By Kim Hyun-bin
The CEO of Withinnovation, a company running accommodation booking app Good Choice, has been investigated for abetting the distribution of millions of pornographic materials via a file sharing website he virtually owns.
The Chungnam Provincial Police Agency said Thursday they referred the case of Sim Myeong-seob, the head of the app, called Yeogi Eottae in Korean, to the prosecution for indictment.
Sim allegedly operated two web storage services from December 2017 to September this year and let over 4.2 million obscene files be uploaded and distributed through the platforms, raking in 5.2 billion won ($4.6 million) in illicit gains.
The police said 172 of the files contained child pornography.
Operators of file sharing websites are required to take technical measures to block distribution of child pornography, but Sim's sites had no such mechanisms.
Police suspect most of the profit from the obscene content was used as initial capital to help Sim launch his company, which operates one of the country's leading accommodation booking apps.
During police questioning, Sim denied he owned the file sharing websites, claiming one of his acquaintances did. But police concluded he was the real owner and the acquaintance just lent him his name.
The police plan to expand the investigation by establishing a special taskforce team. “Separate from prosecutors, we plan to conduct further investigation into how he operated the websites,” said Ryu Geun-shil, head of the cyber crimes department at the police agency.
The app made over 50 billion won in annual sales within three years of its launch and is the second most popular accommodation app in Korea.
Earlier this year, the police found that Yang Jin-ho, an IT entrepreneur who made headlines for his abusive behavior toward employees, owned two big file sharing sites and permitted voyeur videos to be circulated on them by managing heavy uploaders and operating a monitoring company that was supposed to filter out such content.