Cross-border investigative journalism from Japan

Dear all,

Thank you once again for your generous contribution to our project.

In February, we visited Seoul, South Korea, to cover the series "Uploaded and Re-Uploaded". In South Korea, the "Nth Room Incident," a large-scale crime that involved the trafficking of sexually explicit images using chat rooms, occurred in 2020 and became a serious social problem. After the incident, police investigations and amendments to laws have been made to prevent such crimes.

The Center for Teenage Women's Rights, which works to prevent teenage sexual exploitation, the citizens' group ReSET, and the mass media outlet The Hankyoreh, which first covered the case, each told us about the changes and challenges that have occurred in Korean society.

What impressed me the most was the fact that citizens obtained laws that agreed to protect victims and prevent crimes through public petitions and speaking out.

The developments in Korean society will be helpful when considering ways to prevent digital sex crimes in Japan. We will continue our coverage in cooperation with activists and experts in Korea.

The results of our coverage will be reported in a series of articles.

In addition to the interviews during this visit, we strengthened our partnership with Korean organizations.

We visited the Korean office of Ashoka, the world's largest network of social entrepreneurs, and discussed the possibility of applying our investigative reporting skills to education. In both Korea and Japan, education is standardized, and it is difficult to acquire the ability to look at things critically and to overcome challenges on one's own. We are hopeful that we will be able to collaborate with members of Ashoka Korea in the future.

We also met with members of News Tapa, a non-profit investigative news organization. News Tapa, like Tansa, is a citizen's news organization that operates on donations. We met for the first time in about three and a half years, after the covid19 disaster.

At the meeting, we reviewed the current status of the Asian cross border project that was underway before covid19. We discussed ways to restart the project. Tansa also shared that the government has been covering up the consultation documents regarding the state funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A similar case occurred in South Korea, and News Tapa was taking the government to court. We promised to share the situation more frequently and explore the possibility of joint coverage in the future.