Founder of S. Korea’s largest porn site arrested

SEOUL: A woman who co-founded South Korea’s largest pornography website has been arrested after living as a fugitive in New Zealand for years, police said.

Soranet – set up in 1999 – held tens of thousands of illegal porn videos including ‘revenge porn’ and spycam porn videos of women secretly filmed at public locations.

Distributing pornography is illegal in South Korea, although many such videos are widely consumed on servers based in foreign countries, or secretly shared on file-sharing sites.

Soranet – which once boasted more than one million members – was closed two years ago following complaints from women’s rights groups.

The 45-year-old owner – surnamed Song – returned to Seoul last week after South Korean authorities annulled her passport.

She was arrested on Monday for distributing or aiding the distribution of sex videos featuring minors, police said.

Her husband and another couple known to be co-owners of the site – all of whom have Australian citizenship or permanent residency – remain overseas.

They are also accused of abetting illegal activities by Soranet members who shared videos in which women were secretly filmed in public toilets, classrooms, changing rooms, subways and other public locations. — AFP