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| Members of women's rights groups, led by the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, hold a joint press conference at the Korea Press Center to call for a stronger investigation into key players of the country's spycam porn platforms, Tuesday. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon |
By Lee Suh-yoon
The investigation into Yang Jin-ho, the IT CEO who was recently condemned for bullying employees, should rather focus on his companies' gains from illegal spycam content, as he is the ringleader of Korea's spycam porn industry, women's rights groups said, Tuesday.
Activists fear the sensational media coverage of and police probe into Yang's violent, almost comical, abuse cases — involving a Japanese sword and live chickens — could shift the much-needed focus away from the spycam industry cartel itself.
"This is not a simple case of abuse because of CEO Yang Jin-ho's conceited character; this is an organized crime by multiple guilty cartel actors who have accumulated huge wealth by disseminating spycam content," Choi Ran, a counseling manager at the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center (KSVRC), said during a press conference at the Korea Press Center, downtown Seoul.
The groups said Yang's wealth has come from the systematic distribution of spycam sex clips, and the complicity among online file sharing platforms where such clips are posted, illegal content filtering companies, and agencies often called "digital undertakers" which remove such clips at the spycam victims' requests.
Yang is the owner of WeDisk and Filenori, two of the biggest online file sharing platforms in Korea. Employee testimony and local media reports show around 60 percent of the profits — numbering millions of dollars — at these sites are generated from spycam porn content. There are also allegations that the online storage platforms worked in tandem with heavy uploaders of spycam porn content, warning them to delete their IDs in advance before police crackdowns.
The activists called on the police to confiscate profits made from distributing spycam content as well as to expand their investigation into other executive board members of such online storage sites. They also called for a better probe into Mureka, an ineffective content filtering company that Yang is the de-facto owner of.
"Half of the webhard (online file sharing site) industry is linked to Mureka," the groups claimed. "The content filtering contracts with Mureka allowed webhards to disguise their illegal profits as legal."
The activists say the complicity in the spycam porn industry is sustained through the cooperation of powerful figures and that's why Yang has been able to avoid punishment and police crackdowns.
In the meantime, the police are planning to question Yang over the abuse allegations soon. If he refuses to attend, they are likely to seek a warrant to detain him. They searched Yang's home and offices last week.
In recently disclosed video clips, Yang slaps a former worker of WeDisk in the face and head several times in an office while verbally abusing him, and tells him to kneel down and apologize for posting critical comments about the company. He also shot chickens with a cross bow and ordered his employees to kill them with a sword in a company workshop.
