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| Jung Jin-gwan, the head of the cyber safety division at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Station, presents the results of an investigation into IT company head Yang Jin-ho and a spycam porn cartel, at a police station in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Friday. / Yonhap |
By Lee Suh-yoon
After a months-long investigation into Yang Jin-ho, the owner of the nation's two biggest file sharing sites, police have confirmed the existence of a million-dollar cartel for the production and distribution of spycam porn videos.
Apart from owning WeDisk and Filenori, file sharing platforms where spycam clips and revenge porn were circulated, police found Yang had a hand in virtually every stage of the profitable operation.
"Through this investigation, we found Yang was the de-facto owner of not only the two online file sharing platforms but also a monitoring company supposed to filter out spycam content. It is also a digital undertaker agency that removes such content upon a request from victims, confirming the reality of a spycam porn cartel," Jung Jin-gwan, head of the cyber safety division at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency, said in a press briefing, Friday.
Mureka, a company supposed to filter spycam porn content from the file sharing sites, was actually bought by WeDisk in 2008. Police said the operators intentionally refrained from using effective filtering methods, allowing the file sharing platforms to become a breeding ground for spycam porn.
According to officers, Yang made 7 billion won ($6.2 million) by distributing 52,000 porn clips ― about 100 of them were spycam clips ― and 230 pieces of copyrighted material. WeDisk and Filenori, together made over 55 billion won in sales from September last year to August.
Yang also allegedly encouraged and colluded with heavy uploaders of spycam porn content on his file sharing sites. He shared parts of the profits with those who had the most paid for downloads for their content. Through such an incentive system, heavy uploaders earned between 37 million and 210 million won annually.
Yang also helped them avoid the authorities, warning them to change their IDs in advance whenever their activity was detected by the Korea Communications Standards Commission.
Around 80 other members of the cartel, including the heads of digital undertaker companies and 60 heavy uploaders, are being questioned by police. Nearly 60 more will be questioned as the investigation expands.
Shortly before the police announcement of their interim results, Yang was taken to the Seongnam branch of Suwon District Prosecutors' Office after his case was referred to it. He refused to answer reporters' questions as he boarded a van outside the police station where he had been detained for a week.
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| Yang Jin-ho, CEO of WeDisk and Filenori, is escorted to a police van outside Suwon Nambu Police Station, Friday. / Yonhap |
Women's rights groups, however, said the report does not cover the whole extent of Yang's crimes, citing the especially low number of reported spycam clips.
"From our monitoring activity over the years, we suspect Yang and his file sharing websites are responsible for distributing a lot more illegal spycam porn than the police said today," Kim Yeo-jin, a member of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, told The Korea Times.
The center filed a complaint with police against Yang and file sharing sites linked to spycam porn in February. The police, however, only really doubled down on its investigation after media pressure in July, when local broadcaster SBS reported on the cartel following leads from the center, Kim said.
Other charges
Yang faces a total of 10 different charges, and only three are related to spycam porn distribution. The other charges include embezzlement, drug abuse and assaulting his employees.
He was the center of much public outrage recently for the latter charge. In a widely circulated video released by an investigative journalism team, he was seen repeatedly slapping a former employee in the face.
Police said Yang assaulted three former employees in this manner, according to testimony from other employees. It was also found that he forced some employees to kneel in his office, made them eat raw garlic, and forced them to kill a live chicken with a sword. In addition, he allegedly used marijuana and forced eight of his workers to do so.
Yang used company money to buy a piece of art worth 280 million won, police said.
