South Korea’s latest sex crime scandal is a blackmail ring streaming abuse on Telegram
March 24, 2020
Suhyoon Lee
By Suhyoon Lee
South Korea is reeling from yet another serious sexual abuse scandal.
Korean police have identified dozens of victims, including minors, linked to pay-to-view chat rooms operated on chat app Telegram, which distributed videos of middle school girls performing grotesque sexual acts and self harm. The videos were often posted with the girls’ names and addresses. According to one newspaper report, one user even live-streamed himself raping a girl after luring her to a motel room.
The story first came to light through a report in Korean newspaper Hankyoreh (link in Korean) last November. An ensuing Kookmin Ilbo report (link in Korean) in early March further detailing the horrific acts stoked a nationwide outcry. It comes just months after the uncovering of the Burning Sun scandal, which implicated K-pop stars in a prostitution ring in Seoul, and as anger continues to simmer over other forms of sexual abuse against women including widespread spy-cam crimes.
Reporters at Kookmin Ilbo observed about 25,000 users across 30 such chat rooms. Customers paid up to 1.5 million Korean won ($1,200) to get access to the coveted few “nth rooms,” as those rooms are called, where content extorted from underage victims was uploaded in real time. To gain access to these primary outlets, one had to first “prove” themselves in a secondary gateway chatroom by uploading their own sexual abuse content and sharing misogynistic comments.
The Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center also said that it has counted at least 260,000 users in 56 chat rooms where users shared extorted content, as well as spy-cam images or photos of female acquaintances. Some of the content was created by the users themselves, and included deep fake pornography.
According to the Kookmin Ilbo report, each of the eight nth rooms hosted videos that had been extorted from three to four different girls blackmailed by chat room operators. The girls were often runaway teenagers who were active on chat apps or Twitter and engaged in prostitution or sexting for money. The chat room operators contacted the girls through those accounts, and then promised them quick and high-paying modelling or escort gigs. They were then directed to a Telegram account where the abuser slowly extracted their names, phone numbers, addresses, friend lists, and photos of their bodies, which were later used to blackmail them into filming and sending sexual acts that often bordered on torture.
Police have so far arrested 97 people in connection to these Telegram chat rooms.
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https://qz.com/1824130/korea-shocked-by-telegram-chat-room-sexual-abuse-scandal/