Police identify founders of Soranet porn site

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Police identify founders of Soranet porn site

The founders of Korea’s largest pornographic site, Sora.net, have been identified, police announced on Monday.

Two of the four founders have been identified as a Seoul National University graduate and his wife, although police suspect there are three more administrators.

Soranet was established in 1999 and, while banned in Korea, it has since led to petition campaigns calling for the site’s removal. In addition to conventional pornography, some of the materials posted on the site include secretly filmed videos of women’s shower rooms and revenge porn (sex tapes released to damage the reputation of ex-lovers).

The site exceeded 1 million registered members in 2010 and made over 10 billion won ($8.5 million) in total profit.

According to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s cybercrime investigation unit on Monday, the identities of the site’s administrators were unknown. Administrators used false names like Terry Park and Kay Song and servers were located in the United States and Europe, where pornographic sites are not illegal.

Soranet’s founders used advertising revenue earned by the website in order to elude police by constantly moving from country to country, even going so far as to purchase permanent residency in the countries to which they moved. Their elusiveness earned the site the nickname “Impregnable Fortress.”

Then in April police sighted the founders in an airport in Southeastern Asia, but the agents could not take them into custody because they cannot arrest the permanent residents of another nation with a warrant issued in Korea.

“Now that we know where they are,” a police official explained, “we have narrowed down the scope of our search.”

The officer added, “They had permanent residency status in Australia and a few Southeast Asian countries and they tried but failed to get permanent residency in the United States and the Netherlands, where we conducted cooperative investigations with local police.”

Police finally shut Soranet down in April and the founders officially announced the closing of their site through their Twitter account on June 6.

Police officials, while stressing the importance of fluid cooperation with foreign investigators, are working on the extradition process.

“Given their past,” said one officer, “they may try to move to another country again so we’re putting them under close watch.”

BY SON GOOK-HEE [jeong.byungki@joongang.co.kr]
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