"The Man Who Lives with the King," a film released this year, has surpassed 15 million viewers. While the narrative centers on the young King Danjong and Eom Heung-do, who protected him to the end, the character that most captivated audiences was Han Myeong-hoe, played by actor Yoo Ji-tae. In the film, Han is portrayed as a villain who intimidates and corners Danjong with his imposing physique, ratcheting up the tension.
Yet in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, Han Myeong-hoe was closer to a behind-the-scenes strategist who designed schemes rather than stepping to the forefront. That is why films and dramas have typically depicted him as a slight-framed schemer. His specialty was inflating flimsy suspicions into political threats, then converting those threats into pretexts for treason charges to eliminate rivals. The Coup of 1453, which forms the film's backdrop, followed exactly that pattern. Historians also interpret that Han likely lurked behind the "Case of Nam Yi" during King Yejong's reign, given that he reaped the greatest political gains from the affair.
Han Myeong-hoe was hardly alone. Power struggles in the Joseon Dynasty generally unfolded in this manner. The Gimyo Literati Purge of 1519, in which the Merit Subject faction ousted the reformist Jo Gwang-jo, was no different. Nor was the Yangje Station Wall Poster Incident, which gave Yun Won-hyeong's Lesser Yun faction the pretext to completely eliminate Yun Im's Greater Yun faction. In each case, falsehood and exaggeration wore the mask of fact and became weapons of power.
The practice of obscuring truth with false information for personal gain is hardly unfamiliar today. Recently, a photo circulated online showing what appeared to be a U.S. aircraft carrier struck by Iran. It looked real but was an image generated by artificial intelligence. Scenes of U.S. soldiers being captured and surrendering also spread. The more people's emotions are inflamed — by war, disaster, or elections — the faster falsehoods penetrate reality. This latest conflict is not an isolated case. In January 2024, just before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, an AI voice robocall mimicking President Joe Biden's voice reached voters. In May 2023, an AI-generated image resembling an explosion near the Pentagon spread and rattled financial markets.
The problem is that such falsehoods are now seeping into everyday life. Recently, scammers used AI to create fake real estate agents and fictitious property listings, swindling victims out of preliminary contract deposits. In the United States, crimes involving deepfake audio and video to impersonate sellers or brokers and divert transaction funds have become a growing concern. AI services posing as psychological counselors or fortune tellers are also proliferating rapidly. People fail to question them simply because they seem too convincing.
If fake news of the past was a cottage industry, today's fake news is far more destructive because it can be mass-produced and mass-distributed. In the past, fabrications had to be crafted by hand and spread by word of mouth. Today, falsehoods are instantly generated through AI in the form of photos, videos, and audio, then disseminated across platforms. It is virtually impossible to rely solely on human fact-checking and after-the-fact punishment to contain them.
The government recently introduced the AI Basic Act and mandated watermark labeling on deepfake content. However, given the pace of AI advancement, these measures feel belated. Moreover, there are considerable concerns that excessively strong government oversight could chill free expression and morph into a tool for branding inconvenient reporting as "fake news."
This is precisely why the private sector's role matters. Earlier this year, I visited the Poynter Institute, a research organization based in Florida. This nonprofit has long raised awareness about the dangers of AI-generated falsehoods and established standards for fact-checking. It also conducts "AI literacy" training for journalists and citizens alike. Having accumulated years of research and produced tangible results, the institute's influence in American media circles has been growing. In contrast, South Korea's response has been limited to individual news organizations, platforms, and self-regulatory bodies. A comprehensive private-sector verification ecosystem remains woefully underdeveloped. Government institutions and voluntary private-sector verification must advance in tandem. Only when responsible content production, independent verification, and citizen AI literacy work together will AI-generated falsehoods lose their power.
