking, is called in for questioning by the special counsel at the prosecutors' office in Seoul, in this August file photo. Korea Times file