We love superheroes. Batman roaming the streets of Gotham City, fighting crime and keeping the people safe. Spiderman swinging through New York and capturing thieves before the police can get there. V destroying government surveillance buildings and toppling the totalitarian rule. We love superheroes because they eliminate the injustices in our daily lives — without all the troublesome red tape. They get the job done in a second with their powers. We can’t help but wonder: can we have superheroes like that in real life? Welcome to the Digital Prison, a Korean website run by an anonymous group of people aiming to punish sex offenders, murderers, and other violent criminals by revealing their personal information. What could possibly go wrong?

The most evident problem with Digital Prison is the accuracy of the information. Releasing personal information of sex offenders isn’t a new concept in Korea. There is an official website — Sex Offender Notifier— run by the Korean government, which holds personal information of a convicted sex offender, including their name, age, address, and crime sentence. To use the site, people have to log in after verifying their identity. Furthermore, publicly sharing the details found on the Sex Offender Notifier can be criminally charged. Unlike its government counterpart, the Digital Prison takes a more “open” approach. The administrator of the Digital Prison argues that Korea’s weak and lenient sentences for such crimes are the reason why violent crimes remain prevalent. To fulfill the goal of adequately punishing criminals, the Digital Prison reveals all personal information of the convicted and “accused” to anyone who accesses the site. The problem is, these so called “accused” are people who were reported online by others, and with little to no verification that the claim is true, people are branded as sex offenders. This vulnerable system has already produced its victims. A medical professor from the Catholic University of Korea was framed  as a sex offender on the site, but police digital forensics proved the accusation false. A Korea University student, whose personal information was uploaded to the site, pleaded that he was innocent. The Digital Prison ignored his claims and, ultimately, the student committed suicide.

While false accusations and faulty information affect individuals, the Digital Prison also affects society on a larger scale through its vigilante nature. Vigilantism, regardless of its intent, is also a crime, and it has its most significant effects on social stability, particularly on people’s trust in law and law enforcement. In a sense, vigilantes and social instability are like the hen and the egg problem. What comes first, vigilantes or social instability? If people do not trust the law and law enforcement, vigilantes try to enact justice themselves. When vigilantes act out, law enforcement either has the choice to ignore them, which will cause more chaos, or arrest the vigilantes. As long as the “heroes” don’t go overboard, both choices won't make law enforcement popular with the people — so the destructive cycle continues. To break this cycle, we must start by seeing vigilantes in a different light. When we see a vigilante and their acts, what we should feel isn’t gratification or some sort of catharsis. It is a pity and embarrassment that something in our society was so wrong and corrupted that it led a person to resort to crime in an attempt to solve it. We may feel anger by witnessing horrible crimes or even being a victim of one. But that does not give us the right to become another perpetrator. Some laws may be ineffective, or even useless in some cases. That still does not grant us the right to ignore said laws. No matter what the intentions were, a crime is a crime.

In the end, are superheroes who are vigilantes just as harmful to society as the villains? In comic books, the vigilantes have a rigid code — a sense of morality and responsibility that they will never betray even in their hardest hours. But are humans that strong? In real life, can you say with confidence that our sense of justice will not be twisted and warped in the face of strong emotions? Can you truly say that “our justice” is justice? History has already shown us what a group of emotional people blindly following “justice” can do: the crusades, witch hunts, and war crimes. Those violent crimes were all committed by normal people firmly believing that they were enacting justice for their religion and country. There is a reason why modern society established a clear set of procedures to enact, create, and change its laws. 

Currently, the original administrators for the Digital Prison are wanted by Interpol and the site was closed after the Korea University student incident. However, on September 11, another group of people reopened the site. Without doubt, the upcoming reaction to the reopened Digital Prison will be a test for Korean society.