President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a senior secretaries meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on Thursday. Lee had directed officials to prepare a comprehensive response plan for illegal websites "meticulously and thoroughly, to a level that will reassure the public." [Yonhap]
President Lee Jae Myung speaks at a senior secretaries meeting at Cheong Wa Dae on Thursday. Lee had directed officials to prepare a comprehensive response plan for illegal websites "meticulously and thoroughly, to a level that will reassure the public." [Yonhap]

When the Supreme Court in 2019 upheld a four-year prison sentence for the operator of Soranet — once the country's most notorious illegal pornography site — critics were swift to call the punishment a slap on the wrist. Soranet had hosted not only illegally filmed videos uploaded by members but also a separate section distributing child and youth sexual exploitation material, where paid sexual encounters with minors were covertly arranged. The backlash was fierce: how could someone who ran such a space receive only four years? Comparisons with the United States, where operators of sites sharing child sexual exploitation videos routinely receive sentences of 30 years or more, amplified calls for South Korea to toughen its approach.

The government has now responded to those concerns with a policy package that would sharpen criminal penalties for operators of illegal sites hosting illicit content, while also pursuing legal and institutional reforms to cut off the financial lifelines that keep such platforms running — including barring sites where illegally filmed videos have been confirmed from carrying any advertising at all.

A pan-government digital sex crime response council — bringing together the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Korea Communications Commission and the Korean National Police Agency — announced the integrated illegal-site response plan on Thursday.

The measures aim to close longstanding gaps that have allowed illegal site operators to profit from sexual exploitation material while escaping serious punishment, or to keep their platforms running by evading takedown orders and access blocks.

The government conducted an in-depth analysis of 34,628 illegal sites identified through victim support work at the National Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center. Analysts found 385 clusters of sites that appeared unrelated on the surface but were in fact managed by the same operator. Illegal banner advertisements averaged 34.7 per site and reached as many as 300 on a single site; each illegal site was estimated to generate criminal proceeds of at least 300 million won a year. The image shows one of the illegal sites analyzed. [Ministry of Gender Equality and Family]
The government conducted an in-depth analysis of 34,628 illegal sites identified through victim support work at the National Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center. Analysts found 385 clusters of sites that appeared unrelated on the surface but were in fact managed by the same operator. Illegal banner advertisements averaged 34.7 per site and reached as many as 300 on a single site; each illegal site was estimated to generate criminal proceeds of at least 300 million won a year. The image shows one of the illegal sites analyzed. [Ministry of Gender Equality and Family]

The government plans to work with the Ministry of Justice to establish a legal basis for prohibiting advertising on illegal pornography sites where sexual exploitation material circulates. Central to the package is the creation of a new offense — tentatively called "illegal site establishment" — that would treat the act of setting up and operating a site for the purpose of distributing sexual exploitation material as a standalone crime, modeled on existing laws against operating illegal gambling dens.

The new offense addresses a widely criticized loophole: under current law, an operator who does not personally produce or distribute the material can only be charged with aiding and abetting distribution, resulting in sentences that critics say are disproportionately light given the scale of the sites and the profits involved. If the law is amended, operators could be prosecuted as principal offenders rather than mere accessories.

The plan also calls for blocking advertising links that lead to illegal sites, and for imposing fines, penalty surcharges or public disclosure of names on ordinary businesses that place advertisements on such sites.

Police will establish a dedicated illegal-site investigation team. Rather than stopping at arresting operators, investigators will focus on achieving more fundamental remedies for victims — including deleting original sexual exploitation material stored on servers.

The plan also targets "domain shuttling," in which illegal sites evade blocks by incrementing the numbers in their domain names or relaunching under a new facade while leaving the underlying content on the same server. To counter this, the government plans to develop AI-based technology capable of tracking illegal sites across their full lifecycle and build the supporting systems.

Platform operators will face tighter obligations as well. The government will pursue legislation requiring platforms to report to the relevant authorities the user IDs and IP addresses of anyone found distributing illegally filmed material on their services.

The ecosystem of illegal site operations [Ministry of Gender Equality and Family]
The ecosystem of illegal site operations [Ministry of Gender Equality and Family]

The government analyzed the scale of harm, operating patterns and revenue structures of illegal sites using two datasets: 34,628 illegal sites identified through victim support work, and investigation records from 27 cases in which site operators were arrested over the past five years.

Of the 34,628 sites analyzed, 6,683 — or 19.3 percent — were still accessible. Of those, 3,832 could be reached directly through domestic commercial networks without any circumvention tools.

Among the 6,683 accessible sites, 300 operated in Korean. Sites containing Korea-related content numbered 1,316, and the volume of Korea-related video posts across those sites was estimated at about 2.15 million.

Some of the illegally filmed material was posted alongside personal information that could identify the victim — including name, occupation, area of residence, contact details and SNS accounts — compounding the harm.

In analyzing the sites, the pan-government council found that the dominant revenue source was banner advertising. An examination of 1,674 sites accessible via domestic networks that carried banner ads found a total of 40,686 such advertisements, predominantly for gambling and prostitution.

An analysis of investigation records from illegal sites whose operators were arrested since 2021 found that banner advertising revenue from those sites totaled about 30.4 billion won ($21.7 million), with an average of 34.7 illegal banner ads per site and a maximum of 300. A single illegal site was estimated to be capable of generating criminal proceeds of at least 300 million won a year.

To dismantle the advertising revenue model that sustains illegal sites, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family will introduce an advertising prohibition regime starting in September. Illegal advertisements — such as those for gambling — will be subject to emergency blocking and forced removal, while general advertisers will be nudged to pull their ads through fines or penalty surcharges.

Members of the Peace Butterfly Network and others hold an emergency student press conference on deepfake sex crimes in front of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Jongno-gu, Seoul, in August 2024. [Yonhap]
Members of the Peace Butterfly Network and others hold an emergency student press conference on deepfake sex crimes in front of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Jongno-gu, Seoul, in August 2024. [Yonhap]

kido@heraldcorp.com