Cyber Squad Chart
1 2018-05-19T05:42:08-07:00 K. Hazel Kwon 1b817f2c0ff691848388b7520736084cfe07409d 30361 1 Operation Chart of Cyber Squad under the NIS plain 2018-05-19T05:42:08-07:00 K. Hazel Kwon 1b817f2c0ff691848388b7520736084cfe07409dThis page is referenced by:
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NIS Cyber Squad in 2009-2012
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Formalizing comment troops as a subunit of NIS
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2009-2012
Under the then-president Lee Myung-bak’s approval in 2009 (called “MB regime”), the comment troops were established as a formal subunit of the NIS, named "Cyber Squad" (사이버 외곽팀). The unit was ostensibly in charge of psychological warfare, but the hidden "real" mission was to help the hardline right-wingers take political control over the opposition party. The unit was led by the former NIS chief officer Won Sei-Hoon, who later was convicted for public opinion manipulation.
The Cyber Squad was no longer run solely by citizen Internet troops. It evolved into an official division of the NIS, which was run by more than seventy full-time government officers. By 2012, the organization expanded its operations to hire more than 3,500 citizen commenters, who were altogether paid more than $3 million a year (and the total revenue was known to exceed $6 million a year). Their social media strategies demonstrated technological savviness, such as conducting multi-account operations and social click manipulation.
