You can get away with distributing nude selfies, says university group

Sending a voluntarily taken nude selfie to someone else necessitates risking not just its distribution to third parties but also a legal disclaimer that responsibility is on the sender, not the distributor, according to the sexual violence act in Korea. Korea Times file

By Ko Dong-hwan

Distributing nude selfies taken by someone else does not transgress Korea's sexual violence laws, according to a student body at Hanyang University.

The anti-violence activist group came across a case involving a student of the school who distributed nude pictures of his girlfriend she had taken and sent to him. Dating her since high school, he received her first nude selfie in 2016. He demanded more afterwards, threatening to stop seeing her unless she sent him more. She gave in to his wishes.

The woman, unaware that he was going to share her pictures with his friends online, sought a legal expert to see what she could do. But what the expert told her was unexpected ― there has never been a court decision that ruled against a distributor of nude photos that were voluntarily taken by the model.

The student body took the case to the school human rights audit committee. But the authority found it hard to ignore Article 14 of the Sexual Violence Punishment Act that concerns surreptitiously taking pictures of a person. The article states that the law is only effective if the photo was taken against a person's will. But it conflicts with the counter-pornography distribution laws under the Information Communications Network Act.

Because the case does not come under the Sexual Violence Punishment Act, courts cannot order the suspect to have psychological treatment and the plaintiff cannot have a government-appointed solicitor.

Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea proposed in 2016 a revision of the act to include distribution of a person's nude selfies to the list of offences. The proposal has not been reviewed at the National Assembly since.

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