Strike the netizens, save T-ara – navigating Korean article online portals

Lately k-pop fans have been noticing this neat little Russian criminal-inspired tattoo that Jongup was wearing in B.A.P’s “Skydive” promotional imagery, and getting a bit upset over the acronym used:

Drawing and text from “Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume II“

I’m not sure why this generated so much concern – he’s playing a bad guy, so obviously him having “bad person tattoos” is entirely appropriate and in-character.  It says a lot about the weak pussyness of our PC Internet culture when we can’t allow our fictional evildoers to be truly evil.  However, I do agree that the folks behind B.A.P’s image did miss an opportunity to customise the symbolism so it was more effective and relevant to Korea, after all it’s not Russia that needs saving, it’s T-ara who need saving from netizen bullies… and it’s not jews that need beating, but Korean netizens!  Let Kpopalypse show you how to be the kind of Internet bad-meaning-good guy on Korean portal sites that will make the likes of B.A.P’s artistic director go weak at the knees!

It’s been noticed by many that T-ara’s fanclub have been co-ordinating carefully and are active in swamping Korean portal articles with positive comments.  Of course this is hilarious and a great tool to render Korean netizens and their evil craft of being salty bullying bitches powerless, but how to get in on the fun?  Part of it would be to sign up to T-ara fan communities like Tiara Diadem, but then there’s the site navigation stuff which can be trickier.  Navigating Korean online portals can be intimidating and confusing for non-Korean speakers, so hopefully this guide will help you through Nate and Naver, the two main online Korean news portals.  Of course T-ara has been used as an example here for their continued relevance and incredible ability to giving Korean netizens the shits, but there’s no reason why you can’t employ these same techniques below to thwart netizen bullies who are cyberbullying any other entertainers or people you care about.

USING NAVER TO LEAVE COMMENTS

Naver will be discussed first, because it’s easier to use.  Here’s the top of a Naver article about how T-ara are excellent and won’t disband any time soon and if you don’t like it you can basically just suck it up and deal with it.  Obviously this type of article is fertile ground for irritating Korean netizens.  The stuff in the boxes above the article heading is font type and size selection, and also a button for printing (why?), so you can ignore it, it’s not an up/downvoting tool.  Instead, look for these buttons at the bottom of the article.

Here you can share the article, which is the button on the right.  The left button is to like the article and you need a Naver username for this (more on that below), but you don’t need a Naver username to share or leave comments, you can do that through Twitter or Facebook.

If you get this message, it’s saying that you need to have popups enabled on Naver to do article sharing.  You’ll probably get your browser’s popup blocker notification showing up at the same time, from here you should be able to find an option to enable popups on Naver.

Clicking “share” gives you a choice of social networks to share to.  You’ll need to be logged into these social networks to complete the sharing process.

Below the demographic information and some other messages are the article comments.  The below comments are in English and Chinese and have been left by fans who have followed this process, so Kpopalypse readers need not submit themselves to the disgusting sight of actual Korean netizen comments which we’ve all seen far too much of in our lives.

You can upvote and downvote comments with the thumbs up and thumbs down icons under each comment.  Be sure to upvote anything pro T-ara as it will cause maximum annoyance to Korean netizens as well as any netizen comment translating sites.  Also don’t forget to downvote any nasty Korean comments because nobody needs to see those.  You will need to be logged in to do this.

If you’d like to leave your own comments, do so in the below box.

Comments have a 300 character limit.  The text in the box, which can be typed over, is a statement asking you to not defame others, break copyright or say anything nasty so as to generate “a healthy discussion culture and a high quality commentary culture”.  Make sure you abide by these rules (unlike hypocritical Korean netizens, who never do) and only post positive uplifting comments about T-ara.  Clicking the purple box will bring up a popup asking you to log in if you haven’t.  You can start a Naver account if you want, but it’s a lot easier to login through Facebook or Twitter, below is the popup that allows you to do this.

That’s all you should need to know to get started, it’s fairly easy.  Very successful upvoting campaigns will both annoy netizens as well as generate a pleasing “I’m taking my bat and ball and going home” result like this from translating sites:

USING NAVER FOR ARTICLE VOTING

Of course, if you’d like to go that extra step and upvote positive T-ara articles to combat human-garbage Korean netizens who might try to bury them completely, here’s how to do it.

Clicking the upvote button will generate the above prompt which is asking you if it’s okay to go to the login page, so click OK for this.

From here, just sign in through a Facebook account.  A prompt will come up where Facebook asks you to share data with Naver, click okay to that.

