The world's most wired country is raiding cyberspace's red-light district in a campaign pitting Confucian morals against modern technology.
Since January, the main prosecutor's office in Seoul has issued arrest warrants for about 100 people charged with spreading obscene material under South Korea's telecommunications law, a crime carrying penalties of up to a year in jail or a nearly US$10,000 fine.
In a highly publicized case last month, police in the southern city of Busan arrested the operator of a Web site that offers a forum to arrange swaps of sex partners. The 36-year-old man, whose name hasn't been released, is charged with spreading obscene material and remains jailed while the investigation continues, said Busan police officer Lee Nam-sik, who is heading the probe. The campaign comes amid a wider moral crackdown starting last year, when penalties for prostitution-related crimes were also doubled.
Korea has an active sex trade -- both online and off.
According to the Korean Institute of Criminology, the amount spent on prostitution alone amounted to US$23.6 billion in 2002, the last year for which figures were available.
At a recent Cabinet meeting, where the campaign against prostitution was discussed, President Roh Moo-hyun stressed the need for establishing a "healthy consumption culture," implying money should be spent on things other than the sex trade.
In a country where more than 70 percent of homes have high-speed Internet connections, access to cyberporn is easy.
That means traditional taboos in Korea's conservative, Confucian-based society have quickly shattered, said Lee Mee-sook, a sociology professor at Paichai University in the central city of Daejeon.
"The code of ethics became weak, and people started satisfying their sexual desires through the Internet -- anonymously," she said.
On a busy street in the center of the South Korean capital Seoul, "adult" Internet cafes aren't hard to find, where customers can surf the Web in private booths as opposed to the open rows of computers found in typical cybercafes.
Authorities "can't really control it because it's the Internet, it's impossible," said Lee, 28, a worker at the Red Box adult Internet cafe, who gave only his last name. "We should have the freedom to see whatever we want."
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS