S. Korea battles online sex crimes
Anti ‘ revenge porn’ force tasked to remove private porn videos online
Seoul, Oct. 13: Tony Kim has been paid to watch porn for the last six years, spending his days staring attentively at graphic videos of naked women and sexual liaisons.
He is part of an anti “revenge porn” force in Seoul tasked with finding private sexual images posted online without permission, and removing them.
The 27- year- old first applied for the role at Santa Cruise out of “curiosity”, he said.
“But I soon started to feel very uncomfortable, having to watch videos like this all day long, day in and day out.
“Now I’m used to this and feel nothing,” he added. “It is just a job now.”
The bleak business is part of the so- called “digital laundry” industry thriving in South Korea — a tech- savvy nation but one whose culture remains chauvinistic and where objectifying women is common.
CEO Kim Ho- Jin set up Santa Cruise in 2008, initially specialising in removing malicious online rumours or inaccurate information for local firms and celebrities.
But in recent years a new type of client has emerged — women whose private sex videos and photographs were posted online without permission by disgruntled exboyfriends, ex- husbands, or malicious acquaintances.
“We monitor various porn, P2P ( peer to peer networks) and social media sites around the clock, because such ‘ leaked videos’ could pop up at any time and over and over for years,” said chief executive Kim.
So- called “revenge porn” is a global phenomenon — one study showed that two percent of Americans who use the internet have had such images posted -- prompting social media giants such as Facebook to deploy counter measures.
In South Korea, 7,325 requests to have intimate videos removed from the internet were made in 2016, according to government figures, a sevenfold increase in four years.
This includes hidden camera footage posted by people using surveillance gadgets or smartphones to film women in changing rooms or public toilets. Seoul recently announced a sweeping policy package to battle the online sex crimes, including a plan to make a prison term the minimum sentence for such crimes.