More Obscene Clips Posted on Major Portal Sites

Many are demanding that strong measures be urgently taken to manage obscene video footage on the nation’s internet portal sites after adult materials were posted on Daum and Naver, the nation’s major portal sites, following the first case involving Yahoo Korea yesterday.

An indecent video clip of fashion models exposing their breasts was posted on Daum’s TV Pot, a page for UCC, for about seven hours from 10:40 p.m. on March 20 until 5 a.m. on March 21.

An official of Daum Communications said it had asked the police for an investigation into this event, saying, “We thoroughly monitor all video clips. But this time we failed to do so, because as many as 15,000 video clips are posted everyday and those materials were not posted on the main page.”

Moreover, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on March 20, internet users could see four nude pictures of foreign women without age verification when they put the name of a famous Korean actor in the search box of Naver.

In the meantime, the cyber crime investigation division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency traced the IP address of the internet user who posted two sex clips on Yahoo Korea, and found out he got access to the internet in Pohang in North Gyeongsang Province and Siheung in Gyeonggi Province using the ID of a minor.

The police are expanding their investigation to find out whether or not the identity was used by someone else.

An official of the police said, “Yahoo Korea has three managers who monitor videos and images posted on its site on weekends. But on March 18 when the sexual images were posted, they didn’t pay much attention and failed to check the materials because they were out of the office for personal matters.”

Meanwhile, the government has begun to come up with comprehensive measures as problems related to sexually explicit videos and images on internet portal sites have continued.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Communication said on March 21 that it would hold a meeting to discuss this problem with the police, prosecutors and officials of major portal sites, and come up with strong measures to address this problem. Also, he said that what will be reported to the meeting will be announced on March 22.

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