Before beginning this interactive essay, I invite you to listen to the following song. You may not understand the language, and that unfamiliarity may feel unsettling. I encourage you to stay with that discomfort—listen closely nonetheless.

In July 2019, two journalism students in their early twenties, Pak Chi-hyŏn and Wŏn Ŭn-ji, discovered that the messaging app Telegram was being used to circulate sexually exploitative content, including material involving minors. Operating under the name Ch’ujŏktan Pulkkot (추적단 불꽃, Team Flame), they infiltrated encrypted chatrooms by posing as participants, documented the abuse they witnessed, and handed the evidence to journalists and law enforcement. These chatrooms, numbered sequentially, soon became known collectively as the “Nth Room.” What began as a student-led investigation quickly escalated into a national scandal, sparking a public reckoning with the realities of digital sexual exploitation in South Korea.^[1]

As investigations deepened, it became clear that the Nth Room was one of the largest cyber-enabled criminal operations that was part of a vast network of abuse. Ringleaders ran encrypted Telegram chatrooms where they targeted women and girls—some as young as middle school students—through deception and blackmail. Victims were lured with false promises of jobs or modeling opportunities, only to have their personal information weaponized against them. Under threat of exposure, they were coerced into performing acts on camera and the explicit, often sadistic footage was circulated within the chatrooms. In some cases, the abuse escalated into physical violence, which was also filmed without consent and distributed to users through those same channels.

Access to the chatrooms required cryptocurrency payments, which allowed users to avoid detection. Those who shared similar illicit content were rewarded with entry to even more extreme material, creating a closed ecosystem where complicity discouraged whistleblowing. Investigators ultimately identified more than 260,000 accounts, including those of public officials, social workers, journalists, and students. Yet despite efforts to dismantle the network, copycat groups continue to operate vigorously in South Korea as illicit marketplaces for non-consensual, exploitative content, perpetuating male violence under the cover of digital anonymity.

The public response—especially among young women—was swift and widespread. Yet this eruption of feminist rage was neither sudden nor unexpected. Since the “Gangnam Station femicide” in 2016, South Korea had witnessed an unprecedented wave of youth feminist activism known as the “Feminism Reboot.” Against this backdrop, petitions circulated demanding harsher punishments and the public identification of perpetrators. Under mounting pressure, the South Korean government introduced the N-bŏnbang pangji-pŏp (N번방 방지법, Nth Room Prevention Law). Even after years of revision, however, the legislation remains controversial, particularly over whether individuals who claim to have “unknowingly” viewed exploitative content should face criminal liability.

In 2020, as the Nth Room case gained national attention and public outrage mounted, I came across a small feminist collective called eNd. Composed of young feminists, their mission was to demand just prosecution and proper punishment for the perpetrators, with the explicit goal of “ending the Nth Room.” At the time, I was navigating life as a new mother and working full-time as a translator, freshly graduated from my master’s program, and still searching for my own understanding of feminism. Wanting to do more than follow the news, I contacted eNd to offer my translation skills. To my surprise, they were already planning to recruit people with foreign language expertise. After completing their vetting process—designed to protect activists and survivors from threats such as doxxing, harassment, physical harm, or job loss—I was asked to record a short video of myself reciting their slogan, “N-bŏnbang-esŏ kambang-ŭro (N번방에서 감방으로, From the Nth Room to prison).”^[2] In April 2020, I officially joined eNd’s International Team and remained active until June, when I moved to the United States with my family.

At that time, eNd was focused on spreading awareness of the case and monitoring the Nth Room trials. Like many feminist groups, they framed the case as evidence of a broader systemic problem. However, what distinguished eNd was its commitment to translation as a feminist method. In the enforced seclusion of the pandemic, when physical gatherings were limited, translation became more than a practical tool—it emerged as a strategy for reimagining feminist solidarity across borders and screens.

