K-pop girl group T-ARA and MBK Entertainment's official YouTube channels were hacked on Tuesday, April 28. The hackers changed the information on the details of the two with "ONE LOVE ASIA," a certain group.
The said replaced information says, "Asia is coming together to show appreciation and support to all the front-liners. This campaign aims to spread love and togetherness as one human race, to reject all forms of discrimination and inequality caused by misunderstanding on the origin of the virus."
It concludes that the aim of the hacking is related to COVID-19.
In line with this, the hackers uploaded nine videos along with new sets of playlists. URL was also changed to www.youtube.com/ONELOVEASIA with some Chinese contents.
Hacking SNS of K-pop idols or any other celebrities has been experienced multiple times. In 2019, K-pop idol group 24K's Instagram was hacked, and the hacker revealed reasons for such insane action as money purposes. Fans noticed a lot of deleted posts and were replaced with the perpetrator's own contents. The said culprit harassed fans online, saying that they should not follow the said group and concentrate more on studies.
Earlier this year, Girls' Generation's Yuri experienced the same case, which made her enraged. She noticed how unfamiliar accounts came across her feed, and therefore, she took a screenshot with an angry message, "Who did this? Why is something that I never heard of before coming up on my feed? Why is my account following it!??? Please! Stop! Stop hacking my account."
Other K-pop artists whose accounts were claimed by hackers are MOMOLAND'S Nancy, Yoona, and Kang Ye Won. This only means that idols are vulnerable to such indecent acts done by people who would like to invade their own privacies.
Part of Korea's law on cyber security or the ICLG-Cybersecurity Laws and Regulations is "Hacking" incidents. Under the Criminal Activity or section 1.1, it is stated that "Any person who infiltrates another's information communication network ("ICN") without authorized access or beyond the scope of authorized access is subject to imprisonment for not more than 5 years or a penalty of not more than KRW 50 million."
Unauthorized invasion of social media accounts or channels is grounds of criminality that can be sued if found guilty. However, chances of arresting the said perpetrator have limitations and would not be a piece of cake, as it takes enough evidence that will prove that the culprit has done the said act.
