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Ever since the broadcasting of Kim Sun-il¡¯s video footage on Qatar¡¯s television station Al-Jazeera (aljazeera.net), hundreds of Internet users are posting up pleas for Kim¡¯s life on the web boards of Aljazeera.com (aljazeera.com), an Internet site mistakenly known as the official site of the Al-Jazeera broadcasting company. Due to the sudden influx of users, the site crashed on Tuesday morning.
This site turned out to have no connection to the Al-Jazeera television, but a website of a company in England. The official address of the Al-Jazeera television English website is ¡®english.aljazeera.net.¡¯
Al-jazeera.com introduces itself as an "independent media company" on their website, and is a company established in London, England 12 years ago. Most of the articles related to the Middle East area which were posted up on the website turned out to be articles from the U.K. press, such as the Guardian.
Al-jazeera.com selected the story of Kim Sun-il as its top article and had the phrase "Europe, North-America Section" on the top of its website, so many Internet users confused this website with the Al-Jazeera television company homepage. Aljazeera.com also posted up an on-line survey, whether hostage Kim will be released safely, and 90% of the respondents, largely consisting of Korean Internet users, answered yes.
(Kim Min-gu, roadrunner@chosun.com )
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