Obscene Video Swamping Portal Sites

Mrs. Lee (45), living in Hapjeong-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, recently felt embarrassed while searching for video clips related to the World Cup on a portal site with her junior high school-age son.

This was because after she typed in the word “street” on a portal site in order to search for “street cheering,” obscene video clips such as “sexual assault on the street” and “street fetishes” came up. Even after she typed in the word “cheering,” she could see indecent materials like “nude cheering” and “strip show cheering.”

Korea’s major portal sites are becoming a “heaven of obscene video clips.”

As local portal sites begun the service of posting video clips starting the end of last year, netizens are using the portal sites as a base for the distribution of sexually explicit materials.

According to a report by the Information Communication Ethics Committee (ICEC) under the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) obtained by Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, circulation of indecent materials on the local portal sites has reached a serious level.

The report found that the number of cases involving sexually explicit video clips on Internet sites detected by the ICEC increased 2.9 times from 4,304 this January to 12,495 this April. Since the portal sites started the service of uploading video clips, the number of obscene materials caught by the ICEC jumped due to ICEC’s extensive crack down on the materials.

An ICEC official said, “Portal sites account for more than 80 percent of the cases detected.”

The number of cases, for which the ICEC has ordered corrective measures, also soared by 17.4 percent from 6,988 during last January to April to 8,201 during the same period of this year.

In addition, the number of distributors who got disqualified from using a portal site after posting obscene video clips on sites sharply increased from 807 in January to 1,128 in April. Compared to a year ago, it jumped as much as four times from 283 last April.

In particular, portal sites virtually neglect the practice of registering indecent video clips on the grounds of the technical limitations, which makes the problem even more serious.

A portal site official noted, “When a certain word is searched in the subject, obscene images or novels can be blocked, but video clips are impossible to be cut off from searching,” and added, “Our site is finding some obscene materials by employing extra staff, but we are worried that it is not enough.”

An ICEC official remarked, “The ICEC currently works three times as much as in normal times because up to 2,000 sexually explicit video clips are detected per day,” and added that as punishing an user has a limit, the ICEC is moving with plans to hold portal sites liable.

The ICEC is currently considering revising the law to strengthen responsible ethics of Internet service providers.

The revised bill mandates service providers to have a certain number of their own monitoring staff and close service related to obscenity if a service featuring obscene materials is caught several times.

Politicians have also begun to realize the depth of the issue.

Grand National Party (GNP) lawmaker Park Jae-wan, who has been proposing a bill regarding portal sites, stated, “Internet portal sites are turning into a breeding ground for criminal activities,” and said that he will press ahead with a plan to revise the law to clearly define the responsibility boundary for the sites.

Jae-Young Kim Jeong-Hun Park jaykim@donga.com sunshade@donga.com