[Exclusive] Spread of ‘Kissing Room Notification’, a new type of prostitution channel… crackdown is difficult

30 trillion accomplices in the invincibility of the sex industry
③Prostitution information subscription service

Gather information from multiple businesses
Arranged through Telegram secret room

This year marks exactly 20 years since the Prostitution Punishment Act and the Prostitution Victims Protection Act were implemented to eradicate prostitution. However, prostitution is rampant in a more sophisticated way. Not only were prostitution centers closed, but with the development of the Internet and digital technology, the sex industry became more sophisticated and penetrated daily life.

The Hankyoreh investigation team tracked down the ‘main culprits’ who were spreading prostitution by operating a prostitution brokerage platform and paid secret chat room with the help of the Seoul City Dashi Together Counseling Center, which works to prevent and monitor prostitution, and white hacker Joon-young Choi (pseudonym). We ask for the readers’ understanding by revealing that it was inevitable to explicitly report on the behavior taking place here in order to expose the true face of a new ‘criminal industry’.
 

“Do you have any tips to quickly make a reservation ‘every time’ you want? Do I need to use a ‘kiss room reminder’?”

“It is difficult to see ‘Yeapmae’ without notice.”

This is a conversation that took place on a private prostitution review site bulletin board last May. Here, ‘mae’ refers to a prostitute and ‘pre-apmae’ refers to a ‘prostitute who is under great pressure to make a reservation.’ When a sex buyer asked whether he should use a ‘kiss room reminder’ to quickly reserve the woman he wanted, someone responded that it was the only way to make a reservation with a popular woman. This site can only be accessed from overseas IPs through a virtual private network (VPN).

Kiss Room Notifier is a new prostitution brokerage platform that appeared in 2020. Previously, prostitution was brokered online mainly through brokerage sites that received advertising fees from prostitution establishments, but Kiss Room Notification collects information on the attendance of prostitutes at various establishments and delivers related information in a secret mobile chat room.

If you pay a membership fee, you can enter a secret chat room through a specific Telegram ID or information pattern (QR code), and receive information about prostitutes from there.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government's Dashi Together Counseling Center, which has been carrying out activities to prevent and monitor illegal prostitution, says that as of 2024, there will be at least five kiss room notifications. Choi Jun-young (pseudonym), a white hacker who has been tracking online sites and posts related to the prostitution industry for nearly two years, also testifies that kissing room notifications such as ‘No○’, ‘Manager○○’, ‘Let’s○’, and ‘Oh○○’ are actively operating.

■ Mobile-based sex purchase one-stop service
Kiss Room Notifiers send notifications by crawling (pulling data) from information posted on various prostitution brokerage sites in real time. The focus is on information about prostitution women going to work, and reservations can also be made. It provides a ‘one-stop prostitution service’ from schedule check to reservation. Kiss Room Alerts, another parasite in the sex industry, is said to be expanding its scope of activity to include a massage-type prostitution business recently established in an officetel in Gangnam, Seoul.

Among these, the most widely known kiss room notification is ‘No○’. It is estimated that there are 10,000 subscribers and 1,000 paid members (subscribers), and it advertises that ‘as of October last year, 313,339 attendance records of 9,252 prostitutes were collected and 45,245 attendance notifications were sent to sex buyers.’

After registering as a member, the reporter set up a notification for a specific prostitute to come to work on August 20th, and at around 10 a.m. the next day, a notification called ‘○○○ Emergency (12-5 p.m.) 010-

Paid members are divided into levels, from ‘Bronze’, which pays 10,000 won per month, to ‘VIP’, which pays 100,000 won. Depending on the level, the number of prostitutes notified and the amount of related information vary. There are around 50 people in the VIP Telegram room who pay 100,000 won per month.

White Hacker Choi estimated that, considering the size of each paid membership level, ‘No○’s’ membership fee revenue is up to 52.5 million won per month. Unlike other kiss room notifications, ‘No○’ also operates a separate website (homepage), and the website is ‘Isn’t it too difficult to keep refreshing the site to find out when the manager is going to work? You can register and forget about it and go about your daily life when you receive a notification and make a reservation. ‘You can make a reservation much faster than others because you will receive a notification!’

■ Sexually exploitative conversations and photo sharing are common
Aside from ‘No○’, the operating scale and estimated profits of other kiss room notifiers are shrouded in mystery. However, the Hankyoreh investigation team and white hacker Mr. Choi obtained part of the conversation in another secret kiss room notification chat room and looked into what was happening there. In the chat room, explicit reviews were exchanged about photos of prostitutes.

At this time, various slang and slang are used, and the conversation is graded as high, medium, or low according to face F (F), body ratio (B), conversation T (T), and sexual activity level P (P). ‘B: Medium. He's tall and has a nice body, but he has a little belly fat. F: Medium. Feels like a country girl. Sexually exploitative conversations such as ‘rat statue’ were commonplace, and this was acting as a criterion for other sex buyers to select women.

White Hacker Choi said, “I suspect that about half of the photos posted in secret chat rooms are illegal.” Even on prostitution sites, elements that can identify individuals, such as faces, tattoos, and accessories, are covered, but in secret chat rooms, they are distributed with all information revealed, so there is a high possibility that it is an illegal video.

There was also a case where a famous influencer who mainly works on internet broadcasts was put on the chopping block and ‘evidence’ of having worked in a kissing room in the past was mentioned. He also said there was a video in the secret chat room and asked how he could view it. This point suggests that more explicit illegally filmed videos are being shared in ‘off-duty rooms’ where only a small number of people can enter.

The work records of prostitutes were provided in a calendar, and based on this, the estimated profits of the women were estimated. We also tracked the ‘retirement’ or return of certain prostitutes, or if they moved to another kissing room.

In particular, there was a case where a prostitute's personal SNS was found and shared in a secret Telegram chat room. Conversations such as “He leaked messages on Instagram and sent messages to all his acquaintances” and “There is a child whose real name and Instagram photos he took with friends were all distributed” appeared in the conversation. It shows that beyond the act of prostitution itself, means are being mobilized to completely destroy the daily lives of individuals involved in it.

■ Easily promotes prostitution… Prepare countermeasures
Although illegal prostitution is promoted and illegal information sharing is taking place, there is little discussion on social responses to kiss room notifications.

White Hacker Choi said, “Kissing Room Notifier can be easily operated by spending about 100,000 to 500,000 won per month in server costs,” and added, “Programming for Kissing Room Notifier is not difficult enough that you can write it by asking ChatGPT.”

An official from the surveillance business team at the Together Counseling Center said, “Kissing room notifications were created around kissing rooms, an industry where reservations are difficult. If we do not block this type of Telegram-type prostitution brokerage system, there is a possibility that it will become a new profit model for prostitution brokerage and spread like mushrooms.”

Legally, providing information related to prostitution can be punished as an act of mediation under the Prostitution Punishment Act. Attorney Seung-ho Lee (Daeryun Law Firm) said, “If it is confirmed that prostitution is actually taking place by the kiss room notification informing the work information of prostitutes, the operator of the intermediate platform can also be charged with prostitution brokerage.”

However, there are difficulties with the investigation. Park Chan-geol, a professor at Chungbuk National University Law School, said, “It must be proven that prostitution took place at the establishment based on the information provided by the platform (Kiss Room Notification).”

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