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Hours of porn, but Moon feels little shame
Source: Agencies |
December 11, 2012, Tuesday
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MOON Tae-Hwa stares at his computer, dizzy and nauseous from the hours of pornography he's viewed online while his wife and children slept. He feels no shame - only a righteous sense of mission.
"I feel like I'm cleaning up dirty things," the devout Christian and family counselor said.
Moon is a member of the "Nuri Cops" ("net cops"), a squad of nearly 800 volunteers who help government censors by patrolling the Internet for porn in their spare time.
Pornography is illegal in South Korea, though it remains easy for its tech-savvy population to find. More than 90 percent of homes have high-speed Internet access, and more than 30 million of its 50 million people own smartphones.
"It's like shoveling snow in a blizzard," Moon conceded.
But while there is little chance of the government wiping out porn, it also shows no sign of giving up the fight. In fact, it has responded to several recent high-profile sex crimes with a fresh crackdown.
More than 6,400 people accused of producing, selling and posting pornography online were arrested over a six-month period ending in late October.
"Obscene materials and harmful information that can be easily accessed on the Internet are singled out as one cause inciting sex crimes," President Lee Myung-bak said in September.
Free-speech advocates disagree with the government's stance.
"It's a reign of terror against sex," Ma Kwang Soo, a Korean literature professor at Seoul's Yonsei University and author of a book that South Korea banned because of its sexual content. "No country in the world has ever reported that banning porn results in a drop in sex crimes."
Reported sex crimes have risen sharply over the past decade in South Korea, though researchers with the state-run Korean Institute of Criminology say they believe the biggest reason is that victims are more willing to report abuse.
The institute said more than 18,000 people were arrested on rape charges in 2010, up from under 7,000 in 2000. Sex crimes against minors, meanwhile, more than quintupled, from about 180 cases in 2000 to about 1,000 in 2010, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
Critics of South Korea's stance note that when it comes to child pornography, the country's laws have been relatively soft. Possessing child porn brings a maximum one-year prison sentence.
South Korea has a large and active conservative Christian population and a deep-rooted strain of Confucian morality.
Censorship of movies, songs and news media has gradually eased, but the government blocks foreign websites containing pornography and shuts down those operating in South Korea.
The job seems endless, however, so police turn to the Nuri Cops, who include university students, information technology workers, professors and housewives.
"Police officers can't look at all the obscene material online, so their role, which is reporting illegal sites that need to be blocked, is very important," senior police officer Lee Byeong-gui said.
"I feel like I'm cleaning up dirty things," the devout Christian and family counselor said.
Moon is a member of the "Nuri Cops" ("net cops"), a squad of nearly 800 volunteers who help government censors by patrolling the Internet for porn in their spare time.
Pornography is illegal in South Korea, though it remains easy for its tech-savvy population to find. More than 90 percent of homes have high-speed Internet access, and more than 30 million of its 50 million people own smartphones.
"It's like shoveling snow in a blizzard," Moon conceded.
But while there is little chance of the government wiping out porn, it also shows no sign of giving up the fight. In fact, it has responded to several recent high-profile sex crimes with a fresh crackdown.
More than 6,400 people accused of producing, selling and posting pornography online were arrested over a six-month period ending in late October.
"Obscene materials and harmful information that can be easily accessed on the Internet are singled out as one cause inciting sex crimes," President Lee Myung-bak said in September.
Free-speech advocates disagree with the government's stance.
"It's a reign of terror against sex," Ma Kwang Soo, a Korean literature professor at Seoul's Yonsei University and author of a book that South Korea banned because of its sexual content. "No country in the world has ever reported that banning porn results in a drop in sex crimes."
Reported sex crimes have risen sharply over the past decade in South Korea, though researchers with the state-run Korean Institute of Criminology say they believe the biggest reason is that victims are more willing to report abuse.
The institute said more than 18,000 people were arrested on rape charges in 2010, up from under 7,000 in 2000. Sex crimes against minors, meanwhile, more than quintupled, from about 180 cases in 2000 to about 1,000 in 2010, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
Critics of South Korea's stance note that when it comes to child pornography, the country's laws have been relatively soft. Possessing child porn brings a maximum one-year prison sentence.
South Korea has a large and active conservative Christian population and a deep-rooted strain of Confucian morality.
Censorship of movies, songs and news media has gradually eased, but the government blocks foreign websites containing pornography and shuts down those operating in South Korea.
The job seems endless, however, so police turn to the Nuri Cops, who include university students, information technology workers, professors and housewives.
"Police officers can't look at all the obscene material online, so their role, which is reporting illegal sites that need to be blocked, is very important," senior police officer Lee Byeong-gui said.
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