We could all end up in the digital pillory

Kim Won-bae

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.   

In medieval Europe, there was a punishment known as the pillory, a wooden frame that locked a criminal's head and hands in place. It resembled the wooden cangue used during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), but with one crucial difference: The offender was left in a public square to face the crowd's judgment. Whether the prisoner was pelted with stones or showered with flowers depended less on the crime itself than on public sentiment.

In 1703, Daniel Defoe, author of "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), was fined and sentenced to three days in the pillory after publishing a satirical pamphlet criticizing the persecution of Protestant dissenters. According to historical accounts, Londoners threw flowers rather than stones, turning his punishment into a public show of support. Others placed in the pillory were beaten or even killed. Although the state delegated part of the punishment to the public, the system could never uphold the principle of proportionality, under which punishment should match the offense.

Britain abolished the pillory in 1837. Yet the rise of the internet and social media has revived its logic in a new form. In "So You've Been Publicly Shamed" (2015), writer John Ronson observed that, for the first time since the pillory was outlawed nearly 180 years earlier, ordinary people had regained the power to determine the severity of someone else's punishment. Today, neither a prosecutor's indictment nor a court ruling is necessary. An angry online post, sharing and reposting are often enough to inflict lasting damage. In Korea, even offline symbols such as funeral wreaths have become tools of public shaming.

The recent controversy involving the baseball team at Paichai High School illustrates the danger. During a game against Gwangju Jeil High School, players chanted slogans mocking the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. Their actions were clearly wrong. The Korea Baseball Softball Association suspended the team from national tournaments for six months and the players, coaches and some parents later visited the Gwangju school to apologize in person.

Even the principal of Gwangju Jeil appealed for restraint, saying that permanently branding students who had admitted wrongdoing and sought forgiveness was not an outcome anyone should want. If those directly affected by the incident call for leniency, why do people with no direct involvement often demand even harsher punishment? Wrongdoing should be criticized, but condemning an entire school or sending funeral wreaths to its campus goes far beyond holding individuals accountable.

Nor is the standard applied consistently. Last year, after actor Cho Jin-woong retired when crimes he had committed as a high school student came to light, some progressive commentators defended him by describing the offenses as youthful mistakes. Yet many of those same voices showed little interest in extending forgiveness or compassion to the Paichai students. The dividing line is increasingly determined not by the nature or severity of wrongdoing but by whose side one is on. 

Conservative figures who sent congratulatory wreaths to Paichai were no more justified. They argued that the gesture was intended to counter the funeral wreaths, but it instead obscured the team's misconduct and turned the mockery of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement into yet another front in Korea's ideological divide.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote in "The Righteous Mind" (2012) that "morality binds and blinds." Shared outrage strengthens solidarity within a group, but that same solidarity makes it easier to stop seeing the other side as fellow human beings and instead view them as targets deserving punishment. Those who throw stones rarely think of themselves as cruel. They believe they are acting in the name of justice.

A more troubling problem is that the digital pillory can operate regardless of whether any real wrongdoing has occurred. A member of a K-pop girl group recently came under suspicion after saying "Museopno," meaning "It's scary," in the Gyeongsang dialect. A producer at Gyeongnam MBC and the liberal politician Cho Kuk claimed the expression was associated with the far-right online community Ilbe. Others pointed out that the word alone does not reasonably support such a conclusion, yet suspicion lingered.

Unlike the Paichai chants, which combined references that critics interpreted as mocking Gwangju, the dialect expression had no comparable context or connection. If someone can be placed in a digital pillory without compelling evidence, no one can be certain who will be next. A joke, a regional expression, something done years ago or even a misunderstood remark can suddenly become enough to trigger public humiliation and collective condemnation.

This digital pillory is now firmly embedded in society, and it is unrealistic to expect people simply to put down the stones in their hands. Is there any way to slow the cycle?

Some flower delivery companies reportedly refused or canceled orders for protest wreaths targeting schools. Their decisions suggest that someone, somewhere, can still press the pause button before public anger escalates into online and offline branding and disproportionate punishment.

Before throwing another stone, we should stop and ask whether the person standing in the digital pillory truly deserves to be there and whether our own actions might inflict irreparable harm. As Haidt argues, we should also ask whether we have become captive to the "tribal moralism" that constantly divides people into opposing camps. Complete neutrality may be impossible, but that does not mean we should abandon the principle of proportionality. Justice requires not only moral conviction but also restraint.