The Korea Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to provide a measure to impose a punitive penalty within this year on file storage companies for their possible illegal circulation of pornographic materials, a government official said on Tuesday.

The decision comes after Yang Jin-ho, CEO of a file storage company, was put under police custody on charges of assault and coercion of employees and the involvement in circulating porns on WeDisk and Filenori, two popular file storage and sharing sites that he owns.

The official said the media regulator is reviewing an idea to raise a fine ceiling from the current 20 million won ($18,000) to higher levels for illegal porn circulators and to impose a punitive penalty on them at the same time. The FCC is set to discuss with the National Assembly to revise related laws to provide a legal base for the additional punishment. The regulator is also planning to investigate allegations of the collusive relationship between file storage firms, digital undertakers and data filtering service providers.

Yang is also under criminal investigation on suspicion of active involvement in the file storage cartel by exerting his influence on the entire process of circulating porns from uploading to filtering to deleting, not just overlooking the illegal circulation.

The number of illegal porn materials deleted and blocked once uploaded on file storage servers in Korea surged from 47,081 cases in 2016 to 95,485 cases in 2017. The figure is estimated to hit 100,000 cases this year.

By Shin Chan-ok and Minu Kim

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