Elementary Student Shaken by "Send More Photos" Threat... d4youth Provided Help

Korea Center for Women's Rights Advancement Reports on 3 Years of d4youth Achievements
1,283 Victims and Supporters Received Counseling
13,000 Cases of Sexual Exploitation Enticement Reported on Online Platforms

# A, a 6th-grade elementary school student, was chatting with someone they met through an online game. After persistent requests from the other person, A sent a photo of their body. The recipient immediately changed their attitude, threatening to distribute A's photo unless more were sent. Panicked, A sought help through the d4youth (@d4youth) counseling channel.

d4youth is an online counseling channel for victims of digital sexual exploitation, operated by the Korea Center for Women's Rights Advancement. It provides anonymous one-on-one counseling through five social networking service (SNS) platforms: KakaoTalk, LINE, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.

In this case, a d4youth counselor helped calm A, who was extremely anxious. The counselor also informed A about distribution monitoring services from the National Center for the Victims of Digital Sex Crimes, and connected A to psychological support services at the local digital sex crime victim support center. The local center’s counselor convinced A to disclose the incident to their parents, which led to a police report being filed.

On July 31, d4youth announced that it has published a report analyzing its three years of operational results and will distribute the report to more than 1,000 child and youth-related organizations nationwide. The name d4youth stands for a Digital (D) channel For (4) Youth.

According to the performance analysis, over the past three years d4youth has provided support to 1,283 individuals, including child and adolescent victims and their supporters. Of these, 325 cases were directly connected to victim support services, such as assistance with the deletion of harmful videos, psychological counseling, and investigation or legal support.

Among counseling users, 932 (72.6%) were female, 54 (4.2%) were male, and the gender was unknown in 297 cases (23.2%). By age, individuals under 19 constituted the majority, with 931 users (72.6%). Adults aged 19 or older accounted for 59 cases (4.6%), and there were 293 cases (22.8%) where age was unknown.

Regarding the topics of counseling, digital sex crimes were the most common with 200 cases (28.9%), followed by prostitution with 138 cases (19.9%). Other consultations mostly involved sexual concerns or interpersonal relationship counseling.

In addition, through its “cyber outreach” project, which proactively finds and provides counseling and support information to high-risk children and adolescents online, d4youth has provided information to 12,740 individuals over the past three years. Of these, 917 people (7.2%) were actually connected to counseling.

d4youth also proactively monitors and reports online sexual exploitation enticement information in addition to offering counseling. Over the past three years, d4youth has monitored 383 online platforms, reported 13,201 cases of sexual exploitation enticement information targeting children and adolescents, and confirmed that 75.8% of reported content was deleted.

Based on these findings, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea Center for Women's Rights Advancement plan to expand the promotion of their counseling channels and further strengthen prevention and victim support systems for online sexual exploitation.

Shin Bora, President of the Korea Center for Women's Rights Advancement, stated, "We will continue to strengthen practical victim support such as online monitoring, assistance with content deletion, and coordination with investigations, working to create a safer digital environment."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.