SOUTH KOREA — While its northern neighbor makes international headlines for testing a nuclear bomb, South Korea has quietly rounded up, arrested, and imprisoned 28-year-old Kim Bonj-wa for dropping a bomb of his own on the internet.The bomb in question? 15,000 pornographic videos.
Kim began his career as a porn entrepreneur in 2004, in a country where distributing or exhibiting obscene materials in public can earn up to a year in jail and as much as 5 million won in fines. As is the case in the United States, what exactly constitutes “obscenity” is uncertain. What is not uncertain is the fact that South Korea more harshly limits hardcore pornography than other developed countries, including the US and Japan.
Known online by the nickname “Bonj-wa,” which means guru or master, Kim began his career as a distributor of erotic materials by sharing Japanese videos via Toto Disk, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program. Rapidly gaining popularity and, according to some, becoming a major motivation behind the country’s embracing of the high-speed Internet, Kim was able to quit his day job and focus exclusively on uploading erotic materials, many of which are believed illegal for South Koreans to view.
Although some of Kim’s supporters agree that he has likely violated the law as it is written now, they believe the time is ripe for the nation to review its policies toward porn and engage in a dialogue on the subject.
Nonetheless, authorities not only refuse to release the young man but appear to have tried and convicted him already, given a statement on the Pusan police website. According to the site’s homepage, “The convicted person has damaged society by circulating abnormal Japanese pornography. He distorted the healthy sex culture and corrupted juveniles. As such acts violate the law, punishment is inevitable.”
About a dozen of Kim’s followers posted comments on the site insisting that he be freed, while more than 1,300 signatures on a Daum portal site have been collected in support of Kim, who was arrested on Wednesday. Petition circulators hope to pressure the government to release Kim or at least discuss the issue of pornography openly. The petition organizer hopes to have 100,000 signatures by the end of the month.
