South Korea targets illegal porn sites with tougher penalties, ad blocks, and lawful hacking

South Korea is moving to tighten its response to illegal sites distributing sexual exploitation material, with new penalties for operators, a dedicated police task force, and a legal basis for “lawful hacking” to delete content and collect evidence. For PSPs, advertisers, and financial intermediaries, the important part is simple: the government is also moving on the revenue side, not just the takedown side.

1. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Korea Media and Communications Commission, and the Korean National Police Agency announced a “comprehensive response plan for illegal sites” on the 20th. The plan would amend the Act on Punishment of Sexual Violence Crimes so that punishment can apply not only to people who produce illegal recordings, but also to those who set up distribution sites.
2. The government is responding to a pattern that has not stayed neatly on a downward line. Digital sex crimes fell from 4,439 cases in 2021 to 2,314 cases in 2023, then rose again to 3,579 cases in 2024 and 4,273 cases in 2025. The rate of noncompliance with deletion requests from the Center for Support of Victims of Digital Sex Crimes also increased from 24.4% in 2022 to 28.5% in 2025.
3. Because many illegal sites use overseas servers to avoid domestic law, the authorities want more than standard takedown requests. They plan to create a 20-person “illegal sites special investigation team” across the Seoul, Busan, Gyeonggi Nambu, and Jeonnam police agencies, and to expand cooperation with overseas bodies including the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
4. The plan also introduces an “active defense system,” described as lawful hacking, under which investigative authorities can directly access illegal sites to gather leads and delete original data. Acting Commissioner Yoo Jae-sung of the Korean National Police Agency said that if the server location or the suspect has not been identified, execution should be based on a court warrant, and that cooperation with law enforcement agencies in other countries is also necessary if the server location is identified.
5. For the commercial side, the government plans to establish a legal basis to block advertisements, which are a major revenue source for illegal sites. It will also use enhanced due diligence (EDD) under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information to push for the suspension of transactions tied to these sites.

For high-risk payment providers, the message is not subtle: South Korea is aiming at both the infrastructure and the monetization layer. That means ad networks, payment flows, and any intermediary touching these merchants should expect more pressure around transaction suspension and source-of-funds scrutiny, especially where servers and operators sit outside Korea.