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The founder of the pedophile site had more than eight terabytes of child pornography on his servers. RFI / D. Alpoge

Last week, US and South Korean authorities announced the dismantling of the world's largest known pedophile video exchange site.

From our correspondent in Seoul,

The numbers are chilling: eight terabytes of data, 250,000 videos of sexual assault, thousands of paying users. Among the victims are babies. Some 337 users have been arrested in 38 different countries. Twenty-three miners appearing in these videos were taken from the clutches of their attackers.

The site was on the darknet. Authorities identified in March 2019 the founder of the site, Son Jong-woo, a 23-year-old South Korean. The server was in his room. He was sentenced soon after to 18 months in prison.

A petition for a harsher judgment

The verdict was deemed too lenient by South Koreans who are only now discovering the scale of the case. Since Monday, October 21, a petition posted on the website of the Korean presidency calls for a more severe punishment.

And this same petition requires that the names and photographs of all users of the site be disclosed. More than 246,000 signatures have already been collected.

►Also read: In the United States, twice as many child porn images on the Net

The fact that it took a year and the announcement of US justice for the news of the dismantling of the site finally draws attention " shows how sex crimes online in Korea are neglected, " accuses the representative from a Korean association, interviewed by the Korea Herald daily .

According to a report by the international NGO ECPAT , which combats child sex trafficking, " South Korea remains one of the most significant providers of pedophile pornography ". If Son Jong-woo, the operator of the site, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Korea, he faces 30 years of detention in the event of extradition to the United States.

Bitcoin not so anonymous

The dismantling of its site has also shown that the use of bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, is not as anonymous as we think. The site was indeed paying its customers in bitcoins, a virtual currency, decentralized, which can be held anonymously.

►Also read: In Nepal, a Canadian Humanitarian sentenced for pedophilia

But more and more countries are no longer allowing this anonymity, and US investigators have managed to trace payments up to the manager in South Korea by various means, eventually dismantling his site. It is also impossible to clear transaction history in bitcoins.

A specialist therefore believes CNN that other users of this site pedophile could be identified. The same specialist adds that cybercriminals now use other cryptocurrencies, which protect their anonymity for the moment.