Korea, Cryptocurrency, and Sex Crimes

As hysteria over Coronavirus has been reduced to a din in Korea, a new hot topic emerges as a source of disdain and fury. It was revealed last week that a social group roughly 260,000 members strong flourished as a place where people could pay to view explicit, violent, fetishized sexual acts on coerced females, many of whom were minors, in Telegram chat rooms. The chat rooms were apparently divided into tiers by pay scale.

In Korea, this issue has come to be known as ‘The Doctor’s Room” because one of the top leaders of the community was colloquially referred to as ‘The Doctor”. The Doctor’s real name is Joobin Jo, a 25-year-old recent graduate of a Korean university where he was editor-in-chief of Hakbosa, the school newspaper. Joongang Ilbo has reported that Jo apparently made many friends and earned the admiration of many at the university for his intellectual and political exploits. For example, as news of the scandal involving former President Geunhye Park wafted through the whispers of Korean breaths and became gusts of change that swept the country, Jo was there in the middle of many demonstrations at his university. Now ironic but then certainly kind-hearted, he helped introduce efforts to prevent school violence and sexual violence at the school. He also worked as a ‘disabled team leader’ at a special school in Incheon, just outside of Seoul.

It wasn’t until the 19th of March that some around him began to see the wolf beneath the sheep’s clothing. It was then that Jo was arrested on charges of being linked to the community that was then known as ‘N번방’ or ‘some room’. At first he resisted the investigation and denied the accusations of being The Doctor. He even went as far as to claim he was succumbing to Coronavirus until he finally took credit for the work he had done in The Doctor’s Room. The Doctor awaits his day in court which will likely be an unpleasant one for him, all the families who must relive the horrors they have seen done to their daughters, and a society which must yet again discover untold atrocities done to its women that occurred right under their noses.

Two other men known as ‘The Watchman” and “God” also served as leaders in the community and are being pursued by the authorities now. It is well-documented that the individuals known as The Doctor, The Watchman, and God have committed crimes hardly worthy of the detail this site normally aims to provide. Suffice to write that their charges include but may not yet be limited to coercing minors with money to endure sadistic sexual exploitation and various acts of violence at the hands of The Doctor’s Room’s members who could have been either paid subscribers or ‘staff‘ who assisted the leaders in their depraved acts. What is not so clear is how to uncover and charge the 260,000 members of the room who are protected by Telegram’s privacy features for their depraved voyeurism. Prosecutors and judges in Seoul are deliberating now how to go about prosecuting such a case as there is no precedent for it.

The identified individuals related to the case are in enough hot water for what one can only imagine will be a lifetime. Until the case is closed and a ruling is made, people around the country will leer at each other and wonder if their neighbor, uncle, brother, cousin, father, or husband ever took part in one of The Doctor’s acts, or even if they were one of his staff.

The next piece in this developing story is the involvement of a Korean cryptocurrency exchange, namely Bithumb. The preferred method of payment for membership into The Doctor’s Room was cryptocurrency. Decenter today published an exclusive scoop detailing how members obtained Monero, the crypto of choice, and Bitcoin on Bithumb then sent their funds to The Doctor’s wallets.

It seems that The Doctor’s Room members would purchase Monero or Bitcoin to buy their memberships. Members used either Bithumb, a foreign crypto exchange, or a crypto purchasing service to purchase anonymously (unless done with their phone banking app) and sent tokens directly to Jo. Those who sent their tokens from Bithumb, one of the few exchanges still offering the privacy token after a government crack down on it last year, sent their coins directly to The Doctor from the exchange. Bithumb itself takes no responsibility in the matter as whatever users of their platforms do with their purchased cryptos off-platform is not in their purview. They have fully complied with investigators and stated that they realize the weight of the deeds done by members of The Doctor’s Room outweigh the policies they normally protect user information with.

Investigators raided a crypto purchasing agency in Korea on the 20th to obtain user data on Monero purchases. They are using this data in order to track down as many members of the room as possible. Most of the users who paid with Monero can be tracked fairly easily through these records since presumably those users sent their tokens directly to Jo from the exchange. As a result of Monero’s enhanced privacy features, it is difficult to track the movements of those tokens than it is with the far more transparent BTC. With this data, investigators concede that it will be much easier to identify members of The Doctor’s Room.

This new revelation about member payment methods casts a dark shadow on cryptocurrencies and the industry as a whole which all month up to this week had enjoyed due revelry from the passing of a landmark amendment. The new law brings the industry officially into the legal and financial fold. The future of the industry looked bright as a result of the amendment which will likely usher in a period of restructuring, growth, and legitimacy the the industry sorely needs as it proves its value to society. Eventually, the cryptocurrency industry may be able to shake away the stigma that it has carried since 2017.

Jo will stand before prosecutors tomorrow morning where his face and profile will be made public. This is a major departure from the norm for high criminals in Korea who usually enjoy personal protections from the government in order for criminals to ‘save face’. This story is certain to grow in scope, but hopefully the breadth of its involvement in the cryptocurrency industry has reached its conclusion.