S Korean who sold 250,000 kid porn video tutorials for Bitcoin won’t be extradited to US
A South Korean courtroom on Mon rejected an extradition request by the United States for a guy convicted of running among the world’s biggest kid pornography websites.
Son Jong-woo, the operator of the South Korea-based dark web kid porn web page “Welcome to Video”, sold the content for digital funds around the world.
He was convicted of violating South Korean kid protection regulations and completed an 18-month sentence in April but remained in custody after he was also indicted on US federal government charges in Washington, DC-where he could face a much longer punishment.
Son’s sentence was on marked contrast to several 15-year terms passed out to users convicted in america, prompting calls to bolster South Korea’s laws and regulations against child pornography.
The Seoul High Court denied the US extradition request, stating that sending Boy overseas could “hamper South Korea’s have investigation into sexually exploitive content”, Yonhap news agency reported.
“The decision shouldn't be interpreted as exonerating him,” the court added, according to Yonhap.
But Southern Koreans reacted with disgust to the ruling.
“I think I could hear the cheering from various sex criminals over today’s information,” said one Twitter consumer.
Another wrote: “South Korea must be the only region that lets kid sex abusers go no cost.”
The US Justice Department said this past year that 338 people from the site have been arrested all over the world, including in South Korea, the united states, Canada, Spain and Brazil.
Son’s site was “the greatest child sexual exploitation industry by volume of articles”, it said, and relied over bitcoin cryptocurrency to market access to 250,000 child porn videos.
It was one of the primary darknet websites to monetise kid exploitation clips using bitcoin, with the site claiming its contents exceeded multiple million downloads, in line with the US Justice Department.
