Recently, two digital postcards containing rape threats were displayed on an electronic display board at the main branch of the Lotte Department Store in Seoul.
The main branch of Lotte Department Store in Myeongdong, Seoul | koreatodo.com
According to the police, on November 15, Wednesday, the giant LED screen at the Lotte store displayed a message written in Korean that said, “I will rape all Korean women” at around 10 pm, which was followed by a similar message written in English.
The threat written in Korean | MK News
The massive LED billboard was installed as a part of a special Christmas campaign being run by Lotte. Citizens could upload messages on the screen by scanning a QR code. At once, up to six different message cards appeared on the screen, each being replaced after a while with a new message.
The digital billboard installed at the Lotte Store | Korea JoongAng Daily
But the event was disrupted by the appearance of the disturbing rape threats. According to the Lotte Department Store, an employee noticed the messages in question and took them down immediately. However, the next day, a citizen reported the incident to the customer service center after seeing a picture of the board on social media.
| MK News
The store also added that despite taking preliminary measures such as putting additional word restrictions in place in the filtering system, certain words were not filtered out adequately. For now, the store has halted the digital postcard event and is only displaying Christmas videos on the screen.
The departmental store is moving to file an official complaint with the police. An official mentioned that the store had asked Namedaemun police to track down the person who uploaded the messages.
