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."
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS