Ever since I saw the trailer of this movie, I’ve been thinking of posting a review blog on it. The topic seemed good for research on the actual event as it contained blackmailing, bullying, and making the victims’ lives hell!
The movie content can be sensitive for some audiences (images in the movie were blurred), however, I’ve made sure nothing such topic is covered in the blog. I’ve just touched upon the movie content overall. However SPOILER ALERT!
The movie talks about one such huge shameful incident which happened in South Korea in 2018, for almost 2years. There were a few criminals who ran groups on the Telegram app where they shared vulnerable and compromising images and videos of young girls, minors, and women. If you want more details about it, here’s the link: The Nth Room
The first 2mins of the movie beautifully gave the introduction. It was not literally beautiful but gave a picture of the traumatizing experience faced by the victims. I’m someone who had used Telegram on a daily basis and to see that app was in the center of all this scares me. The movie looked quite predictable from the beginning, that the reporters would reveal the criminals with the help of the law.
What shocked me more was the type of pictures and posts done by the women and girls on these sites. They were the worst of worst, and I’m not going to explain or mention them here knowing about the age sensitivity. What ridiculed me was the victims did it to themselves. No one put physical force on them but the mental pressure was so intense it led them to obey everything. The images though were blurred seemed so grotesque and disturbing. I never thought people the victims would be so afraid that they would hurt themselves rather than call for help. Yes, shame in family and public is the worst but since there were so many victims I actually thought that someone would have a brave heart to call the police. (many came up later though to share what happened to them, and the stories break my heart)
SK’s Reporters were the ones who took the case in their hand, probably because it seemed like a good scoop and one of their victims was harassed. Thanks to their task force team so many well-wishers came forward to help despite knowing the risk behind it. At many points during the movie, I thought why aren’t the police looking into it? Why aren’t the reporters telling the police…. For the longest time, I had no answer. (Might be because bullying is so common in SK that no one takes them seriously!) But the way the reporters acted as the investigators and worked on getting out Baksa/Godgod was commendable, at times putting their own life and family at risk.
The blackmailing by this criminal leader Baksa/Godgod was done in 2phases. One towards the victims and the others toward the reporters. The victims were approached by giving them false job hopes or sharing their private pictures. Once the victims fall into the trap, more blackmailing is done by telling if they share more nudes or revealing pictures their older pictures will be deleted. Then these conversations were screen recorded and shared in such porn sites where other people were called to consume. The victim's pictures, home address, parents' numbers, and school names were shared which made them more vulnerable and scared to accept Baksa’s request. It was pathetic and horrible, and the perpetrators didn’t even feel an inch bad for them.
The 2nd set of blackmailing was done to the news reporters of JTBC and SBS who were trying to trace Baksa, the creator of the telegram rooms. He tried to scare them by displaying the lead reporter's number in public, in the chat rooms and sending them hate comments and when that didn’t scare them, he started using more victims. The labeling of victims was one of the horrific things they did, trying to portray that because people were behind him he would go on doing more and more illegal acts, and traumatize more women and girls.
Just like most other heinous criminals, they did not have an ounce of regret, tried to get sympathy towards them, overconfident that no one could catch them. The methods they used to run these video rooms on Telegram were unique though. Whoever uses the app knows that you have a message disappearance feature, where you can delete messages as soon as they are read, or within 30secs, 1hour, and as you wish. Also, there’s the feature that if the owner of a group signs out, a room disappears. So with no evidence, the law found it too difficult to find the criminals. Also, it was found that there were 2 creators of the rooms, working individually — Baksa & Godgod!
Both were mentally sick when arrested both apologized to the public. One said — “Thank you for catching the devil whom I could not stop.” The other said — “My sexual ethics were corrupted”, and these people had the sharpest criminal mind but looked like any ordinary guy. One of them also dealt in firearms and narcotics and monetized the video-sharing business through Bitcoins. The other used public wifi to upload videos used wifi extenders to get those connections at home, and used multiple phones from the junkyard so that no one figures out their IP address. Pure evil!
Baksa (26years) had forced 25 victims to share their videos to 1000s and he was sentenced to 42years in prison in 2021. He was active from 2019–to 20. He also collected 100million wons+ Bitcoin money through this racket.
Godgod (24years) had circulated videos of 20 victims for which he had been sentenced to 34years in prison. He was active from 2017–to 20.
3500+ group members of the chat rooms had been arrested, of which 235 approx. have been jailed. Later the victim count went up to 74, of which 26 were minors.
The movie ended with a helpline number of similar case victims and sharing the testimonials of each of the important leads in the case. Be it the reporters, the police, Team Flame (well-wishers), the hacking team, lawyers, psychologists, etc.
The direction was done beautifully I should say, capturing the documentary in a very sensational way. It not only gave the goosebumps from the grossness and shocks but also made for a good thriller, making me wait for what next will happen.
