Former Cumberlands student found guilty of possessing child porn

A former University of the Cumberlands student was found guilty of possessing child pornography by a federal jury in London after about five hours of deliberation – the culmination of a three-day trial that included numerous expert witnesses, and even the public display of several disturbing videos portraying young children engaging in sex with adults.

Sungkook Kim, 23, a South Korean citizen who was born in Thailand, could fact up to 10 years in jail and $250,000 in fines for the charge. Last week he pleaded guilty to every charge against him in a 25-count indictment that includes accusations that he attempted to blackmail a fellow female student, that he illegally accessed UofC computers and that he committed identity theft.
A formal sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Closing arguments by prosecutors and defense attorney’s Thursday centered on whether Kim knew that four videos found on an external hard drive he owned showed minors having sex with adults. Prosecutors conceded that video’s Kim had of the victim of his extortion attempts, though technically child pornography, would be difficult for the average person to discern the age of the participants.

The remaining videos, though, clearly showed often very young children engaged in horrific sexual acts. Investigators testified that only one of the videos had been opened and viewed on Kim’s computer. That video was of key interest to jurors who asked to watch only a short snippet of its beginning during deliberations.

"He did view at least one of them," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Denney told jurors during closing arguments. "He knew what he was doing on a computer … He knowingly possess those videos. Anyone that does that maintains a market for those products."

Denney noted that Kim showed a high level of sophistication with computers.

Paul Croley, Kim’s defense attorney, provided multiple defenses for his client. He argued that Kim would be unlikely to deny possession of the videos given than he immediately admitted to authorities every other illegal act he committed before they were found.

"He accepted responsibility for his actions," Croley said.

Croley said that "75 to 80 percent" of the trial centered on the extortion scheme and other things as a way to confuse the issue of possession of the videos. He also accused prosecutors of unnecessarily showing jurors each of the pornographic videos in the entirety in order to inflame them and bias them toward his client.

"Mr. Kim had thousands of images of adult pornography … but only four downloaded images constitute child pornography. That doesn’t sound like to me someone with a child pornography problem."

Investigators first became interested in Kim after a fellow female student reported to police that she was the victim of an attempted extortion scheme via email sent from a Yahoo! Account in October of last year. Kim claimed to have sexually explicit video footage of her and threatened to distribute it to her friends and professors if she did not make another similar video of herself. In all, 21 emails were sent with the threats. Williamsburg Police, along with the help of the Kentucky Attorney General’s cybercrime unit, allegedly tracked the messages to Kim’s personal home computer, and a couple other computers on the University of the Cumberland’s campus.

Kim was indicted on the charges in mid-December 2008 and has remained in jail since his arrest last November.
He faces up to two years in prison on each of the 15 extortion charges and up to $250,000 in fines for each. He could get up to five years in prison on the computer fraud charges and $250,000 fines and two years in prison on the identity theft charge.
After extensive questioning, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove accepted Kim’s plea. He does not have a plea agreement in place with prosecutors.

Kim has been expelled from the University of the Cumberlands since the allegations against him surfaced.
Investigators claim Kim gained access to 97 separate accounts at the

University by installing "key logger" software on computers at the school that would email back to him keystrokes made at the machines. Administrative as well as student accounts were compromised.