Police on Wednesday also busted another elementary school student, a nine-year-old fourth grader, and four students in the first year of middle school who created their own community sites and distributed pornography. Since the suspects were all under age, criminal charges were dropped, and they were dismissed after being given a stern talking-to.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing sites are thought to be the main source of pornography for youngsters, since they do not require age verification process. The Chosun Ilbo logged on to a site and typed “elementary school student” into the search engine. The server found 146 video clips and image files. Only three of them were not of a pornographic nature. The rest bore titles like “Japanese elementary school girl prostituting herself”, “Elementary school boy and girl alone in a room.” and “Elementary school student having oral sex.” One was a two-minute, 38 second clip of two elementary school students having sex.

Chat rooms on portal sites also lure elementary school students to pornography. Around 2:00 p.m. is the “rush hour” for elementary school students on chat sites, as they have just come home from school. At 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, on a site popular among elementary and middle school students, it was not difficult to find chat rooms under sexual titles like, “Only for elementary school students who are good at flirting,” and “Only for little girls who want sex with middle-aged men.”

According to a survey conducted by the National Youth Commission of 171 elementary school students in March 2004, 14.1 percent had uploaded or downloaded porn. Of 51 respondents who had visited porn sites, about 20 were frequent visitors, who visited them more than once a week.

Im Hye-sung, an official at the National Youth Commission, said that even though children are vulnerable to pornography on the Internet, there is neither legal basis nor technical means of stopping them from logging on to P2P and chat sites.

(englishnews@chosun.com )