Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Sales of spy cam detectors soaring on K-pop star's illegal filming
Singer Jung Joon-young exits the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency after being questioned over sexual misconduct allegations on Friday. Yonhap
By Nam Hyun-woo
By Nam Hyun-woo
The unnerving sex scandal of singer Jung Joon-young has pushed up the sales of spy cam detectors, according to industry officials Friday.
They said the detectors' increased sales came amid the growing public awareness over protecting oneself from covert recordings in the wake of the singer's sexual misdeed.
According to a domestic online commerce firm, the sales of spy cam detectors through its website from March 7 to 13 grew by 333 percent from that of a year earlier.
“We have noticed such a sharp increase after the scandal erupted,” an official at the firm said asking not to be named. “Though sales have risen, we also feel very uncomfortable about this, since the sales seems to be spurred by the scandal.”
The sales boost came afer Jung stirred a huge controversy for taking videos of sex partners without their consent and sharing the footage with his friends, including another singer Seungri, in a KakaoTalk group chat.
On Thursday, police interrogated Jung on charges of spreading the videos and Seungri was also grilled during an overnight investigation over the suspicion that he arranged prostitutes for prospective business investors.
“Though I cannot say there's a sales boom on spy cam detectors, I can feel that more inquiries are coming these days,” said an official at an online spy cam detector retailing company. “Though Jung (allegedly) took the video with his smartphone, the public's concerns that someone may be taking videos of them seems to be growing.”
Amid the growing public fear on spy cams, firms are releasing various spy cam detectors. Along with relatively expensive radio-type detectors, cheap film-type detectors, which uses cellophane paper, are trending on online markets.
“Fears over spy cams have been always there among young women, but I take extra care these days after the Jung scandal,” an internet user wrote on Instagram with photos of her using a film-type detector.
According to police data, 26,654 out of 140,880 sexual crimes reported to police in the past five years involved covert videos.