Ilbe Storehouse
Daily-Best Archive or Ilbe Storehouse, also known as Ilbe, is a South Korean Internet forum that has a predominantly far-right userbase. The site was created in April 2010 and started as an archive of the daily best posts from the forum DC Inside.
The site's userbase is often described as having an alt-right, anti-feminist, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBT stance, with elements of manosphere culture. Due to its vocal users and strong political and cultural influence, the forum has gained widespread attention from social critics, with some labeling it a social phenomenon. Some critics consider the site a Korean analogue of 4chan and 2channel.
History
Ilbe, short for Ilgan Best, is a term for sections on the Internet forum DC Inside showing the most popular threads of the day. Ilbe was among several archive websites that aggregated deleted threads. In November 2016, the sections were removed from DC Inside after the media started claiming that the Ilbe Archive was the original website while DC Inside branched off of it.The original website called Ilbe was launched by Moe-myeongsu in July 2009 as an archive of the DC Inside TV comedies gallery. In 2016, he attempted to sue the owners of a new Ilbe site, claiming they had mimicked his website while it was offline for maintenance.
In April 2010, another website with the same name was created by a user with the nickname SAD from the LG Twins gallery. In November, he retired from running the site and left it to the users active at the time: Bucheo and Sae-bu. Bucheo would later also leave the site due to military conscription, while Sae-bu would hire operators, programmers, and other staff to run the site. A year later, it was reorganized as an independent forum.
In December 2012, the site had over one million registered users. In April 2015, it reached over 2 million accounts. In September 2016, it had over 20,000 viewers at peak hours. Even in the mornings, when the number of viewers was minimal, the viewer count exceeded 10,000 people. According to the website administration, this data did not include mobile users, who made up 65% of total traffic.
In 2016, when the Park Geun-Hye scandal happened, the site's audience reduced significantly, going from 700,000 daily viewers in September to 520,000 in December. Concurrent views at peak hours also decreased to 10,000 views.
Structure
The website has very few rules, but it does prohibit users from mentioning each other by their username or getting too close to each other to prevent new users or dissenters from being down-voted indiscriminately by existing users. This policy promotes anonymity and equality. In contrast, on other popular Korean forums, older users are respected more and hold greater authority during discussions. The site is largely unmoderated, with an exception for cases that may result in litigation or cases in response to complaints.An account can be created with just an email address; the site doesn't require any documents or an ID number for registration, unlike other Korean websites. Users begin with a reputation of one, but can descend to zero as a result of downvoting by other users. Registration is required to post but not to view the boards, except for the NSFW boards. An exception is the Random chat board, which doesn't require an accountusers are named "Anonym" followed by a random number. It was created for users who were tired of the Jjalbang board's obsession with politics, but it's not nearly as popular.
Jjalbang is the most active board on Ilbe. Popular posts are featured on the Daily Best boards, but may return to Jjalbang if they receive too many dislikes. Like and dislike buttons on the board are named to the daily best! and democratization. Only registered users can vote, and users with a high reputation can vote twice.
The Politics board was created to separate serious political posts from general forums, but it later became a distinct community, often antagonizing the Jjalbang board, which often features political memes. Politics favors Park Geun-hye, while in Jjalbang, Lee Myung-bak is preferred. In 2020, a core of long-time users migrated to DC Inside, initially to the Wuhan Minor gallery, and then to the US Politics Minor gallery.
The Animation board is often described as the center of Ilbe. Its main topic is Japanese anime, but other topics are discussed, and the board is often compared to the Random board. Users on the Animation board tend to socialize more than other users; they gather in KakaoTalk chats to talk and play games, despite moderator efforts to prevent this. The board antagonizes the Girl groups and artists board, not only because it is considered a 3D reservation, but also due to the gap between Japanese and Korean pop culture.
Subculture
A large part of Ilbe's subculture comes from the users' collective identity as losers: until the founding of the site, most of the large Korean forums were left-leaning and hostile to moderate right-wing opinions. Thus, its userbase has embraced many of the derogatory terms used to refer to them, such as Ilgay.The site inherited a large part of its subculture from DC Inside. Many controversial memes originate from DC Inside, including Roh Moo-hyun memes from DC Inside's Happhil gallery, as well as hong'eo and eomuk from the Basketball gallery.
