Illegal Website

[Anchor Lead]

The Dark Web is a secret and anonymous corner of the vast Internet where all sorts of illegal activities such as drug and arms trafficking take place. Now prosecutors have found Korea's first drug-dealing site on the Dark Web.

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This is a Dark Web marketplace that was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation a few years ago. It resembles an ordinary e-shopping mall, but even contract killings were traded here. Anyone accessing the site can remain anonymous since such sites can be entered only through programs capable of hiding IP addresses.

[Soundbite] Jeong Yong-ha(KBS Information Security Team) : "When you use a browser to access the Dark Web, you are bounced through several relay servers, making it hard to track the starting point."

Korea was not free from the reaches of the Dark Web. In March of this year, a man surnamed Shin opened a site that brokered drug deals on the Dark Web. Its membership numbered over 630. Drug dealers advertised and sold narcotics to these members. They sold marijuana, methamphetamine, LSD and more. There was even a college student among the drug dealers. Payments were made in "dark coin," a virtual currency that can hide the real identities of account holders like stolen bank accounts. More than 100 million won in drugs were sold on this site until the prosecution raided it in November.

[Soundbite] Kim Bo-seong(Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office) : "Drug dealers in their 20s and 30s familiar with the Internet and social media are on the rise. We will use the internet drug investigation team to deal strictly with drug trafficking online, including the Dark Web."

Using an investigative method developed on its own, the prosecution booked 13 Dark Web drug traffickers and indicted nine of them.