by Yue Li
Korean women battling spycam technology which compromised their privacy and safety. Photo by: AFP
“If we were punished for our fantasy, for what we put in the diary, what is left for us guys to do?”
This is how a Korean congressman justified the actions of the subscribers of the infamous Nth Room during a conference to amend the law against digital sex crimes. In 2020, an online chatroom on Telegram featuring sexual exploitation contents, including child pornography, was exposed by two university students. A 25-year-old student known as “Doctor” operated one of the online chatrooms, and he was sentenced to 45 years in prison under 14 charges, including coercion, sexual abuse and violation of Child Protection Act. The chatroom had more than 260,000 subscribers, who gained access to the chatroom by making insulting comments to women and uploaded sex-related videos.
The case of the Nth Room unveils the grey area of digital sexual exploitation. The general public was horrified by the large number of subscribers who have potentially participated in the distribution of sexual abuse content, because the chance of running into a Nth Room subscriber is similar to finding a cab on the street. Petrified by the appalling likelihood, over 2.7 million people have signed a petition requesting to reveal the identities of all the viewers. Politicians, on the contrary, justified the viewers’ participation as “normal for teenagers and adults to fool around on the computer.” Congressman Jeomsik Jeong dismissed their criminality and argued that the viewers should not be punished for “enjoying the videos alone for self-satisfaction.” Former members of the chatroom also posted online to express their frustration of being accused as guilty. They victimized themselves by claiming that they are merely “regular customers who paid the money but did not get the services.” Female victims who were blackmailed to upload explicit videos also became targets of accusation by politicians and users.
Cyber sex crime in South Korea raises new concerns about the utilization of technology as a form of modern slavery. The internet and digital devices give predators easy and anonymous access to sexual exploitation content without making direct contact with the victims. This leads to the diffusion of responsibility, which decreases the amount of guilt an individual feels. Moreover, technology allows the development of sexual exploitation as an industry. Chatroom operators follow “industrialized” guidelines to coerce victims, generate obscene content and market the chatrooms, regarding their actions as merely performing their job duties. This loss of ethical considerations also eases the viewers’ guilt as they identify themselves as consumers rather than bystanders and perpetrators.
The situation exacerbates the need for fighting for women’s rights in South Korea. Females are facing far worse conditions regarding sex crimes and gender-based violence. According to the police, 98% of the victims in cases against intimate partners in South Korea were women in 2019. Olivia Schieber, senior manager at American Enterprise Institute, related the tolerance of sex crimes to South Korea’s tradition of regarding “sexual assault and domestic violence as private matters.” This widespread sentiment of discrimination against women serves as the ideological foundation for the lack of representation of females in the legal system. In 2020, only 19% of the legislative body in South Korea is represented by women. The deep-rooted Confucian culture and gender dynamics have led to the normalization of female objectification as reflected by the high number of subscribers of Nth Room.
The lenient law against sex crimes is another concern. This can be reflected in Doosoon Cho’s case—which was later produced as the movie Hope—as the perpetrator was sentenced to only 12 years in prison after leaving an eight-year-old girl lifelong injuries through torturing, raping and drowning. South Korea’s laxity in tackling cyber sex crimes was also highlighted by its refusal to extradite the operator of the world’s largest darknet child pornography website, Jongwoo Son, who stayed in prison for only 18 months under South Korean law. The fact that drunkenness can be used as an excuse for child sexual abuse and can result in light punishment mirror South Korea’s lack of motivation in addressing the issue and its limited scope in amending related legislation.
The already unjust gender relationships in South Korea is worsened by the use of technology in modern sex crimes. It calls for a reevaluation of policymaking and an inclusion of more female representatives in the judicial system. Ella Wilton, junior ambassador of School of Oriental and African Studies, addressed that “a higher percentage of women in law-making roles could make a huge difference to the passing of laws aiming to tackle inequality and put an end to the laxity of sentencing in sexual assault cases.”
About the Author
Yue Li is a journalist in SRP’s Writing and Interviewing Program. She is a recent graduate from University College London where she studied Education and Technology. Her areas of interests include women’s rights and education equality.