S. Korean Man Faces 4 Years in Jail for Sexual Abuse in Metaverse

• An unnamed man has been sentenced to jail time for four years in South Korea.
• The man is accused of producing and storing lustful content involving minors.
• The accused produced sexual content of children and adolescents from December 2021 to March 2022.

In South Korea, an unidentified man in his 30s is now serving four years in prison for allegedly producing and storing lustful content entailing minors he attracted on the metaverse.

The unnamed man has been booked under the 13th Criminal Settlement Section of the Uijeongbu District Court in South Korea for violating the Act on the Protection of Sex for Children and Youth. Additionally, the defendant has been ordered to complete an 80-hour sexual violence treatment program, employment restrictions for children and adolescents, and other organizations related to the disabled for seven years each.

The court’s statement reads:

The quality of the crime is awful by targeting the victims of children and adolescents who do not have an established conception of sexuality and lack the ability to protect themselves, to satisfy their distorted sexual desire.

Learning from the findings, the accused produced sexual content of children and adolescents from December 2021 to March 2022. The crime on the metaverse included kids from elementary to high school taking body pictures and videos and sharing them through social media.

The defendant claimed guilty, and the sentence was decided on various conditions, such as the offender saying the exploitation material did not produce any profits or distribution.

This incident was not the first sexual crime to take place in the metaverse. In May this year, a researcher entered the metaverse to study users’ behavior on Meta’s Horizon World. But within an hour of donning her Oculus virtual-reality headset, the victim’s avatar was raped in the metaverse.