The recent reports claim that the principal offender of the "Nth Telegram Room," Joo Jin Mo (also identified as Baksa), had used BTS fan cafes to extort women.

Seo Seung Hee, chief of the Korean Cyber Sex Violence Response Department, said the Baksa would appeal to women in the late teens and early twenties by proceeding to celebrity fan cafes and forcing victims to show pictures in which he would threaten them. This was a tactic mostly used by Baksa, with several cases where the victims did not know their images or videos were already being sold on Telegram. 

However, because of the poor awareness of "online grooming" in Korean society, and because it's not a Korean offense. Seo clarified that the likelihood of sexual harassment and victim-blaming would escalate if online bullying were not banned outright.

Seo reported that several of the sexually harassed women would consult attorneys and the prosecutors would announce that it is the woman's fault to let this occur. There are also instances of online harassment miscommunications in which the offenders manipulate the victim into believing they're in a one-to-one relationship to get naked pictures and videos they'll post in the Telegram chatrooms. Without adequate laws relating to online harassment, Seo maintains that it would be difficult to correct the sexually assaulted victims' misconceptions.

The UN Committee on Child Rights highly recommended that South Korea take measures on the particular issue of online grooming, after evaluating the severity of the situation last October. Seo sincerely hopes that the latest laws and sanctions against the culprits of sexual offenses will have a positive impact, suggesting that it is essential to focus on how women are handled in the wrong way to address the ongoing sexual abuse of children and women.

What is the Nth Room Scandal? 

(Photo : Twitter)

Nth room case is the name of a criminal case in South Korea throughout 2018 and 2020, including extorting and distributing sexually explicit images through the use of the Telegram app. This case is commonly known as the case of the Nth Room, with the term corresponding to the activities of several people. The more well-known case is the Nth room, led by a man who marketed sexual harassment clips in telegram networks and communities, called from the "1st room" to the "8th room." 

Similar manner, there was a doctor's room run by a man who uses the screen name Doctor (later discovered to be Cho Joo-bin) suspected of blackmailing hundreds of women, compelling them to submit and take sexually explicit images.

The emergence of a Telegram community became public in February 2019, where offenders named the victims "slaves," posted pictures of sexual abuse and even exchanged personal details. It was released on prominent online male-dominated South Korean communities such as Ilbe Storage (Ilbe), and DC Inside's erotic gallery and research gallery.

Lee In-young, Korea's governing Democratic Party's parliamentary leader, has said the party would take the case to parliament. The leading opposition United Future Party denounced the prosecution, in which it will submit the trial to Parliament to prosecute indecent images of children of any type.