File Sharers Use Ex-Ministry Website

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s prostitution prevention website had turned into a pornography-sharing website.

The ministry ran the White Tie campaign from last June to December to clean up the culture and conscience that tolerates prostitution and held surveys on sex life and promoted a lot of efforts to combat prostitution on a website (www.whitetie.co.kr). White tie refers to men who stand up against violence against women. But after the campaign ended, some Internet users used the website as a means of sharing pornography. Uri Party Assemblyman Yun Ho-jung said on Thursday that he holds the ministry accountable for what happened. He blamed the ministry of spending 352 million won for this project, 26 million won just on running the website for four months, and neglecting the website after the campaign ended.

The ministry replied, “We did not know that the website was kept running, after the contract for the domain expired. We shut down the website on November 2, after hearing Assemblyman Yun’s statements.”

achim@donga.com