Shock! Elementary School Students Also Involved

Elementary school students have been exposed for distributing pornographic material on the Internet.

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency issued arrest warrants on June 1 to Park (30), an overseas resident in China, and three others for composing a star’s image with a pornographic photograph and posting it on the Internet.

Nine others people, including Sung (39), who distributed the image in an Internet café, were booked without detention. Six juveniles were dismissed with a caution. Among them are two elementary school students.

According to police, Park and his gang has made 240 composite images of about 80 star entertainers with the Photoshop program and posted them on pornographic websites since January.

The young students downloaded the images from those sites and posted them on their own Internet cafés.

Park and others have also photographed pictures of women in neighboring apartments changing or taking showers, using a telescopic digital camera, and posted the images on the Internet.

Police revealed that such photographic composition technology is spreading fast among elementary school students. Mixing the faces of girls their ages with images of females in pornographic material and then posting them on the Internet is becoming increasingly common.

On portal sites, many students are posting questions such as, “Teach me how to mix nude pictures with Photoshop,” or “I want to make a composite picture of a friend who is harassing me. Send me a lewd picture.”

One police official said, “Composite pictures are pornography as well, but since elementary school students seek them without a sense of guilt, parental guidance is necessary.” Team Manager Lee Hyun-sook of the Support Center for the Protection of Teenagers said, “Parents need to tell their children that the act of composing pornographic images can cause irreplaceable damage on others.”

Jae-Dong Yu jarrett@donga.com weappon@donga.com