Over 1,600 Motel Guests Are Secretly Live-Streamed

South Korean police make 2 arrests in shocking case
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 20, 2019 4:50 PM CDT
Cops: Hidden Cams Streamed 1,600 Motel Users
A camera lens that could be recording ... you.   (Getty Images)

Plan on visiting South Korea? Now you can stay in a motel without being secretly filmed by spy cams—or so it seems after Seoul police arrested two perpetrators behind just such an alleged scheme, the Korea Herald reports. Police say the pervs set up 1-millimeter lenses in sockets, hair dryer holders, digital TV boxes, and other places inside 42 rooms in 30 motels in 10 cities nationwide from November to March 2. Seems they set up a website with an overseas server and charged members $44.94 monthly to live-stream or watch full videos, per CNN. The site had over 4,000 members—97 of them paying—and the perpetrators allegedly banked some $6,200. Roughly 1,600 people were filmed in all, per the BBC.

Now the alleged spy-cammers are facing up to 10 years in prison and more than $26,000 in fines. But it's only the tip of the iceberg of South Korea's hidden-filming problem. Over 6,400 such cases were reported in 2017—nearly triple the 2012 tally, per USA Today—and tens of thousands of women hit the streets in several cities last year demanding change with the slogan "My Life is Not Your Porn." Some say South Korea's pornography ban is responsible for the problem. Whatever the cause, people's lives are being damaged: "The most common things that the clients are saying—and they are quite heartbreaking—are 'I want to die' or 'I cannot leave my house,'" says a computer expert who helps women remove unwanted images of themselves from the Internet. (More pornography stories.)

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