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The spark that ignited the ‘Nth room’ fire
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HOME > CULTURE > FEATURES

Tuesday

March 31, 2020

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Published: 31 Mar. 2020, 19:38

THE SPARK THAT IGNITED THE ‘NTH ROOM’ FIRE

Images of a man in a neck brace thanking the police for stopping his life as a
devil have saturated the media in recent days.

The man is 24-year-old Cho Ju-bin, the alleged mastermind behind multiple chat
rooms on Telegram that have reportedly been used to sexually exploit dozens of
women and young girls.

The story, referred to as “Nth room,” which was the name of one of these chat
rooms, has left the nation in shock. And even more shocking is how these chat
rooms were uncovered.

Two female university students, who have dubbed themselves Team Flame, began
investigating these chat rooms last July in order to enter an investigative
journalism competition held by the Korea News Agency Commission.

Months of work, which including interacting in these sexually explicit and
degrading chats, culminated in an article they titled “‘Do you sell child
porn?’… Crime flourishing on Telegram,” which not only won the competition but
sparked an investigation by police that eventually led to Cho’s arrest on March
16.

These aspiring reporters have already achieved what many journalists can only
dream of for their careers, but rather than elation and pride, they say
disappointment is the emotion they are overwhelmed with.

“Korea has been taking digital sex crimes so lightly,” said Kim, one of the team
members. “We’ve been using words like molka [to describe illegally shot spy cam
pornography] to diminish the meaning behind videos of sexual exploitation. It
makes it look like a small problem and takes the essence away from it being a
digital sexual exploitation crime. We hadn’t thought of digital sex crimes as
major crimes, and that is evident in the language that we use. Now that we’ve
realized it, we need to change.”

The young women have been swarmed with messages of support since the Nth room
scandal began gaining serious traction in the country in recent weeks. They also
receive threats on a daily basis but refuse to be discouraged.

With the April 15 general elections fast approaching they have been exerting
extra efforts to make sure the issue is not forgiven or forgotten and are
sharing their findings on their YouTube channel and blog, while continuing to
cooperate with the police and its investigation.

Their most urgent mission is to bring tangible change in the development of the
way all sex crimes - not just digital sex ones - are dealt with in Korea. It has
long been the case in Korea that sex criminals are given sentences much lower
than anticipated by victims or the public, which many believe has led to a
proliferation of such crimes and to victims being discouraged to speak out about
their experiences.

“Among themselves, the participants [of the Telegram chats] say, ‘I bet the
operators are going to get three years in prison, or five max.’ They know that
the punishment is going to be low and that the investigation won’t find them if
they ‘hide well.’ They’re always ready to start again, believing that Telegram
is the safest place for them,” said Lee, the other member of the team.

Team Flame sat down with the Korea JoongAng Daily to talk about their
investigation, during which they witnessed explicit, violent and degrading
content being shared freely in the darkest of these chat rooms.

They asked to be identified by the alias Kim and Lee to keep their identities
hidden. The following are edited excerpts.

사진 크게보기

Team Flame has started a YouTube channel where they are sharing their
experiences and findings. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Q. Your work has become one of the biggest news stories in Korea so far this
year. How did it begin?

A. Kim: I had written on digital sex crimes when I was an intern at a newspaper
in 2018. And in the early half of 2019, digital sex crime was one of the hottest
issues in society. We wanted to take a deeper look at this issue and decided to
enter an open competition for investigative journalism. That was when we found
out about the existence of the Nth Room.

We first found Avsnoop, an illegal porn site run by a user named Watchman,
through which we found the link to the Gotham Room [one of the biggest Telegram
chat rooms]. The Gotham Room was a marketing room where people shared content
from the Nth Room with each other. They even shared the personal information of
the victims. We couldn’t believe the things that were going on and we decided to
start our investigation. We also knew that this wasn’t just something for our
coverage, so we reported it to the police the next day. We met with the National
Police Agency and we’ve been cooperating since.

How did you manage to get into these chat rooms?

Kim: Luckily, we didn’t need to pay. There were at least a hundred chat rooms
that were free, where content from the Nth room or the Baksa Room [the other
main chat room] was being shared. When we entered, the manager of the chat room
told us to change our profile picture to an adult animation and that was it. But
there are rooms where you’re required to hand over explicit pictures or videos
to get in. Fortunately, we were not asked to prove that we were male, but there
were some rooms that demanded people take pictures of their genitals to prove
themselves along with their nicknames as identification.

Is it true that there was a chat room that specifically dealt with content
featuring children?

Lee: It was called the Loli room [taken from the term Lolita Complex]. There
were videos of little girls crawling around and people would film them in
sexually objectifying ways.

Kim: People frequently uploaded videos of girls as young as elementary school
with their genitals showing. I think some of them were family members, like
cousins or nieces. They weren’t required to do so. They just did it because they
wanted to.

Lee: They voluntarily uploaded those videos themselves, because that way, they
would get invited into chat rooms where more graphic content was being shared.

Were there any victims or participants from outside of Korea?

Kim: Yes - I’d say almost half. Once, there was even a link that led to a site
where foreigners were sharing illegal material among themselves, and the Korean
users joined.

We keep emphasizing that we can’t tell the exact volume of damage done by the
Nth room because people were coming in from everywhere.

