Sex Offender Personal Data Exposed

The personal information of sexual offenders made public by the National Youth Commission is indiscriminately being leaked out online.

Behind the leakage to the Internet are netizens who are allegedly digging out detailed personal information, including photos, schools and jobs of the offenders from their mini home pages in Cyworld based on the partial data divulged by the Commission.

One offender whose personal information has been significantly exposed filed a complaint to the police against the netizens for defamation.

It is also pointed out that difficulty in identifying the addresses of Cyworld with sex offenders could lead to produce innocent victims whose names happen to be the same as theirs.

Vulgar abuses abound-

It was yesterday that a list titled, “Cyworld addresses of rapists” appeared. This list included mini home page addresses, detailed charges and even, in some cases, phone numbers of 10 sex criminals whose identity had been revealed on May 22nd by the National Youth Commission.

Later in the day, the hits on the mini home pages in question reached over 20,000.

Netizens flooded their bulletin boards or guest books with hundreds of scathing remarks. Our paper tried to contact four people on the list, but found one’s phone turned off, and another said he could not confirm if he was the offender disclosed by the commission. The other two confirmed that they were the ones on the list.

J (20), identifying himself as one of those on the list, said, “Yesterday I received hundreds of calls and text messages.” And he added, “I have suffered enough pain and guilt for a moment of wrongdoing two years ago, and now I can’t go outside with my phone number and Cyworld address exposed.”

The one who refused to identify himself as sex offender, I (22) said, “I sued the netizens who revealed my personal information without my permission for defamation yesterday to the Cyberterror Response Center of the police.”

The leakage was possible because the Commission divulged birth dates as well as names of the criminals, allowing netizens to locate their mini home pages with their birth date data.

Controversy over personal data disclosure-

The Youth Sex Protection Law states allows as of now only names, birth dates, and limited addresses to be made public in the case of first-time offenders. In addition, the revised law states that beginning from June 30, disclosing personal information including photos, jobs and detailed addresses of repetitive offenders preying on youth only should be revealed to victims, their guardians and youth-related education authorities for a limited period of five years.

Kim Bong-ho, the head of youth sex protection team of the commission, said, “Netizens’ crossing the legal boundary to disclose the personal information of sexual crime offenders is outright illegal.”

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