A TV screen shows a file image of Kim Nok-wan, center, the leader of a Telegram- based sex crime ring, during a news program at a express bus terminal in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Nov. 24, 2025. The words on screen read: "Court sentences Kim Nok-wan to life imprisonment for sexual exploitation, production and distribution." Ahn Young-joon / AP

A 33-year-old South Korean man was sentenced to life in prison Monday for running an online blackmail ring that sexually exploited or abused 261 victims, including more than a dozen minors he raped or assaulted, over a four-year period before his arrest in January.

The Seoul Central District Court said the severity of Kim Nok-wan's crimes warrants his "permanent isolation from society." It sentenced 10 accomplices to prison terms ranging from two to four years in what law enforcement authorities describe as the country's largest cybersex crime case to date.

He was the head of the so-called Vigilantes: a large-scale, pyramid-style group that blackmailed victims into producing explicit content and sharing it in online chatrooms, BBC News reported. Calling himself the "pastor" of the group, Kim targeted both male and female victims, according to the BBC News.

Starting around August 2020, Kim targeted women who posted sexually suggestive content on social media, and men attempting to join secret Telegram chat rooms for sharing digitally-manipulated sexual images of acquaintances. He threatened to expose them and coerced them into recruiting new victims, forming a pyramid-like blackmail ring on the app that produced and shared manipulated sexual images of their targets, most of whom were minors, according to details of the crimes revealed in court.

Kim raped or assaulted 16 victims, including 14 minors, and recorded videos of his crimes in 13 of those cases. He created roughly 1,700 sexually exploitative images or videos targeting about 70 victims, disseminating around 260 of them online to threaten those who refused to cooperate, and also attempted to blackmail some of the victims' family members and work colleagues, the court said.

"[Kim Nok-wan] says in court that he is remorseful, but he committed countless crimes over the past four to five years," the court said, per BBC News. "Considering the brutality of the crimes and the lack of restitution for victims, it is necessary to permanently isolate him from society."

The other defendants, including five minors, knew that the victims they recruited through threats involving video and images would face the same sexual exploitation they had endured, but carried out the acts anyway to prevent their own images from being circulated, the court said.

"Most of the victims were children or adolescents, and it appears they would have suffered extreme physical and psychological pain as a result of the crimes," the court said in a statement.

"Digital sex crimes can rapidly amplify the damages of the victims to an irreparable level in the digital space, and once sexually exploitative materials are distributed, it's physically very difficult to completely remove them, making recovery from damage practically impossible."

The revelation of Kim's crimes following his January arrest triggered public shock and concern over the growing risk of sexual violence enabled by digital technologies. Monday's ruling came almost five years after the same court issued a 40-year prison term for Cho Ju-bin on charges of blackmailing dozens of women, including minors, into filming sexually explicit videos and selling them to others.

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