By Kim Rahn
Police are cracking down on porn website operators, including a member of the nation’s largest online porn provider, Soranet.
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), Wednesday, they booked a man, surnamed Lee, 42, without physical detention for allegedly uploading some 50 pornographic videos on his online cafe which had about 5,800 subscribers.
His cafe belonged to Soranet, which is a portal through which nearly 60,000 such cafes can be accessed. Soranet has long been criticized for spreading obscene content and allowing operators' suspected involvement in pornography, sex trades among members and other illegal activities, since it began operating in 1999.
Since NPA Commissioner General Kang Sin-myeong pledged an intensive crackdown on Soranet last month, about 1,100 cafes on the site have voluntarily closed, according to police.
Separate from Soranet, police also booked two broadcast jockeys (BJs) without physical detention for uploading a sex scene involving a minor.
The two people in their 20s, whose names were withheld, allegedly showed the sex scene featuring an 18-year-old girl for about 20 minutes through a personal online broadcasting site at around 4 a.m. on Nov. 17.
They allegedly posted a notice of the scene several hours before it took place and allowed access to only those who paid to watch the broadcast. Some 380 people paid a combined 7 million won to them. The BJs offered 500,000 won to the girl.
Police also booked another man, Shin, 51, for allegedly operating a porn site since January 2013 and uploading tens of thousands of obscene images and videos amounting to 80 gigabytes.
Shin frequently changed the site address to avoid being caught. He charged site members 15,000 won in monthly fees, taking in approximately 60 million won in total.
Another man, Mun, 33, was also booked for allegedly taking obscene photos and porn videos by hiring some 30 nude models and uploading them to a porn site since July. He received 100,000 won for a membership fee and 60,000 won for monthly charges, gaining about 10 million won in total.
“It is likely that operators of the closed cafes and the investigated websites may open other sites under different names. It’s something we have to keep monitoring,” said an NPA official.
Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.