ed Crackdown on child porn

Root cause of sex crimes should be uprooted

Ko Jong-seok, suspected of kidnapping and raping a 7-year-old girl who was sleeping in her home in Naju, South Jeolla Province, allegedly used to enjoy watching Japanese child pornography at Internet cafes or motels.

He is a social outcast who lived without a mobile phone, and would console his loneliness by watching child porn on the Internet to satisfy his sexual impulses. He was at an Internet cafe right before he allegedly committed the heinous crimes.

Police found hundreds of child porn video clips on the personal computer of Kim Jeom-deok, who allegedly attempted to rape a 10-year-old girl before strangling her to death in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, in July.

As seen in these two cases, watching sexually explicit videos featuring underage girls often leads to the perpetration of sex offenses. Unofficial statistics show that one out of three child sex offenders watched child porn right before committing crimes.

Korea is a powerhouse in producing obscene material. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, Korea ranks sixth in the world by producing 2.16 percent of the globally distributed child porn. The United States took an unrivaled first place with 50 percent, followed by Russia (14.9 percent), Japan (11.7 percent), Spain (8.8 percent) and Thailand (3.6 percent).

More shocking is that the lion’s share of child porn is made by minors through self-portrait cameras. A report by the National Police Agency (NPA) showed that nearly 89 percent of 383 child pornography produced domestically in 2010 was filmed by the subjects of the material themselves.

The NPA has launched a nationwide crackdown on producers, distributors and holders of child pornography in its bid to stem the rising flow of sexual assaults against minors. A special task force will be set up to investigate hundreds of peer-to-peer file sharing websites and Internet servers that have been distributing pornography.

What’s atypical this time is that the police has avowed zero tolerance for those who possess child porn. However, law enforcement authorities have been criticized to date for being tepid in punishing criminals involved with child porn.

Under a relevant law made stricter in September last year, those involved in producing and distributing child pornography are subject to 5 to 7 years in prison and holders can face up to 20 million in fines. Deplorable is that not a single person has been punished domestically for possessing such images.

Things are quite different abroad. In the United States, those who distribute sexually explicit material involving minors can be imprisoned for life and a person gets 5 to 10 years in jail if they even download child pornography.

The problem is that even if penalties are strengthened against offenders, it’s questionable whether these measures could be effective in uprooting child pornography.

Given that child pornography is spread worldwide at a fast pace, the government needs to address this problem through international cooperation.