A investigation into three K-pop stars who were sharing evidence of sexual crimes in secret chat groups.
UPDATE: The BBC has removed a short section of this film on 21/05/24 as it contained a factual inaccuracy: It wrongly attributed legal advice given to victim ‘Kyung-mi’ as from a lawyer from broadcaster KBS, when in reality it was advice from a different lawyer.
In South Korea, K-pop stars have fame, fortune and millions of female fans. But some led a double life, inhabiting a hidden world where videos of women being drugged, assaulted and humiliated were shared.
This #BBCEye documentary tells the story of the female journalists who took on the task of investigating the secret chat groups of prominent K-pop stars – and paid a high personal price.
#Molka’ is the Korean term for secretly taking explicit photos or videos without consent. It’s a crime that’s increased elevenfold in the last fifteen years in South Korea. Three friends, all successful K-pop stars, were sharing images in which unconscious women were sexually assaulted. Some of the messages contained evidence that two of the stars, Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon had subjected a woman to extreme sexual violence.
Their crimes would never have been discovered had the phone data of Jung Joon-young not been leaked. The information eventually ended up in the hands of Korean journalist Kang Kyung-yoon, who began a painstaking process of verifying hundreds of explicit photos and videos. The scandal also involved a top Gangnam club, Burning Sun, where another of the friends, Big Bang star Seungri, was a DJ and CEO. Women were being drugged inside the nightclub, and sexually assaulted by men attending the club. Kang and fellow-journalist Park tell the story of their investigation and how they became the targets for exposing the stars.
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