Key sentence:
- Recently, South Korea tightened its laws against online sexual violence.
- After Cho Joo-bin was sentenced to 40 years in jail in November last year for producing as well as distributing illegal sexual visual material.
- In the US, under federal law, the sentence for such a felony is a minimum of 15 years in jail.
- Telegram’s spokesperson released a statement clearing the stand of the site and added that it would be taken down publicly accessible material that violates their terms and conditions.
Recently, South Korea tightened its laws against online sexual violence. According to CNN, a specific case involving university graduate Cho Joo-bin led the authorities to rethink legislation that previously endorsed the presumption that minors were active participants in crimes committed against them.
Group chats ‘Guru’s room’:
After a procedure, the then 23-year-old student Cho Joo-bin was on bed rest when he styled himself in his mid-40s as a businessman as well as began a group chat on Telegram during September 2019 named ‘Guru’s Place.’
CNN claimed that the chat room offered men a forum to spend thousands of dollars observing and demanding the exploitation of young girls and became the setting for South Korea’s most infamous digital sex crime case.
Cho Joo-bin was sentenced to 40 years in prison:
After Cho Joo-bin was sentenced to 40 years in jail in November last year for producing as well as distributing illegal sexual visual material, blackmail, recording sexually abusive behaviours, forced sexual abuse, rape, sexual harassment, coercion, violation of private information protection, including fraud.” media attention were drawn to the widespread violence.
New sentencing guidelines were adopted in early 2020. The average sentence for persons convicted of creating and distributing sexually exploitative content for minors in 2018 was 2.6 years, as per the Korea Institute of Criminology. The revised rules extended the jail time for the crime to five years.
The statement issued by telegrams spoke person:
Nevertheless, this is far below the multinational jurisdictions. In the US, under federal law, the sentence for such a felony is a minimum of 15 years in jail.
In the meantime, Telegram’s spokesperson released a statement clearing the stand of the site and added that it would be taken down publicly accessible material that violates their terms and conditions. “Sexual violence, as well as the abuse of minors, weren’t welcome on our platform,” he said.
However, according to CNN, some individuals were also concerned that even with the latest sentencing rules, when cases are not quite as high profile as the case of Telegram, penalties may not have been as severe.
