70-year-old man arrested for distributing porn

A 70-year-old man was booked on Monday without physical detention on charges of distributing huge amounts of pornography, including sex videos featuring minors, the police said.

The man is the first ever to be caught as a "heavy uploader" of child porn on file-sharing Web sites, they said.

Police last week launched a nationwide crackdown on child pornography in the wake of a series of brutal sexual offenses against children.

The suspect, identified only by his last initial Y, is accused of having uploaded around 4,000 files of sex videos and other pornographic materials on a peer-to-peer (P2P) Web site since July last year, the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency said. Among the files posted, 940 of them feature minors, it added.

"It is the first time we have arrested a 'heavy uploader' who posted such a huge amount of child porn on a P2P Web site," a police officer close to the investigation said. "Most of all, we were surprised to find out that it was a man in his 70's who was the perpetrator."

The suspect allegedly received points that can be exchanged to cash for every download from the operator of the P2P Web site, the police said. He pocketed around 1.2 million won (US$1,060) in that way, they said.

"I started uploading porn just for fun and people who are younger than me started giving me good feedback," the suspect was quoted by the police as saying.

Investigators said they found another 3,000 items of pornography on his computer.

Meanwhile, the police said they will strengthen monitoring of activities related to child pornography on P2P Web sites that minors have easy access to.

The crackdown comes after a 10-year-old girl was killed by a convicted sex offender who allegedly owned almost 70 items of child pornography, the police said. Police suspect the girl was also raped. (Yonhap)