Sunfull encourages comments for quake victims

The Sunfull Movement said Monday that it started a campaign to encourage online condolences to the families, friends and neighbors of the victims of the earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan province on April 20.

The magnitude-7.0 temblor killed about 200 people and injured more than 11,000.

Sunfull opened a website (sichuan.sunfull.or.kr) jointly with a news portal by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, on April 23 for netizens to post encouraging messages for the quake victims.

The website offers a pool of example Chinese comments for those who cannot speak Chinese, and a Korean netizen can choose and post one. There is a Chinese version as well for Chinese speakers.

There were more than 1,200 comments listed on the website as of Monday.

Comments are linked to social networking services including Twitter and Facebook.

“Hateful comments posted on the Internet may leave deep scars on those who are commented on, and may also cause misunderstandings diplomatically in the case of international incidents,” said Min Byoung-chul, founder of the Sunfull Movement.

When the Sichuan province was hit by a massive earthquake in 2008, the Sunfull Movement launched a similar campaign encouraging its participants to write words of comfort.

After a shooting spree took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the United States in December 2012, the movement opened a website to offer online condolences. It then made a book of the messages and gave it to U.S. Ambassador to Korea Sung Kim.

The movement is a nonprofit organization set up by the Konkuk University professor in 2007 to campaign against cyber-bullying and encourage people to post positive comments.

By Chun Sung-woo  (swchun@heraldcorp.com)