South Korea’s Supreme Court upholds a 47-year prison term for Cho Ju-bin, mastermind of a notorious online sex abuse ring on Telegram
SEOUL: South Korea’s Supreme Court has ordered a 47-year prison term for the mastermind of a vicious online sex abuse ring.
The ruling on Thursday extended Cho Ju-bin’s original sentence by half a decade.
Cho ran a group that blackmailed women and girls, including minors, into filming and sending sexual content from May 2019 to February 2020.
The group illegally shared these images in pay-to-view chatrooms on the messaging app Telegram.
The case reignited a national conversation over how seriously hyper-connected South Korea handles digital sex crimes.
Critics have accused authorities of being too lenient on the widespread illegal sharing of sexual content.
South Korean women have also protested an epidemic of cameras hidden in toilets and schools to secretly record them.
In 2020, Cho was initially sentenced to 40 years behind bars.
Appeals courts later adjusted the term to 42 years and four months.
In a separate case, Cho was convicted of raping a minor and producing abusive content without consent.
A lower court earlier this year sentenced him to five years in jail for those crimes.
The Supreme Court upheld that decision on Thursday by dismissing Cho’s appeal.
This confirmation results in a total prison term of 47 years and four months.
Cho’s appeal had argued that adding the five-year sentence would exceed the legal maximum of 45 years for combined offences.
The court rejected this argument.
The issue of digital sex crimes has also impacted the country’s showbiz industry.
In 2019, K-Pop star Goo Hara took her own life after being threatened with so-called revenge porn by an ex-boyfriend.
Another K-Pop star, Jung Joon-young, was jailed for five years for filming and distributing sex videos without consent. – AFP
