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| A poster for Netflix's latest crime documentary, "Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror" / Courtesy of Netflix |
By Kwak Yeon-soo
Director Choi Jin-seong belatedly learned about the "Nth room" crimes that triggered shock waves in Korea in early 2020. The crimes were of a new type that he had never heard of; they used hacking techniques to get private information, blackmail many young women and minors to send sexually exploitive images and videos and trade them with thousands of users via cryptocurrencies through the encrypted messaging service, Telegram.
What's more shocking is that these perverted and sadistic perpetrators were mostly young men in their late teens and early 20s. After some research and interviews with "Team Flame" (college students who first broke the story), journalists and police, Choi realized the crimes were more horrendous and systematic than he had imagined. So he decided to make a documentary about them.
His alarming film, "Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror," presents viewers with an unfiltered account of how online chat room operators coerced women, including underage girls, into making and sending pornographic and dehumanizing videos.
"I was taken back by how technology facilitates heinous crime. The more I dug into it, I thought it was such an important story that needed to be told. We tried to approach it from a journalistic standpoint, so we interviewed Team Flame members and investigative journalists who were committed to exposing the digital sex crimes," he said in a recent written interview released by Netflix.
The true crime documentary details the search for two perpetrators of the scheme who used the aliases, "Baksa" and "GodGod." The men, who exploited dozens of young women and shared the footage with paying customers, referred to their victims as "slaves."
The director said it was important for him to set the protagonist of the documentary. He avoided using recognizable body shots and identifying victims to protect them.
"I didn't contact victims while developing the story, because I feared it could be seen as re-victimizing them," he said.
"So instead, I focused on wannabe journalists who investigated the scandal, met with victims and interviewed perpetrators. Another central figure of this film are the courageous journalists who tracked down criminals, like the film, 'Spotlight,'" he said.
Like the film, "Searching," the documentary is told through screens ― framed by Twitter and Telegram chats. "I wanted people to understand that this is a new type of crime that emerged in accordance with the advancement of technology. I also wanted it to be more cinematic."
Choi shared the message of the film, saying, "There's a message that I wanted to highlight in this documentary: no matter how hard they try to get away with their crimes and not be caught, criminals will get caught eventually."
"Cyber Hell" is currently streaming on Netflix.
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