Park Ji-hyun (Korean: 박지현, Korean pronunciation: [pɑktɕiçʌn]; born 1996)[1] is a South Korean political activist and former co-chair of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), the main opposition party.[2] In 2019, she helped to expose one of the largest online sex-crime rings in South Korea, called the Nth Room.[3] In March 2022, she was appointed interim co-chair of the Democratic Party at the age of 26,[4] and resigned in June.[5] Park was named to the TIME100 Next, TIME magazine's list of emerging leaders,[4] as well as the 2022 BBC 100 Women and Bloomberg 50 lists,[3][6][7] in recognition of her work in combating digital sex crimes and fighting for gender equality in politics.[2]
In 2018, Park was studying journalism at Hallym University and working as a student reporter,[1] when #MeToo protests took place in central Seoul, demanding that the government do more to combat illegal filming of women and girls.[8] Inspired by the protests, she and her classmate Won Eun-ji planned to submit an article for the Korean News Agency Commission's annual student journalism competition.[8][9] They initially planned to write about the "spycam epidemic" in South Korea, where men secretly film women and girls without their consent.[9]
In July 2019, Park and Won started infiltrating the Nth room, a notorious sexual-abuse ring on Telegram, under the name "Team Flame".[4][8][10] Working with the police, their investigation led to the arrest and eventual conviction of the two ringleaders, whom they discovered had been blackmailing and coercing women and girls as young as twelve into performing degrading acts, and then selling their images and videos illegally.[8][10][11]
Their first article came to the attention of two journalists from The Hankyoreh, who then collaborated with Park and Won to publish an in-depth newspaper report in November 2019, while protecting their identities.[9] The Nth room ringleaders sought to retaliate, and two current affairs programs on TV eventually picked up the story;[9] meanwhile, women mobilized on Twitter to expose and further publicize their crimes.[10] As details of the Nth room case came to light, more than five million people signed national petitions calling for harsher punishment and disclosure of perpetrators' identities.[10] By the end of 2020, 3,757 people had been arrested in connection with the case.[6]
For years, Park was known only by the pseudonym "Flame", and was interviewed in the Netflix documentary Cyber Hell hidden in shadow.[8] She also wrote and published an anonymous memoir about exposing the criminals behind Nth room.[6]
Park met Lee Jae-myung when he was governor of Gyeonggi Province through her advocacy work.[8][1] Governor Lee attended the June 2020 launch event for the Gyeonggi-do support center for digital sex crime victims.[1]