A spam message falsely written to impersonate an incumbent police officer, instructing recipients 'not to open foreign articles related to current and former presidents,' is trending again, prompting the police to launch a full-scale investigation.
According to the police on the 27th, the Suwon Central Police Station in Gyeonggi received a petition on the 24th from Officer A, requesting an investigation on charges such as defamation under the Information and Communication Network Act and violation of the Framework Act on Telecommunications.
Officer A, affiliated with the Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency, identified that spam messages impersonating the officer's name have been spreading since about the middle of this month, and thus took this action.
The spam message states, "Urgent. Do not open the CNN article titled 'Yoon Suk-yeol death.' An email titled 'Concerning South Korea' related to a rebellion incident is being distributed."
Additionally, it includes a message stating, "This is an email containing malicious code created in North Korea yesterday. The moment you open it, your phone will be accessed by a North Korean hacker. Please inform those around you."
Notably, the spam message even includes Officer A's real name at the bottom, creating the false impression that it is an official notice distributed by the police.
The spam message first appeared in 2016 and has been continuously spreading with only slight modifications to the president's name and information.
The police have not conducted investigations so far, as the spam message does not contain elements likely to cause direct harm, and identifying the original creator is difficult.
However, last year, a document was sent to the telecommunications three major companies KT, LG Uplus, SKT, and Kakao, requesting that spam messages in which specific strings are combined simultaneously should not be propagated or disseminated.
A police official noted, "As the petition has been filed, it seems that a decision on whether to investigate will be made after reviewing various situations."