“Blossoming” Corporal Punishment Websites

An elementary school girl A (9) was scolded by her mother for “not studying,” and was beaten on her arms and legs with her mother’s palm.

The offended girl then went into her room and logged onto the Internet to type in the word “corporal punishment” on an Internet search portal.

After she went into a website after the search, videos on sexual intercourse with whipping, and photos showing an adult bashing a child popped up.

The girl, who got curious over this, opened a net community called “Corporal Punishment XX,” which now has up to about 200 members, according to police investigation findings.

Elementary school students operating “corporal punishment” websites –

The cyber crime investigation division at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said on February 11 that five elementary school students including the girl, A, and another called B, (8), who operated “Spanking XX,” and two middle school students were caught operating “corporal punishment website.”

The police dismissed the minors with a warning while indicting other corporal punishment and porn website-operating adults without detention.

The girl, B, who operated the corporal punishment café from last August, sat before her computer for long hours while her parents were not home, searching different websites to post corporal punishment and porn pictures and videos on her website. The girl said to the police, “I saw my elder sister make a corporal punishment website, so out of curiosity I did the same, thinking it would be fun. It has a huge number of members now.”

The activities of minors in the sadistic corporal punishment websites are in worryingly high level. Minors operate 20 percent of the 417 such websites that have been detected by the police since last year.

“Infected from adults –

The police have figured out that many elementary and middle school students have logged onto such sadistic websites using their parents’ ID, and opened similar ones out of curiosity.

A person named Kim (26) who was indicted without detention operated a website named S and posted photos showing corporal punishment from May 2005 to the end of last year, receiving about 40 million won in membership fees from 1,200 members. Meanwhile another named Song (35) even imported sadistic devices from China to sell for actual corporal punishment, as well as selling photos on his website.

The police say that various crimes against minors, including masochistic and sadistic sexual intercourse, could be performed on such corporal punishment websites, and that they are expanding the scope of their investigation, targeting Internet chatting sites and online communities.

dnsp@donga.com