SOUTH KOREA — Following the recent dissemination of “obscene materials” on two of the country’s largest portal sites, the South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) stated that it will team up with law enforcement and portal site operators to set up an online monitoring system of foreign websites in order to prevent more pornographic materials from being uploaded to South Korean web portals and peer-to-peer systems.The MIC plans to block foreign pornography sites that are considered the primary sources for “obscene” materials that are then uploaded to Korean portals. MIC indicated that by the end of May, it will have blocked approximately 180 foreign adult sites.

“We believe that the [blocking] measure will be quite effective in dealing with obscene materials in cyberspace as we found most internet users obtain such content from foreign pornographic sites and upload them on local portals,” the MIC said in a written statement.

MIC information safety department director Lee Tae Hee added that the government is seeking to block approximately 500 to 600 foreign sites, overall, in their effort to crack down on “obscene” materials.

According to the Korea Times, earlier this month a sexually explicit video file approximately one minute in length was posted to “Yammy,” Yahoo Korea’s page for user-created content, for around six hours. The clip was reportedly viewed by over 25,000 users in that six hour period.

Two days after the appearance of the file on Yammy, Naver and Duam, the nation’s #1 and #2 portals according to the Times, were criticized for the presence of similar clips posted to their sites, which were “unchecked for hours.”

Last Wednesday, Korean police began an investigation to determine who was posting the clips to the Korean portals.

The MIC indicated that it intends to strengthen the punitive actions it doles out in such cases, and not just for the offenders who post the video clips.

“We will toughen the punishment not just on the circulators but also on the portal sites which fail to monitor and keep such hazardous materials out of teenagers’ reach,” the MIC said in a written statement issued this week, according to the press.

Naver and Daum have also promised to add personnel for monitoring blogs, Web forums and other sites where users can upload content, and increase “surveillance” at night and over the weekends, in particular.

Government officials also claimed this week that the effort to block foreign adult sites will benefit and encourage the spread of user-posted content in South Korea.

“As the internet has become indispensable in our daily life, we will keep our efforts to screen out obscene and other hazardous materials,” said director general of the information security and privacy bureau, Suh Byung-jo, according to the Times. “Such efforts will also help the burgeoning user created content business take off.”

According to Lee Tae Hee, one suspect has been identified in the Yammy video incident, tracked down by the IP address he used when posting the clip. The suspect faces up to a year in prison and a substantial fine, according to Lee.