This archive report was first published on 6 July 2020.
Published on July 6, 2020
South Korea Denies US Request to Extradite Child Porn Site Owner ¶
A South Korean court has rejected a US extradition request for Son Jong-woo, a 24-year-old citizen convicted of running one of the world's largest child pornography websites on the dark web.
According to officials, Son operated the site called 'Welcome to Video' from June 2015 until his arrest in March 2018. The site was inaccessible by regular web browsers and users paid fees in Bitcoin to access it.
Although Son completed an 18-month sentence in April for his crime, the US Justice Department wanted him extradited to face money-laundering and other charges in an American court.
However, the Seoul High Court ruled that keeping Son in South Korea would help the country track down users of his site for possible indictment.
Anti-child-pornography activists in South Korea had called for Son's extradition, citing the country's light punishment of him. In contrast, some men in the US who received child pornography through Welcome to Video have been sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
Law enforcement officials around the globe have worked together to track the site's users and have arrested hundreds of people in a dozen countries, most of them South Koreans.
They also rescued at least 23 underage victims in the US, Britain, and Spain who were being actively abused by users of the site.
