Profiting from ads on pornographic sites amounts to profiting from crime and is a punishable offense, the Changwon District Court ruled recently.

The court revealed Tuesday that it had given the 32-year-old Oh a suspended sentence of eight months in prison with two years of probation for operating an illegal porn site and distributing over 300,000 obscene videos. Oh was also fined 239 million won ($211,000) for profiting from ads on the website.

Oh had operated the website since 2015 without any adult authentication system and earned 239 million won from selling ad space on the site. He pleaded guilty to creating the site and uploading illegal content, but argued that profiting from the ads did not violate any laws.

However, the court disagreed. Chief prosecuting attorney Lee Chang-kyung said that because the money was gained in the process of operating the porn site, it constituted proceeds from crime and was subject to additional levies.

According to Lee, when deciding on the sentence, the court took into account the fact that Lee had not directly engaged in producing the illegal material and that he had voluntarily shut down the website during the investigation.

By Park Jin-won (jpark13@heraldcorp.com)