Users are known for redacting well-known logos of organizations like universities, government structures, large private companies, as well as movie posters, and then adding tiny hints consisting of Ilbe's initials, Roh Moo-hyun's face, and other memes. Occasionally the media pick up such images and use them in reports. Evidence of such uses is recorded on the site in a distinct genre of posts called Broadcast proofs.
Another type of popular post is Dongmuljup. It features users picking up street animals, usually birds and cats, but sometimes strange and exotic animals. The ironic term Saramjup describes reporting drunk people who have fainted on the streets to the police. The users who do that are termed Haeng-gays.
Sniper posts are also common on the site. They discuss posts on the site or other websites to analyze them or expose their flaws. They often feature investigations of posted photos and clues to determine where and how they were taken.
The site has been compared to 4chan and 2channel.
Political stance
Background
The site's userbase is often described as having an alt-right, anti-feminist, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBT stance.Ilbe's users generally lean to the conservative right politically, and their opinions and behavior have attracted significant controversy, from both the mainstream media and the political left.
Prior to the 2008 US beef protest in South Korea, opinions of right-wing supporters were mostly disregarded or criticized, because most South Korean websites at the time were dominated by left-wing users. Out of 12 major community websites in South Korea, only Ilbe and DC Inside possessed a right-wing political leaning. After the protest, many right-wing internet users began to express their opinions on the internet. DC Inside and Ilbe grew quickly as myriads of new right-wing users registered.
As Ilbe was one of the first major online communities in South Korea with a distinctively right-wing tone, it has been noted as a haven for the right-wing on the internet. The site's ideology is sometimes described as "rationalism" by its proponents, treated as a countermeasure against alleged left-wing propaganda, specifically false information about the right.
Criticism of Korean leaders
The Ilbe community achieved notoriety among Koreans making fun of the late former president Roh Moo-hyun. The political parties have criticized Roh and other political leaders through many forms of media, such as comedy, parody music, and spreading rumors on social media. Users make an Ilbe "theme song" every year, and they regularly parody popular songs with lyrics that criticize leaders. Users compose their parody songs as propaganda to attract people to join the community. The songs contain exaggerated expressions of political leaders and colloquially refer to them as MC Muhyeon, DJ Daejung, MC Jong-Un, and MC Geunhye. Users also call 23 May "The day of Gravity", making fun of Roh's death by claiming that gravity killed him. One of their notable memes is the "Noala", an image of Roh with a photoshopped koala face. Users also created the label Unji. A distinct part of the site's slang is the -no verb ending, referencing Roh's surname.On January 25, 2018, a poster showing Roh making the Ilbe hand sign appeared in Times Square, New York. Users claimed to have posted the advertisement to commemorate the birthday of then-president Moon Jae-in. The advertisement also featured Noala and Unji memes.
On November 7, 2013, former first lady Lee Hee-ho, whose husband was former president Kim Dae-jung, accused some users of degrading deceased president Kim by spreading false information.
Presidents with popular support on the site are called gakha. It was initially used to refer to Lee Myung-bak, who purportedly planned to restore the title, and then it was used for Park Chung Hee and his daughter Park Geun-hye. The term, with being the Korean transliteration of the English word God, is also used to imply the president possesses omnipotence. Like most South Korean right-wing political communities, former right-wing presidents Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan are heavily praised by users.
Denial of Gwangju Uprising
Despite the South Korean government's official recognition of the Gwangju Uprising as a democratic movement, Ilbe's userbase is extremely critical of it.The May 18 Memorial Foundation, one of the memorial organizations for the uprising, announced that the site was spreading conspiracy theories, such as North Korean special forces being involved in the uprising; that the uprising was a heavily armed riot; that military suppression against citizens was justifiable; and that the 5.18 Special Law, which pays respect to the uprising, is unconstitutional. Users label some journalists, like Monthly Chosun former chief editor Cho Gap-je, as jwappal due to their support of the uprising.