Planning the next move in Korea's fight against spycam porn
Seo Seung-hui, 27, head of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, at her office at Seoul Women's Plaza in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, Thursday. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon
By Lee Suh-yoon
Seo Seung-hui and other members of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center (KCSVRC), a local NGO, do more than just delete spycam videos for victims.
In the latter half of 2018, the KCSVRC played a central role in exposing a “spycam porn cartel,” showing how a handful of online file-sharing sites made tens of millions of dollars by allowing — and encouraging — spycam content to flourish on their platforms.
Just a year ago, Seo and fellow workers at the KCSVRC could not dream of going home before 10 p.m.
“Victims find out they have unknowingly featured as porn stars in spycam clips too late, after the clips are plastered all over online file-sharing sites and reach some of their acquaintances,” Seo, 27, the head of the KCSVRC, said in an interview with The Korea Times on Thursday.
“As each clip requires continuous monitoring and deleting over several months, we ended up with an accumulating workload with each new case.”
The load is more bearable now after the long-overdue government crackdown on spycam porn platforms this year.
The KCSVRC, a local NGO founded by Seo and other female activists in 2017, works with other women's groups to denounce and press charges on the bigger players in the online spycam porn industry.
The KCSVRC's work — along with the greater media coverage given to this endemic problem this year following massive women's rallies — seems to have paid off. With greater government and public scrutiny, the country's spycam porn industry has noticeably shrunk, Seo says.
“Previously, voyeur videos of the victims had been shared in thousands of different instances across various platforms,” she said. “Now the size of the dissemination for each victim's video is definitely smaller. There are also fewer platforms to monitor and the number of reports we get from victims has slightly dropped.”
The KCSVRC has helped 500 victims since May last year. It also passed on its expertise to consultation staff at the new state-run Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center through workshops and a spycam clip-deleting manual. The new center has helped over 1,800 victims since its opening in August.
“I hope our members can regain their work-life balance next year,” Seo said with a laugh.
But the fight to eradicate spycam porn is far from over. Women's groups are pressing lawmakers to pass laws that target the biggest profit-makers of the spycam porn industry — online file-sharing sites.
Existing laws against online sex crimes cannot properly seize the illicit profits made from spycam content or hold platform owners accountable, Seo says.
“There's a legal loophole that allows site operators to get off the hook by claiming they took the proper technical measures to prevent spycam content from their platforms,” Seo said.
A bigger fight
The spycam porn platforms are quickly evolving to evade the stricter regulations. A disturbing new trend has emerged this year under the “domestic porn” section, according to Seo.
“Unable to upload as many spycam clips as before, they started uploading very similar content using female sex workers, coerced or bought into allowing themselves to be filmed during sex,” Seo said. “But did these women — vulnerable members of the bottom economic class and stuck in an exploitative relationship with a pimp — really consent to the filming?”
Seo says her group will next look into online messenger platforms that have turned into a place for older men to buy sex from underage girls.
“Eventually, we want to expand the conversation into questioning the social norm that says it is OK for women's bodies — online or offline, filmed or in person — to be bought and sold,” she said.