Social Issues

S. Korean leader of online plot that tortured women jailed 40 years

Seoul, Nov 26 (efe-epa).- A Seoul court sentenced Cho Ju-bin, the leader of a macabre online plot that shocked South Korea for having tortured, sexually abused, and extorted dozens of women, some minors, to share videos online.

The Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of sexually abusing minors and operating an organization that obtained financial benefits from the videos he produced of this torture and abuse.

Cho, 25, ran between May 2019 and February 2020 a network in which he and his accomplices extorted 74 women, 16 of them minors, to film videos of torture and sexual abuse that they later sold through the Telegram messaging application.

The plot operators first accessed the victims’ personal data and then threatened to disseminate such information if they did not send nude photos or videos of themselves.

Once victims sent those images, the members of the network threatened to disseminate the material if the women did not agree to videotape themselves or perform sexual acts.

Although the court has not considered it proven, it is believed Cho even ordered one of his collaborators to rape and record a minor who was being extorted using a video in which she appeared naked.

The sentence contrasts with the request of the prosecution, which requested life imprisonment for Cho for the “irreparable” damage caused to his victims.

Another five of his accomplices have been sentenced to between seven and 15 years in prison.

One of them, only 16 years old, has received a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison after being tried as a minor.

Part of the South Korean public opinion has denounced the low severity of the sentences for those responsible for committing sexual abuses and disseminating them through the network, after the resolution of cases such as that of Son Jung-woo. He was accused in the United States of operating the largest child pornography network on the internet and that he only spent 18 months in prison in his country. EFE-EPA

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