By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter

Six teenage girls and boys were apprehended for spreading a video clip in which they abused two naked middle schoolgirls.

They allegedly confined the runaway girls, and among other victims, forced them to prostitute themselves, police said.

Police sought arrest warrants for two 19-year-old girls and four boys, aged between 18 and 21, in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday, on charges of abusing the middle school girls and uploading video footage on the Internet. They are also suspected of intimidating them into prostitution and pimping other girls.

The group of teenagers confined two 15-year-old runaway girls at a motel in northern Seoul, forced them to strip and hit each other on Feb. 21.

They forced another victim they had confined, a 13-year-old girl, to film the scene of violence with a cell phone, telling the girls that they would spread the video clip on the Internet if they ran away.

The boys, armed with a knife, kidnapped the two girls by car Monday and threatened to kill them if they refused to prostitute themselves. They also attempted to rape the girls.

The girls managed to escape, but the teenage gang uploaded the footage on their blogs. With the video clip enraging Internet users, they removed it, but police tracked them down.

They are also suspected of having pimped three girls over 60 times and made five million won between last October and November.

Another boy involved was booked without physical detention, while two others were already behind bars for other crimes, according to police.

The gang said they had lured runaway girls through an Internet chatting site, and police are expanding their probe to search for more victims.

Internet users were shocked by the case, and the rage increased after one of the accused girls said about making the two girls hit each other, ``If I hit them, my hands hurt.’’

Bloggers are calling for harsh punishments, saying that lenient penalties on teenagers are resulting in repeated serious crime among them.

rahnita@koreatimes.co.kr