Burning Sun: Exposing the Secret K-pop Chat Groups

1 episodes·Last updated on 22 May, 2024

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Synopsis: In South Korea, K-pop stars have fame, fortune and millions of female fans. But some led a double life, inhabiting a hidden world where videos of women being drugged, assaulted and humiliated were shared. This #BBCEye documentary tells the story of the female journalists who took on the task of investigating the secret chat groups of prominent K-pop stars - and paid a high personal price.‘Molka’ is the Korean term for secretly taking explicit photos or videos without consent. It’s a crime that’s increased elevenfold in the last fifteen years in South Korea. Three friends, all successful K-pop stars, were sharing images in which unconscious women were sexually assaulted. Some of the messages contained evidence that two of the stars, Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon had subjected a woman to extreme sexual violence.Their crimes would never have been discovered had the phone data of Jung Joon-young not been leaked. The information eventually ended up in the hands of Korean journalist Kang Kyung-yoon, who began a painstaking process of verifying hundreds of explicit photos and videos. The scandal also involved a top Gangnam club, Burning Sun, where another of the friends, Big Bang star Seungri, was a DJ and CEO. Women were being drugged inside the nightclub, and sexually assaulted by men attending the club. Kang and fellow-journalist Park tell the story of their investigation and how they became the targets for exposing the stars.

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