Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
Court to decide whether to extradite Korean operator of child porn site to US
An picture released by Britain's National Crime Agency in London on Oct. 16, 2019, shows a screen shot of "Welcome to Video." U.K. and U.S. authorities said the site contained 250,000 videos downloaded a million times by users across the world. AFP
By Jung Min-ho
By Jung Min-ho
A Seoul court will decide whether to extradite the operator of a notorious child porn website to the United States by the end of June.
The Seoul High Prosecutors' Office said Monday that it has arrested Son Jong-woo, 24, who was released that day after serving 18 months in prison for operating “Welcome to Video,” which was called the world's “largest dark web child porn marketplace.”
In three days, the prosecution will ask the Seoul High Court to review whether he should be extradited to the U.S, where a federal grand jury has indicted him on charges of advertising and distributing child porn among others. The court must then make a decision within two months.
The move follows a U.S. Department of Justice extradition request last year.
Between June 2015 and March 2018, Son operated the site on the dark web, a network that cannot be found via usual search engines and requires special browsers. In doing so, he made more than 400 million won ($330,000) through cryptocurrency trade.
An investigation found that the site contained more than 250,000 videos, including footage of extremely young children being raped.