In her influential essay “The Politics of Translation,” Gayatri Spivak argues that feminist translation is not only a linguistic practice but also a political intervention.^[3] Since then, the field of feminist translation has expanded alongside research on transnational feminisms. Recent work by Olga Castro, Emek Ergun, Maud Anne Bracke, William J. Spurlin, and Luciana Carvalho Fonseca advances this conversation by calling for transnational, decolonial, and queer approaches that highlight translation’s capacity to challenge heteropatriarchal, racist, homonationalist, and colonial regimes of borders and binaries.^[4]

Addressing this potential, Hong Seung-yeon suggests that translators can engage in feminist activism in three ways. First, by choosing which authors or works to translate—a decision that is itself political. Second, by mobilizing metatextual elements such as prefaces, notes, paratexts, design, publicity, blogs, or social media. Or, alternatively, by intentionally challenging gendered regimes of language and experimenting with grammar to counter androcentric norms. Through these practices, feminist translation becomes a form of practical action aimed at raising feminist consciousness and fostering social change.^[5] Similarly, Lee Sang-bin explains that feminist translation functions as a form of (re)writing that not only supports feminist activism but also amplifies feminist awareness.^[6] Within this framework, eNd’s use of translation was not merely instrumental but a feminist method in its own—facilitating exchanges, encounters, and collaborations across languages.

As part of eNd’s International Team, my responsibilities included translating news cards and public statements, monitoring Spanish-language media coverage of the case, and compiling outreach lists of feminist organizations, journalists, and publishing platforms across Spanish-speaking countries.^[7] I collaborated with other volunteer translators working in English, Japanese, German, and Mandarin. Though scattered across time zones and never meeting in person, we made cyberspace our shared ground. What united us was a deep frustration and anger at gender-based violence and the impunity that sustained it.

Another key project I participated in was the translation and international circulation of eNd’s public statements, which were shared online and distributed to foreign media outlets, activists, and journalists. These statements situated the Nth Room within a global pattern of digital sexual violence, drawing parallels to the Chinese illegal video-sharing site Yamao Nondan, the Italian chatroom CANILE, and Japan’s Paingate. They stressed that only through collective outrage, vigilant oversight, and sustained online advocacy could victims in South Korea and beyond rightfully reclaim their daily lives. At their core, the manifestos emphasized that the struggle against digital sexual violence cannot be fought in isolation but must be rooted in transnational feminist solidarity. Central to this vision was the Korean word uri (우리, “we” or “our”), which conveys plurality while also emphasizing collectivity and relational belonging. Translating uri into we, 私たち (watashitachi), wir frauen, 咱们 (zánmen), and nosotras, was not simply a matter of rendering a word, but of expanding the very sense of collectiveness—opening space for feminist sorority with others engaged in similar struggles that were locally grounded yet global in scope.

Until the conclusion of the Nth Room trials in April 2022, eNd remained actively engaged in shaping public discourse around sexual violence. They worked closely with other feminist organizations, government agencies, and artists to provide educational content and statistical data.^[8] These efforts challenged dominant narratives and helped reframe how sexual violence was discussed in South Korea. For instance, on April 1, 2020, eNd issued a statement condemning the 1208th episode of Kŭgŏsi algo sipta (그것이 알고싶다, Unanswered Questions), a South Korean investigative program, for portraying the main perpetrator Cho Chu-bin as a “tragic and fearful monster” while relying on language that blamed the victims.^[9]  

As their activism evolved, eNd expanded its focus beyond the Nth Room case to address broader forms of cyber sexual violence, including illegal filming, online grooming, and the circulation of non-consensual content. Their work also contributed to feminist knowledge-making, producing new analyses and collective records that documented both the crimes and the resistance against them. This was evident in Kŭraesŏ uri-nŭn pŏpwŏn-ŭro katta (그래서 우리는 법원으로 갔다, So We Went to Court), a collaborative record of their on-the-ground observations. That same year, Hwaldongga D (활동가 D, Activist D), a member of eNd, published Kŭrimja-rŭl iŭmyŏn kil-i toenda (그림자를 이으면 길이 된다, A Path Emerges When You Connect the Shadows), reflecting on the movement’s ongoing impact and future directions. Around this time, eNd merged with another feminist group named ReSET (Reporting Sexual Exploitation in Telegram), which had grown from a small collective tracking abusive activity on Telegram into a formal advocacy organization supporting survivors and advocating legal reform. Today, both ReSET and Ch’ujŏktan Pulkkot operate as official NGOs at the forefront of South Korea’s efforts to combat technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

The efforts of Ch’ujŏktan Pulkkot, ReSET, eNd, and many other activists have become a vital force within South Korea’s feminist grassroots movement. Their activism not only brought the Nth Room case to public attention but also highlighted the structural conditions that enable such violence. Operating across both digital and physical spaces, these collectives have reshaped public discourse and compelled the nation to confront the systemic nature of gender-based crimes.

