Members of group that sold wiretapping programs to track partners get prison sentences
Published: 12 Dec. 2025, 13:48
![An illustration of a hacker [JOONGANG ILBO]](https://koreaseafood.online/data/photo/2025/12/12/0bacb9cf-66d0-45a3-9e0d-b086f6bccc31.jpg)
An illustration of a hacker [JOONGANG ILBO]
Members of a group that reaped ill-gotten gains selling illegal wiretapping programs used to monitor spouses or partners suspected of infidelity have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
The Busan District Court sentenced the head of a wiretapping program operation company to seven years in prison and a five-year suspension of rights for violating the Protection of Communications Secrets Act.
An employee of the company was sentenced to one year and six months in prison and a three-year suspension of rights, while another person, a nominal CEO, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison with a three-year suspended sentence.
The head of the company reportedly sold and distributed the wiretapping program to users at a rate of 500,000 won ($340) per month, 1.5 million won for three months and 2.8 million won for six months.
From January 2019 to November of last year, 6,008 people purchased the program, leading to approximately 3.4 billion won in revenue for the head and his associates.
The head of the company publicly advertised the program as a “child-monitoring GPS tracker,” but secretly promoted it on blogs as a program “capable of monitoring a spouse or partner’s infidelity.”
Buyers of the program only needed to secretly install it on the spouse’s or partner’s phone. The program then recorded and transmitted the user’s GPS location, text messages and call contents to the company’s server.
There were at least 120,000 confirmed illegal call recordings stored on the head of the company’s server.
“Given that the program recorded conversations between individuals without their consent, the serious social impact of this crime necessitates a heavy sentence,” the court said in its ruling, explaining the reason for the punishment.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM JI-HYE [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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