People talk about whether reports of 260,000 users is accurate, but that’s
really not the point, and mentioning that number means that people don’t
understand the scale of how digital sex crime spreads and regenerates.

사진 크게보기

[JEON TAE-GYU]

Did you see anyone that you knew in the chat rooms?

Lee: When you have someone’s contact information saved on your phone and they
log onto Telegram, you get a notification message. When I got a message, I was
suspicious of why this person I knew would use Telegram but still hoped that it
wasn’t a big deal. But when I saw the participant list of the illegal chat room
I was in, I saw his name at the top because I had his contact. I was so angry.
Was he crazy?

I knew him well and we were close in a way. He seemed like just a normal guy. I
debated with myself on whether I should call him out or do something. I decided
not to in the end because I was afraid he would alert one of the managers of the
chat room. I felt like there was no one we could trust.

Were you required to react to content to remain in the chat rooms?

Lee: There were times when we had to. And although I felt mortified, I just
blended into their world - calling the victims [within the videos] by names and
grading them. For them it was just like talking about any other everyday mundane
subject. For them, sexual harassment was a mundane part of their lives. We saved
anything that could be used to identify users to make a report to the police.
But honestly, interacting in the chat rooms wasn’t even one of the most
difficult parts of the experience.

Kim: What was agonizing was to watch people victimized at every moment. When it
had been six months past our first Nth room report, we were so frustrated that
there were still victims and nothing was being done. We were so angry at how the
police couldn’t catch them even when news had already gotten out. We got to the
point where we thought about leaving the country, because it’s a country that
can’t deal with this.

Did any of the participants ever question the material being produced and
shared?

Kim: No. They call everything porn or data and equate the people who feed them
their “porn” as heroes. There was no remorse or sense of guilt. But at the same
time, they were so sensitive when it came to their own identities being exposed.

Have any of the users tried to contact you after the story broke?

Kim: We have been getting letters of apology from some Telegram participants. I
remember one that really blabbed on without a core message. I didn’t even read
carefully through it because it was so long and unorganized, but his point was
that, he realized this was illegal and it really tormented him. He didn’t take
any action against the content being shared which made him very psychologically
stressed and he believed that this also makes him a victim too. He said he
really reflected on his actions but also thinks he’s a victim too.

Overall, how to you feel about your work?

Lee: We’re actually more disappointed than we are proud. I think I’m worried.
What if, despite all the work that’s been achieved, the reality doesn’t change?
Everything - the legislation, the judicial system, the education system and
society’s awareness - needs to change, but what if that’s not the case? I really
hope that everyone’s efforts pay off, but I’m worried.

Right now, prosecutors have requested a year in prison for Kelly (one of the
main suspects), and three years and six months in prison for Watchman (another
main suspect). They are alleged to have committed some of the worst crimes
possible against children, and that’s all they get. Even with all the news and
everything that’s going on, the legal system is not on par with the social
change, and it makes us worried.

What is hindering proper measures from being taken on this problem?

Kim: Right now, there aren’t any clear guidelines. It means that there aren’t
proper standards for investigations to be conducted or on how criminals should
be punished. Lack of a clear and firm stance makes it seem like such crime is
not as serious as it is.

Lee: Another maddening thing is the sentences imposed on sex criminals. The
level of punishment dictated by the law is already low, but judges then hand
down sentences ever lower than that criteria. If they had really thought about
those cases as if they affected their own lives, they would not make those
calls.

Kim: The times call for change. And even if their punishments are not equitable
to their victim’s pain, at the very least sentences need to be handed down
according to the demands of the times. Right now, it’s all just lagging behind.

What do you think lies at the heart of this case?

Kim: The essence is misogyny. It’s about objectifying women and not treating
them as equal beings. It’s a fundamental trait of all the participants. In the
offline world, it seems as though women’s rights have improved. But in the
virtual world, its a different story. It’s all about people’s awareness, but
then awareness is shaped by the society. We can’t just blame individuals. We
have to realize that the state has let this happen - by imposing weak
punishments on perpetrators and failing to protect victims.

Lee: We were hoping that Korean society as a whole was going to work together to
tackle this, but we’re upset to see that it has become another gender conflict.
We didn’t want to cause a fight between men and women, but some people are
saying that women are making a fuss out of nothing and that the victims are not
real victims because they’re not “innocent.” But right now, the victims have to
hide, and sex crimes are the only type of crime where the victims have to hide
themselves. Please stop.

Kim: People around us even say that it’s a pity that we can’t reveal ourselves.
We’re also sad that in this society, we still can’t punish the criminals
properly and we have to hide as the reporters.

What would you like to see happen next?

Kim: They say that voting is the flower of democracy. But right now because the
legislation is not functioning properly, the public needs to exert their power.
I believe that this could be the beginning of development at the National
Assembly, and people can really call for change. A lot of politicians are
mentioning the Nth room case, but they shouldn’t just stop there. People need to
take an interest in what each politician is saying and make sure that they
continue to take action over the issues, even after the elections.

Lee: I hope that people will keep paying attention even after the general
elections. That’s what worries me the most right now. We’ve been getting a lot
of news about the election, and less about the Nth room. But I hope that people
will keep this fire lit. Like an ever-glowing flame, I hope you all take
interest in both digital sex crimes and other sex crimes.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]

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