12-year-old caught posting Web porn
An elementary school boy was caught yesterday operating and uploading photos to a pornography forum on a platform hosted by portal giant Naver.The 12-year-old boy surnamed Song, along with four other teenagers, set up an online forum in March that hosted nude photos of famous female celebrities and sports stars, X-rated cartoons and obscene child pornography.
They posted 684 altered nude or half-naked photos featuring 53 female celebrities.
The teens used various smartphone apps to create the provocative photos.
The community has attracted 4,367 registered members, 60 percent of which are under 19.
As membership increased, the elementary school boy opened a new forum dedicated to offering adult animated content.
The Gwangju Metropolitan Police Agency plans to order the under-age boys to undergo sex education, without pressing any criminal charges given their status as minors.
The case exposes the lax management and loopholes of such membership-based Web communities run by major portal sites.
Anyone who subscribes to Naver is allowed to create an online forum and, conversely, Naver members can register for a type of forum unless the portal giant imposes some regulations.
“This case shows that Naver failed to thoroughly monitor the content of its forums and neglected their duties,” said Kuk Soong-in, director of the cybersecurity division of the police agency.
“We can’t regulate the adult online community altogether,” said a representative of the largest portal service.
“Some say that Naver can prevent words like ‘adult’ or ‘19’ from not being used in the name of the forum but the words don’t necessarily indicate that the forum contains porn,” the representative said.
Along with the obscene photos, the police also secured 30 porn videos featuring teenage girls.
But the site evaded monitoring by Naver and it managed to shut down the forum only after the case was revealed.
BY CHOI KYONG-HO, PARK EUN-JEE [ejpark@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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