Police in South Korea have arrested two men for secretly filming 1,600 hotel guests and streaming the footage live online in the latest voyeurism scandal to hit the nation.
The suspects, who have not been named, set up secret cameras in 42 rooms at 30 hotels in 10 South Korean cities between November last year and the start of this month, media reports said.
The arrests came a week after singer and TV celebrity Jung Joon-young admitted he had secretly filmed himself having sex with women and shared the footage online without their consent.
Photo: AFP
The suspects in the latest case went to extraordinary lengths to install the cameras, the cyberinvestigation unit at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.
Miniature cameras with 1mm lenses were found in digital boxes, hair dryer holders and wall sockets. More than 800 illegally filmed videos were live streamed via a server based overseas.
By the time the site was taken down this month, the suspects had earned 7 million won (US$6,204) from 97 people who paid a monthly fee to access the material, the Korea Herald said.
Two other men are being investigated in connection with the allegations.
There was no evidence the hotels were aware that their guests were being filmed without their knowledge, police said.
South Korea is battling an epidemic of molka — secretly filmed videos of a sexual nature that target women in public places such as toilets and changing rooms, but also in their own homes.
The rise in cases prompted tens of thousands of women to take to the streets of Seoul last summer to demand longer sentences for perpetrators.
Authorities responded by increasing patrols of the city’s public toilets — a measure campaigners say is ineffective.
Police reported 6,470 cases of illegal filming in 2017, compared with 1,353 cases in 2012, the South Korean National Police Agency said.
However, many offenders are ordered to pay modest fines and in most cases the crime goes unpunished.
The hotel spy cam suspects face up to five years in prison and a heavy fine for distributing illegal videos.
“The police agency strictly deals with criminals who post and share illegal videos, as they severely harm human dignity,” a Seoul police official told the Korea Herald.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS