The Nth Room case is a digital sex crime that occurred in South Korea from 2018 to 2020 where sexually exploitative content of targeted women were deliberately shared amongst chat rooms on the messaging application “Telegram.”
Due to active reports of the case, South Korea was able to see the blind spots of the cyber world and generate better protection of victims and harsher criminal punishment regarding digital sex crimes.
Oh Yeon seo, an Ewha alumna from the Department of Nutritional Science & Food Management with a double major in the Division of Communication & Media, was on the front line of uncovering and exposing the case to the public.
“The Nth Room case was first reported by one of the senior reporters, Kim Wan, at Hankyoreh in 2019,” Oh recalled. “I remember reading the simple yet shocking article about a boy in Incheon who earned millions by selling exploitative content online.”
Her initial shock was replaced by perplexity after she received a call from her team leader who requested her participation in the special task force of the crime.
Back in 2019, though there were many prior reports of digital sex crimes, the media lacked protocols on the reporting process with the majority giving details of how gruesome or sexually orientated the crimes were, which led to secondary victimization. However, Oh and the special task force team decided to shift the focus of the article to the fundamental flaws of the society’s system that blocked the victims of such crimes from reporting the circumstances and the neglected severity in addressing cyber assault crimes.
To do so, the team took caution to respect the rights of victims, becoming the first article that mosaicked the evidence and used the term “sexually exploitative content” instead of “internet pornography.” Furthermore, Oh interacted with the victims of the case via phone calls, writing the article from the perspective of the victims.
As a close witness to digital crimes, Oh felt severe guilt and frustration at times, believing her news reports had no effect in alleviating the pain of victims, but rather worsening it. She also expressed that she had desperate urges to pour all her anger at the criminals out onto the articles, seeking justice.
Oh’s solution for recovery was to find the healthy mindset she had when she first worked on the case.
“I chose to participate because I wanted to contribute to changing society,” Oh said. “No matter how long it took, I knew then that I had to keep going.”
Eventually, Cho Joo Bin and Moon Hyung-wook, the main perpetrators of the Nth room scandal, were respectively sentenced to 42 and 34 years in prison which were exceptionally heavy sentences in South Korea, later becoming the standard punishment for sexual exploitation crimes. It was the moment when Oh’s persistent work finally achieved the desired result.
For her notable role in exposing the truth behind the Nth room case, Oh received the “Ewha Journalist Award of the Year” by the Ewha Journalists’ Club in 2022.
Despite the hardships that followed the success such as constant fear of revenge by criminals due to identity reveals of reporters through media or dealing with raw descriptions of crimes, Oh is glad to have made a difference in the view towards digital sex crimes in the long-run.
Regarding her future goals, Oh wishes to become a reporter who speaks up for the overlooked, especially those who suffer injustice. In 2023, she wrote an article about Choi Mal-ja who requested for a retrial of her sexual assault case. Choi was sent to prison in 1964 for biting the tongue of the man who assaulted her.
“Though the retrial was rejected at the end, being able to acknowledge Choi’s story and help her find justice even in the slightest way felt like the most fulfilling thing I could do as a reporter.” Oh shared.
Moreover, Oh addressed words of advice to Ewha students aspiring to become journalists.
“Never underestimate the power of words,” Oh said. “In journalism, the key to writing a good article is to be objective. When reporting violent crimes such as the Nth Room case, I recommend being objective and stating the factual truth instead of getting emotional because facts are a more practical weapon in addressing the severity of such crimes.”