A nationwide campaign to create a sunfull digital world was launched on June 8 under the slogan of "Lets' make an advanced digital society."
The sunfull movement aims to increase awareness of the impact that cyberbullying and anonymous derogatory messages have on victims, although healthy criticism is sometimes necessary and indeed welcome in the right context. Also, the campaign aims to increase the practice of posting positive messages on boards to change users' approach to online communication.
About 1,000 guests, including Prime Minister Chung Un-chan, Minister of Public Administration and Security Maeng Hyung-kyu, attended the launching ceremony held at the Seoul Plaza in downtown Seoul.
The campaign will be led by the tentatively named [in translation] "warm digital world practical network," a private-government cooperation body. The organization will launch a citizens' campaign to create a new digital world, a spokesman of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said.
To create an advanced information culture, the network will start a nationwide "sunfull" movement. Sunfull means positive comments. It also means posting encouraging comments on the vicious posts to comfort the writer of original articles. It includes good words and deeds on the Web, stemming from a good heart and soul.
Positive comments include posts that are complimentary, comforting, encouraging, thankful, apologetic and forgiving. Noting that the sunny movement is a social campaign to encourage people to take a harmonious approach to each other, the spokesman said, "It emphasizes that a positive comment will make the person who wrote a post or article even happier rather than the writer of original article. People who write positive comments for others become happier than the people who receive them. It also teaches that people who bless others are blessed."
On the occasion of the Month of Information Culture, which falls in June every year, a variety of information-related exhibitions, academic seminars and other events will be held across the country under the subjects of proper information culture or etiquette, narrowing the information gap and the future information society.
"In particular, this year's events are designed to encourage almost all sectors, including local governments, civic groups and general people, to participate in the campaign, away from the past of central government-orientated events," said the spokesman.
Among those events are the 2010 Jeju Information Culture Festival in Jeju Island, the Family Cultural Festival in Gwangju City, Creating a Proper Internet Culture in Gangwon Province, the Cyber Science Festival in Anyang City and Information Culture Hanmadang in North Gyeongsang Province.
Since the government designated June as the Month of Information Culture in 1988, informatization has been spreading rapidly across the country in terms of quantity and people's use of information has been expanding remarkably, he said.
In a nutshell, Korea has emerged as a global IT powerhouse with the construction of a super-speed information & communication network in 1993, education of 10 million people on informatization in 2002 and securing the top position in terms of digital opportunity index (DOI) during the 2005-2007 period.
However, cyber crimes, including malicious comments, soared by 184 percent from 51,722 cases in 2003 to 147,069 cases in 2009 owing to immature culture and etiquette in use of information following rapid informatization, he pointed out.
More about the Sunfull movement is here: http://www.sunfull.or.kr/web/eng/main/main.html
