Gyeonggi-do Operates 'One-Stop Support Center' for Digital Sex Crime Victims

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province will operate a one-stop support center for victims of digital sex crimes starting January next year. Before establishing the center, the province will utilize a citizen monitoring group to provide rapid victim support, beginning victim support activities in October.

On the 18th, the province announced that from January next year, it will launch a one-stop support center dedicated to victims of digital sex crimes, staffed with personnel specialized in victim protection, counseling, and deletion of harmful videos.

To this end, the province plans to allocate a budget of 1.7 billion KRW in next year's budget. The center will handle victim reporting and counseling, support for video deletion, as well as linking victims to medical support and legal advice.

Prior to the establishment of the one-stop support center, the province will form a dedicated team starting in October and build a victim support reporting system as part of preliminary preparations.

Additionally, to enable rapid monitoring of illegal videos, the province will operate a citizen monitoring group of about 20 people from October to December. The monitoring group consists of trainees who have completed the Cyber Record Deletion Specialist training course at the Gyeonggi Job Foundation. They will monitor illegal and harmful information on blogs, social networking services (SNS), and other platforms, and request the deletion of videos from the respective platforms when such content is found.

The province is also promoting the revision of the 'Ordinance on the Prevention of Digital Sex Crimes and Victim Support' as a mid- to long-term task.

Furthermore, it will operate training courses for digital sex crime prevention education experts and conduct preventive education targeting elementary, middle, and high school students, out-of-school youth, and local children's centers to raise awareness about digital sex crimes.

Next year, the province plans to train 30 youth sex education instructors and promote education to eradicate digital sex crimes such as illegal filming.

In addition, the province plans to propose to the Ministry of Justice to expand the special judicial police unit's authority to investigate digital sex crimes to include the 'Act on the Protection of Children and Juveniles from Sexual Abuse.'

Lee Soon-neum, Director of the Women's and Family Bureau of the province, explained, "According to the National Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center's survey, the number of digital sex crime victim support cases last year was 96,052, a 2.8-fold increase from 33,912 cases in 2018. Given the difficulty of early detection and the rapid occurrence of victimization characteristic of digital sex crimes, we expect that supporting victims through various methods not only at the government level but also at the provincial level will help reduce the damage to some extent."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.