SEOUL — A 33-year-old South Korean man was sentenced to life in prison on Monday for a wide array of charges that included rape, sexual assault and illegal distribution of sexually explicit content, in what prosecutors described as the country’s biggest cyber sex crime to date. Some of the 261 victims were minors.
Under the alias “Pastor,” Kim Nok-wan was found to have raped more than a dozen people and produced more than 1,000 sexually explicit videos or images of victims while running an online blackmail ring using the encrypted messenger app Telegram. Kim threatened to share the sexual content with the victims’ families or workplace colleagues if the victims did not do his bidding, which included providing explicit photos of themselves or sexual favors.
“The methods that the defendant employed throughout his criminal process are cruel and heinous,” the court said in a news release. “It is impossible to avoid a sentence that permanently removes the defendant from society.”
Ten accomplices were sentenced to terms of two to four years.
Kim’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Telegram, which is based in Dubai, could not be immediately reached for comment, but South Korean authorities said that the company had cooperated in the investigation.
South Korea has sought to strengthen laws targeting sexual crimes against minors and deepfake sexual content in recent years in the wake of multiple high-profile sexual crimes, including with a bill passed last year that sentences those found guilty of threatening minors with sexually explicit content to minimum prison terms of three to five years.
Prosecutors found that beginning in 2020, Kim targeted males who sought sexually explicit content in secret chatrooms on Telegram. As a condition to enter a chatroom, Kim required them to prove they weren’t law enforcement officials by sharing personal information about themselves and female acquaintances, as well as sexually explicit images. Once they did, Kim blackmailed them, threatening to publicly shame them online as sexual predators unless they recruited additional victims or provided explicit photos of themselves.
Kim targeted females whose images or personal information were shared by male victims. He also went after women who posted sexually suggestive content on social media. He threatened to publicly expose the content unless they wired him cash, shared explicit photos of themselves or met offline for sex.
In one case, Kim, through an accomplice, sent a video to a victim’s father of the victim engaged in sexual intercourse and threatened to shame her at her workplace.
Kim offered to stop the blackmail if the victims recruited new targets. Some of them complied, becoming accomplices to Kim’s scheme. The same offer was extended to the new victims, creating a pyramid scheme.
The court said Kim raped or assaulted at least 16 victims, including 14 minors. Kim made videos of 13 of the victims as he carried out his crimes. In total, he produced 1,700 sexually explicit videos or images of at least 70 minors, according to the court.
Kim’s case revived not-so-distant memories of another online sex crime ring that rocked South Korea in 2020. Cho Ju-bin, who is serving a 42-year sentence, blackmailed at least 74 female victims, including minors, into sharing sexually explicit videos of themselves. He then sold the footage through Telegram. In 2019, two K-pop stars were convicted of raping unconscious women. In 2018, a South Korean man was arrested for creating the world’s largest known child pornography website at the time.
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