The Seoul police in South Korea have established a task force to handle fake news on the Internet related to conflicts in the Middle East.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Department in South Korea announced on the 6th that a special agency has been established to investigate the spread of fake news related to Middle Eastern conflicts on the internet. An official from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department stated that the department's Cyber Crime Investigation Division has formed two special investigation teams to handle false news related to the Middle East. "Once we detect false information being uploaded, we will request the relevant websites and the Korea Communications Standards Commission to delete and block it. In Seoul alone, there have been 29 such incidents," one of which involved a well-known blogger spreading fake news related to oil transportation on the YouTube website. The South Korean Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Resources has filed charges against the blogger for spreading false information as defamation under the Information and Communications Network Act. The police plan to summon the blogger for questioning soon. "We are investigating four YouTube accounts reported by the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Resources and the Korea Oil Company," said an official from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department. "We will crack down severely on the spread of fake news that can lead to social instability."