Then Naver will take you to this page, where you have to pick a username for yourself on Naver.  Don’t use a capital at the start of your username like I did in this screenshot!  Lower case only.  Once this is done, you’re good to upvote T-ara articles so nasty Korean netizens don’t bury them!

USING NATE TO LEAVE COMMENTS

Nate is the other main Korean news portal site and it has a slightly higher difficulty level for non-Koreans because the layout is a bit messier and more confusing, and there’s also a little less English on the site generally.

Here’s the top of a Nate article about how the ever-relevant Jiyeon from T-ara wears sunglasses at night.  Once again the little boxes on the right hand side just above the image are only font size control so ignore them.  Also ignore Nate’s super-distracting sidebar which is even more annoying and pointless than my own, and look for these buttons below the article:

In the middle are your upvote and downvote buttons, you’ll need a Nate account to use them.  The other buttons on the left allow you to share the article via Facebook or Twitter.  Once again you’ll need to enable popups on your browser for Nate to allow sharing to Twitter, but Nate isn’t as user-friendly as Naver won’t tell you that you need popus turned on, it’ll just sit there and refuse to do anything when you click the Twitter button until you figure out what’s wrong.  Once you’ve switched your popups on for Nate, you can share away:

The comments box for Nate looks like this, and has a generous 1000-character limit:

The three login icons for Nate, Facebook and Twitter are above the comment area, so log in through here.  Clicking anywhere in the comment area or the submit button on the right will also invite you to log in via Nate, Twitter or Facebook, or sign up at Nate.

Once again you’re better off using Facebook or Twitter to sign in unless you’re very good at navigating Korean-only pages.

Here is what a comment looks like on Nate.  At the right are the upvote/downvote buttons so be sure to upvote anything that is positive about T-ara to cause maximum irritation.  Underneath the comment is where you can leave a reply to someone else’s comment.  The reply then appears like this, at the bottom.

Easy – now you can troll Korean netizens to your heart’s content.

MAKING A NATE ACCOUNT FOR ARTICLE VOTING

Sometimes leaving comments isn’t enough.  Korean netizens are crafty and like to bury articles they disagree with, using sneaky downvoting.  Of course we can rectify this with righteous upvotes, but to upvote the article itself, you’ll need to make a Nate account, Nate won’t allow logging in through other social media for this.  If you attempt an upvote without having a Nate account you’ll get the following prompt:

The message is asking you if it’s okay to direct you to the login page, so click OK for this.

From left to right:

• “stay signed in” check box
• find a Nate ID
• I forgot my password because I’m a trashy netizen who can’t retain simple thoughts
• sign up to Nate (in bold)
• some IP security bullshit

Click on the bold “sign up” text and we’re good to start making an account on Nate.

This message says that you must use your real name when using Nate, so be sure to do this so the Nate thought police don’t scrub away your hard work.  Click the red box in the middle of the three boxes to continue.

This page is your typical “sign your life away” bullshit legal page.  I won’t bother to translate it all in detail, because it all basically means “our way or the highway”, so you have no choice but to follow the steps if you want to make a Nate account so it really doesn’t matter what it says.  Tick the first three checkboxes, and the fourth if you want.

• The first box says you agree to Nate collecting and using your personal information for whatever the fuck they want
• The second box says you agree to the Terms Of Use (i.e EULA-type shit nobody reads)
• The third box is you again giving permission for Nate to fuck you up the ass any way they choose later by using your personal info
• The fourth box says that Nate will send you email, and you can opt out of this, but they’ll send it to you anyway regardless if they feel like it because fuck you

Then you have to fill out a really intrusive page where they ask you everything:

From top to bottom:

• The user ID you want to use on Nate, between 6-40 characters (you can check ID availability with the red box)
• password
• confirm your password
• your name (no spaces!)
• email
• phone number
• gender (male or female, because there are only two genders)
• birthdate
• some security bullshit

If you fill it all out and get a message like this:

…it probably means your user ID already exists, so pick another.  However, this message sometimes comes up in error because Nate is a phenomenally buggy piece of shit, so I don’t know, just try to change something and see how you go.  Eventually with luck you’ll reach the following screen:

This step is authentication of your account through your mobile phone.  I didn’t go through with this final step because fucked if I’m going to give some overseas shitcunts my mobile phone number, I’ll probably start getting unsolicited SMS from some wacky Korean religious cult leader who controls the government, fuck that.  However if that sort of shit doesn’t bother you, go right ahead.  Anyway if you made it this far you should be fine.

Thanks for reading everyone!  Have fun being a thorn in the side of the Internet’s worst cyberbullies, feel free to point out any errors or refinements that could be made to this article, as well as report to anyone who might find it useful.  I’ll leave you with a better version of Jongup’s hand tattoo!