South Korean who ran abuse site will avoid justice in US

THE operator of the largest child abuse website ever uncovered walked free from a South Korean prison yesterday after a court in Seoul ruled that he could not be extradited to the United States to face additional charges.

Son Jong-woo, 24, was arrested in Korea in March 2018 after an investigation into the Welcome to Video site that brought together law enforcement authorities from 18 countries, including the UK.

Son operated the site, which included 250,000 videos of children being abused, from June 2015 until his arrest. The site operated on the dark web and had 1.28 million subscribers, and Son is estimated to have earned more than £260,000 in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency from it.

At least 23 children who were being abused by users of the site were rescued as a result of the investigation, while 337 people have been arrested to date, including 223 in South Korea.

Tried in South Korea and sentenced to 18 months in prison, Son completed his term in April but was immediately detained again after a US federal grand jury indicted him on nine charges, including producing, advertising and distributing child abuse images, as well as conspiracy and money laundering. Son’s lawyers argued that he should not be tried a second time for crimes for which he had already been punished and it was likely that he would only have faced money laundering charges. Nevertheless, if convicted, Son could have faced up to 50 years in a US prison.

The Seoul High Court rejected the extradition request yesterday on the grounds that sending him to the US would hamper domestic investigations into sexually abusive content on the web, the Yonhap news agency reported. “This decision should not be interpreted as exonerating him”, the court said, adding that Son should “actively cooperate with the investigation and face proper punishment”.

It did, however, acknowledge that South Korean law “has a much lighter maximum penalty” for anyone convicted over child abuse images.