Sinister predators preying on depressive teens

Yang Sung-hee

The author is a columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

What has happened there? The question is about the “Depression Gallery” of the prominent online platform DCInside. The “Depression Gallery,” one of its subcategories in which people suffering from depression rely on anonymity to communicate with one another, is a popular bulletin board in the largest Internet community portal in Korea. Last March alone, it had 8 million users, according to SimilarWeb.

At dawn of Children’s Day on Friday, two teenage girls, one aged 15 and the other 17, who had met each other via the Depression Gallery attempted to commit suicide at the Hannam Bridge in Seoul. The two girls live-streamed the process of their attempted suicide on social media, and there was a adult male present at the scene who claimed, “I came here to stop them.”

The incident took place less than a month after a high school girl, a subscriber of the gallery, had shocked the nation by committing suicide by jumping from a building’s rooftop in southern Seoul on April 16. At that time, the process was streamed live on social media. A man in his 20s accompanied her. Later, the man was arrested on charges of aiding and abetting suicide and violating the law on suicide prevention. Speculations were raised that the teenager had been sexually exploited through the Depression Gallery.

The police arrested four men in their 20s — reportedly members of “Sindaebang Family,” an offline group created by the gallery users — on charges of statutory rape and assault. Last month, a woman in her 20s, a key member of another offline group, “Sinlim Family,” was sentenced to a prison term. She was accused of recommending alcoholic drinks, sleeping pills and drugs to users of the Depression Gallery, including underage women. She is also suspected of sexually exploiting female students.

Immediately after the suicide last month of the high school girl, Prof. Lee Soo-jung, a famous forensic psychologist at Kyonggi University, appeared on a radio show and declared, “This is an evolved ‘Nth room’ case, where the worst combinations of sexual exploitation, suicide encouragement and drug use took place.” Her remarks were not an exaggeration.

“Three years ago, when we first saw the ‘Nth room’ case, drugs were not so easily accessible as they are today and suicide was not neglected like today,” said Prof. Lee. “All these combinations lead to crimes through the gallery.” She urged the law enforcement authorities to sternly investigate the cases.

Insiders of the gallery also said most users were teenage girls and men in their 20s and a significant number of them were fake depression patients who target mentally vulnerable teenage girls. In January and February alone, four court convictions were handed down over sexual crimes against minors through the Depression Gallery.

DCInside said it will reinforce self-monitoring of the Depression Gallery, rejecting a police request to temporarily shut it down. But the effectiveness of the self-monitoring is uncertain. Shutting it down is not the best resolution, but the galleries on DCInside, known for its reputation to be the hub of all the problems associated with an anonymous community, cannot avoid responsibility if it is turning into a hotbed of crimes or abetting suicides beyond the limits.

Meanwhile, the Women News recently reported that multiple posts on taming and sexually abusing women with unstable emotionality have been discovered on several online communities. Young women who are emotionally unstable and suffering from deprivation due to domestic violence, group bullying or a parents’ divorce are often targeted for sexual consumption or sex crimes. “It is a serious problem that aiding and abetting suicide has taken place without guilt. Also, there is a high possibility that the youngsters are exposed to sexual exploitation or larger crimes by depression hunters,” said Lee Hyun-sook, head of a youth group Tacteen, in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo.

In 2021, the teen suicide rate hit an all-time high of 2.7 per 100,000 people in Korea. In particular, the rate among the youngsters aged between 12 and 15 soared nearly five times compared to that in 2016. Teenage girls who received treatment for depression were 1.7 times more than teenage men in 2021.

Those numbers alone are shocking. In a sad turn of events, some girls, hurt by painful abuse and school bullying, are now looking for someone to share their agony with in a community without any protection. Even elementary school girls became victims. May is the month of family, but the gloomy reality makes it meaningless and lamentable.