Police say Kim is charged with secretly taking digital photos up the skirts of three of his female colleagues at the Gangnam office of a cosmetics firm in Seoul and uploading the pictures some 30 times from an Internet cafe to an Internet auction site, where he offered to sell his coworkers as sexual partners for W150,000 (US$150).

Kim also reportedly posted the phone number of a 27-year-old colleague identified as Hong alongside secretly taken pictures. Hong is said to be suffering from serious psychological stress due to obscene phone calls from strange men in the middle of the night.

Police said there had been cases of online auctions being shut down when young men and women were discovered putting their virginity up for sale, “but this is the first case of someone offering the sexual services of another person without their consent.” They vowed to investigate whether it was the only instance.

(englishnews@chosun.com )