Twenty-four people were charged but not detained for distributing obscene videos to teenagers through “chatting apps” for smartphones, police said Thursday.
The obscene materials sent via smartphones included images of private parts, said a spokesman of the Seoul Police Agency’s cyber crimes investigation unit.
Those charged asked young recipients of obscene videos to send photos of their private parts and perform lewd acts, the spokesman said.
Among the 24 are five people previously indicted for sexual offenses, the police said.
The remaining 19 were mostly ordinary citizens with no criminal record, including a lawyer, landlords, self-employed small business owners, company employees and college students.
Some of them were also suspected of asking female teenagers to engage in prostitution, the spokesman said.
The cyber crimes investigation unit will strengthen monitoring of the so-called chatting apps because such apps are known to promote a “hotbed of sexual offenses,” he said.
jckim@koreatimes.co.kr