S. Koreans arrested for running sex chat sites employing female N.K. defectors

BUSAN, July 22 (Yonhap) -- Police said Friday they arrested six men who operated sex chat Web sites that employed female North Korean defectors and ethnic Korean residents in China who conducted obscene chats with South Korean men. The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency said it booked 34 others without physical detention on charges of violating the country's telecommunication law banning distribution of pornographic materials over the Internet, along with the six who were arrested. The Web site operators hired about 1,000 women in China to run 26 companies that operate about 70 sex chat sites, according to the police. About half of the women hired were defectors from the North, with the other half being Chinese residents with Korean roots. The six operators raked in nearly 22.3 billion won (US$21.2 million) in profits once they started their business in April 2007, with about 700,000 local men registered to use the chatting services, police said. They ran advertisements on online communities for ethnic Korean women living in China in order to recruit them. The women then chatted with registered site members, who paid up to 800 won for 30 seconds of obscene chatting. The women, mostly working from Yanji, northeastern China, were paid only 9 percent of the total profits after the site operators deducted earnings for themselves and broker fees, according to the police. "The detected firms used very organized tactics to avoid crackdowns and taxation through frequent relocation," a police official said. He said the country needs to beef up its penalties on those who circulate pornographic material. According to current law, such violators, when caught, are sentenced to a maximum prison sentence of only one year