The Korea Communications Standards Commission said Tuesday that it will tighten its online surveillance on Internet posts that contain comments related to racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance.

The move came amid a flood of angry posts aimed at migrant workers following the rape and murder case involving a Korean-Chinese man in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, early this month

More recently, there have also been a slew of racist comments targeted at Jasmine Lee, a naturalized woman from the Philippines who became a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party in general elections last week.

The commission said that it has decided to take preventive measures so that the ongoing attacks on people from overseas would not spread to migrant workers or foreign residents here in general. 

Officials said they plan to strengthen monitoring on abusive posts online and to issue corrective orders for those that are found to have violated the commission’s regulations.

From early this year until April, a subcommittee at the commission reviewed 11 cases, including an online cafe set up to verbally abuse Chinese-Koreans and a blog aimed at sharing anger against Korean women.

Of them, six websites were ordered to remove related comments, while the use of the other five was shut down immediately, officials said.

“Since the Suwon murder case, there have been a growing number of extremist comments or expressions of xenophobia online. We will focus more on related issues,” an official said.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)