If you experience any digital sexual crime, the government is here to help.

- The MOGEF launched ‘comprehensive support services for digital sexual crime victims’ that include consultation, support on video/photo deletion, and post monitoring

From Monday, April 30th, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (Minister Chung Hyun-back) will begin operating the “Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center,” which will provide comprehensive support services for victims of digital sexual crimes such as illegal photographing or filming and dissemination.

The Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center, established by the Korean Women’s Human Rights Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, will provide comprehensive services such as counseling, deleting support, investigative support, litigation support, and post-monitoring.

In case of experiencing digital sexual crime, victims can receive personalized support tailored to the specific case after filing a report by phone (02-735-8994) or through a private online bulletin board (www.women1366.kr/stopds).  

Digital sex crime is characterized by the fact illegal photographs or videos can continue to be spread on the Internet once they are posted until deletion. Unlike other sexual assault, digital sexual crimes can persist and further expand.

In the meantime, victims had to search for their own videos and photographs and directly contact the websites to delete them or asking the “digital funeral companies” to help them delete at their own expense, which caused psychological pain and financial burden for victims.
Therefore, the Digital Crime Victim Support Center will focus on providing deletion support services that are most needed from the victims of digital sexual crimes.

The Center collects the cases, requests the deletion of images and files from the websites, supports victims to collect evidence to make police reporting and helps them make deliberation to the Korea Communications Commission. The Center also makes referrals for free legal services and medical expenses assistance.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family established the ‘Public-Private Partnership to Fight against Digital Sexual Crime’* to monitor the implementation of the ‘Comprehensive Prevention Measures against Digital Sexual Crimes’ (September 26, 2017) and to discuss policy improvement. In March, the Partnership worked to ensure that those prevention measures were taking place by monitoring each step including sales of illegally transformed digital cameras, use of those cameras, distribution of photographs and videos, reporting digital sex crimes, investigation/punishment of the crime, victim support, and preventive education.

* The Public-Private Partnership to Fight against Digital Sexual Crime: consists academics and experts from civil society organizations, governments and public institutions in the relevant fields.

Currently, we are conducting research on preventive regulation measures against sales and use of illegally transformed cameras. In addition, the legislative proposal for the protection of personal image information is currently under consideration by the National Assembly, which prohibits the installation and use of video equipment in places where privacy is likely to be violated such as restrooms, bathrooms, and changing rooms.

To help report the distribution of illegal photographs and video files, the Korea Communications Commission will activate the urgent deliberation system to ensure prompt response by establishing the ‘Digital Sexual Crimes Response Team’ in April. At the same time, to prevent the distribution of edited and modified illegal video files, we plan to adopt DNA filtering technology from next year.

Regarding the investigation process of digital sex crimes, the Cyber Investigative Team of the National Police Agency established the Cyber Sexual Violence Task Force. In the Regional Policy Agency in each province, and the Cyber Criminal Investigation Team launched a new Cyber Sexual Violence Investigation Team.

For punishment of perpetrators, the Special Act on Punishment of Sexual Crimes is being revised.

The revised law stipulates that if a person who has photographed another person’s body or act that can be identified as a specific person has distributed the video files, he or she will be imprisoned for 5 years or less. If the video files that contain a person’s body is distributed without consent, the revised act will newly introduce legal grounds for punishment.

For victim support, the revised Act on the Prevention of Sexual Violence and the Protection of Victims was promulgated on March 13, 2018 and is scheduled to be enforced on September 14, 2018. The revision was made to prepare the legal ground for the deletion support for victims of the digital sex offense and to impose the deletion cost of the illegal digital photographs and video files on the perpetrators.

The Public-Private Partnership to Fight against Digital Sexual Crime will hold quarterly meetings to continuously monitor the implementation of the measures and to find out policy measures that need to be strengthened.

Minister of Gender Equality and Family Chung Hyun-back said, “The operation of the Digital Crime Victim Support Center is meaningful in that it is the first government effort to establish a support system for victims of digital sexual crimes and to provide customized support for victims of those crimes.” Minister added, “We will work to ensure that the victims, who had to deal with the issues by themselves, can now receive necessary support and return to their daily lives as soon as possible.” Also, Minister Chung stated, “In the future, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family will closely examine whether there is a blind spot in assisting victims, working as a control tower for the eradication of violence against women.”