During anti-U.S. beef protests in Seoul last Friday and Saturday, junior and senior high school students received mobile text messages urging them to participate. Groundless rumors that have been spread include: “First human death from mad cow disease reported on May 2,” “Consuming just 0.01 g of U.S. beef will kill you” and “President who allowed U.S. beef imports is getting ready to relinquish Dokdo.” Students who received such messages passed them on to their friends, so they spread like wildfire.

Most of the text messages appear to be exchanged between students. But some of them are suspected of being sent in an organized manner by people with specific motives. The senders cannot be identified since only numbers like 1004, 2008 or 0000 show up on phones receiving such texts. If they were being transmitted among friends, there would be no reason to hide phone numbers. And it’s not just a handful of junior and senior high schools but most schools in the country where students are said to be receiving such messages.

It would be difficult for students to send such a huge volume of text messages to unspecified individuals and in a format that hides their own numbers. Most services that cloak the sender’s identity offered by Internet phone service providers require money. Most of all, it is impossible for students to acquire the mobile phone numbers of so many other students. There’s a strong possibility that the people involved are spammers who have access to scores of personal information obtained illegally from the Internet.

If there are forces who are spreading groundless rumors among teenagers to incite them and achieve their political objectives, they must be ferreted out and held responsible for their actions. When that happens, we will see just who has been responsible for controlling and directing the “mad cow drama” that has been playing out over the past few days from behind the scenes.