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BFF-24
SKOREA-CRIME-GENDER-PORNOGRAPHY
Founder of South Korean ‘spycam’ porn site jailed
SEOUL, Jan 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The female co-founder of South Korea’s
largest porn site has been jailed following months of mounting public fury
over the spread of secretly filmed spycam pornography.
Tens of thousands of women have rallied in recent months against the
growing phenomenon of spycam videos, known in Korean as “molka”, which mostly
involve men filming women without their consent in toilets, changing rooms
and in public.
Soranet — which had more than a million users until it was shut down in
2016 amid widespread outrage — carried thousands of such clips among reams
of other X-rated content.
Producing and circulating all forms of pornography is illegal in South
Korea.
The site’s female owner, surnamed Song, was sentenced to four years in
prison and fined 1.4 billion won (US$1.25 million) on Wednesday for aiding
and abetting the distribution of obscene material, including sex videos
featuring minors.
The 45-year-old, who founded Soranet in 1999 with her husband and two
others, “seriously damaged and distorted people’s universal dignity and
value”, said a court statement.
It added that she had “enjoyed huge profit” from the site.
Song had lived as a fugitive in New Zealand for years but was arrested in
June when she returned to Seoul after authorities annulled her passport.
Her husband and another couple known to be co-owners of the site — all of
whom have Australian citizenship or permanent residency — remain overseas.
Spycam crimes reported to South Korean police surged from around 1,100 in
2010 to more than 6,500 in 2017, with many of the videos shared or sold
online.
According to official statistics, about 98 percent of offenders are men —
from teachers and professors to pastors and police officers — while more
than 80 percent of victims are women.
Despite South Korea’s ban on pornography, many videos are widely consumed
on servers based in foreign countries, or secretly downloaded on file-sharing
sites.
BSS/AFP/MR/1100 hrs