Four people have been arrested in South Korea after a massive hacking scheme allegedly compromised over 120,000 IP-based home and business surveillance cameras — a scandal that has chilling echoes of the long-standing “molka (몰카)” crisis and renewed fears about digital voyeurism in the country. The perpetrators reportedly exploited weak or default passwords to hijack cameras installed in private homes, karaoke rooms, clinics, a Pilates studio and other locations, then compiled and sold hundreds of sexually exploitative videos on an overseas pornography website.
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), the suspects did not collaborate as a group — each operated independently. One was accused of hacking 63,000 cameras and producing 545 exploitative videos; another allegedly breached 70,000 cameras and created 648 videos. Together, these two accounted for roughly 62 percent of all illicit content posted over the past year on websites. A third suspect is charged with storing, but not distributing, videos; the fourth has reportedly been released.
The scale of this case — 120,000 compromised cameras — suggests a vast breach of privacy affecting potentially thousands of victims. According to NPA statements shared with media, stolen footage included private and sensitive spaces such as homes, businesses, medical clinics and leisure facilities. The NPA has approached foreign agencies and requested blocking of the overseas site that distributed the illicit content.
This shocking revelation comes amid a surge in digital sex crimes across South Korea. In the past year alone, authorities detained more than 3,500 people in connection with roughly 3,400 online sexual abuse cases. Nearly half of those detained were teenagers — a disturbing signal of how deeply embedded such crimes have become among younger generations. Meanwhile, last month a major online blackmail ring run via an encrypted messaging app was dismantled: its 33-year-old mastermind was sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing or blackmailing over 260 victims, including minors.
Observers say the latest hack-and-sell scandal underscores a longstanding structural problem in South Korea — where “molka” (hidden camera) crimes have become part of a broader pattern of misogyny, voyeurism, and technological abuse. Molka originally referred to clandestine spy-camera recordings, often in public bathrooms, saunas or hotels — crimes that triggered the feminist uprising during the Hyehwa Station protests of 2018–2019.
Now, thanks to cheap, mass-market IP cameras and poor security hygiene (weak or default passwords, seldom-updated firmware, open WiFi networks), the digital gaze has infiltrated everyday spaces — private bedrooms, clinics, studios, and more — turning homes and workplaces into potential crime scenes.
The timing of the arrests could not be more urgent. South Korea is already contending with a spike in deepfake pornography and manipulated sex-content, often shared through encrypted apps, disproportionately harming women, girls, and minors. That means the latest hack case may not even represent the worst of what’s out there — rather, a sign of a deeply entrenched digital sex-crime industry, evolving rapidly with technology.
In response, police urged all owners of IP cameras — at home or business — to change default or simple passwords immediately, update firmware, and disable unnecessary remote access. NPA cyber crime investigators stressed that even “private” devices can become instruments of exploitation when security is neglected.
For many South Koreans, this will ring all too familiar. The trauma of “spy-cam nation” is not new: decades of hidden-camera scandals, public outrage, feminist protests, and repeated government pledges for reform. But the scale and sophistication of this latest hack may mark a turning point — a wake-up call that vigilance and social change must evolve along with technology, before the virtual lens becomes a permanent threat to privacy and dignity.
Ah, the techno-creeps strike again. Somewhere in the dim glow of their monitors, these keyboard lurkers imagine themselves as masterminds, when in truth they’re just pitiable creatures tinkering with other people’s dignity. Pathetic doesn’t begin to cover it. South Korea has spent years battling the hydra of molka culture, and yet here we are, watching another digital sewer overflow onto our screens. These men hack webcams, spy on strangers, and call it “content creation.” It’s theft, it’s violence, it’s voyeurism dressed up as tech-savvy rebellion.
Let me say it plainly: if your idea of excitement involves breaking into private cameras and harvesting people’s most vulnerable moments, you are not a hacker — you are an emotional lightweight drifting through life with the moral backbone of a damp tissue. You don’t scare me; you depress me. Because every time one of you surfaces, a trail of real human suffering follows. Women changing clothes in their bedrooms, couples chatting in their living rooms, clients stretching at a Pilates studio — ordinary life turned into a stage for your shadow-peeping fantasies.
And please, spare me the “weak passwords” argument. Yes, people should secure their devices. But the responsibility for the crime sits with the criminal, not the victim. In Korean they say 양심 (yangshim) — conscience. These techno creeps have none. They roam the digital night as if ethics were optional, as if clicking a mouse somehow absolved them of violating someone’s sense of safety.
What bothers me most is how familiar this feels. Remember the Hyehwa protests? Remember the fury of Korean women marching against hidden cameras, shouting “여성이 안전한 나라를!” (“A country where women are safe!”) with a fire that shook the entire peninsula? Every new scandal tells them their voices still haven’t reached everyone who needs to hear them — especially the cowards crouching behind hacked IP cams.
To the men who built this racket: you didn’t just expose footage. You exposed yourselves — small, frightened, hungry for control in a world that’s moving on without you. And to the authorities: keep hunting them. Shine a stadium light on their digital caves. Privacy is not a luxury; it’s the basic grammar of human life.
As for the rest of us, let’s update our passwords, patch our cameras, and refuse to let fear burrow into our daily routines. The techno creeps will always try — but so will we, and we’re louder, wiser, and far less pathetic.