To understand such societal conditions, I draw from Rita Segato’s conception of patriarchy as a historically layered structure intertwined with what she calls colonial modernity. At the core of her analysis is the notion that the female body becomes “the first colony”—a foundational site through which masculine power and sovereignty are asserted.^[10] Within the Latin American colonial context, she traces a shift from “low-intensity patriarchy,” often characteristic of precolonial societies, to “high-intensity colonial-modern patriarchy,” shaped by the gendered logics of global capitalism.^[11] This transformation positioned the masculine subject as the default Human and sole political actor, while relegating women, racialized groups, and non-normative subjects to the domestic sphere and the margins as disposable minorities.^[12]

Although Segato’s framework is rooted in Latin America, it offers valuable insights into other geopolitical contexts. In South Korea, gendered hierarchies were reconfigured under Japanese colonialism and further entrenched during the U.S.-backed Cold War militarization of the peninsula.^[13] As Choo Ji-hyun argues, militarization reinforced heteronormative roles, casting men as national protectors and women as domestic caregivers.^[14] The absence of a precise Korean equivalent for the term “gender” has also contributed to conflations of gender with biological sex in institutional and public discourse, further reinforcing binary thinking. In this context, gender-based violence is often depoliticized and framed as a private issue, rather than a structural one. Segato insists that this depoliticization operates as a mechanism of governance—obscuring accountability while reproducing the patriarchal foundations of power.^[15]

The primary ringleaders, Cho Chu-bin and Mun Hyŏng-uk, were convicted on multiple charges—including rape, illegal filming, and operating a criminal enterprise—yet received sentences of only 47 and 34 years, respectively. By the end of 2020, over 3,700 Telegram users had been arrested in connection with the case, but only 245 were ultimately sentenced guilty. While the Nth Room operation was dismantled, the systemic failures that enabled such crimes—both before and after the case—remain unaddressed and continue to threaten the safety and autonomy of potential victims. Moreover, much of the illicit content still circulates on the dark web, and many perpetrators remain unidentified.

These outcomes reveal how punishment in patriarchal societies often functions as a spectacle that conceals the state’s role in sustaining gender-based violence, instead of a tool for structural change. Rooted in masculinist logics of sovereignty, the legal system reframes gender-based crimes as a matter of private misfortune, rather than recognizing it as symptomatic of deeper power asymmetries. As a result, the law fails to dismantle the systemic conditions that enable such crimes, focusing instead on isolating individual offenders for “punishment” while leaving the broader patriarchal structure intact.

The UN’s declaration of November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, in remembrance of the assassination of the Mirabal sisters, alongside global feminist initiatives such as Ni Una Menos and Me Too, underscores a shared patriarchal condition across borders. It is precisely because of this shared condition that translation emerges as a powerful feminist method for building transnational solidarity—not only against cyber-enabled sexual violence, but gender-based violence more broadly. Founded in Argentina in 2015, the Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) movement gained international visibility through translation, which enabled its message to reach audiences beyond Latin America.

In 2024, the South Korean feminist archive project Flat—an initiative launched by feminist journalists at KyungHyang Shinmun to foreground women’s voices and stories—introduced a project titled “Tŏ isang han myŏng-do irŭl su ŏpta (더 이상 한 명도 잃을 수 없다, We Cannot Lose Anyone Anymore),” a direct translation of the Ni Una Menos slogan. The very act of carrying this movement across borders relied on translation. As a feminist method, translation exposes the shared structural conditions that sustain gender-based violence while also opening possibilities for collective resistance. By amplifying visibility and legibility across languages and platforms, feminist translation makes it harder for the world to look away.

The song introduced at the beginning of this essay was written by Ch’ujŏktan Pulkkot and produced in collaboration with the feminist singer-songwriter group BigIssue Project. Released in 2021 as part of a digital album, it was dedicated to survivors of digital sexual violence. Below, I present an English translation of the lyrics and invite you to listen to the song again with these words in mind:

With You

[rap]
Even when I pretend like everything’s fine, 
Even when I try to act strong,
Every time my phone lights up, 
My heart drops. 
What if someone saw me? 
I’m always on edge. 
Sometimes I’m just glad we’re all wearing masks.

[verse 1]
Wherever your heart is now, 
I just hope it finds some peace.
Wherever your thoughts may wander, 
I just hope they bring you ease.
And instead of saying “It’s okay,” 
I’ll be here ’til the end. 
Right by your side.

[rap]
Afraid that someone might know my face, 
I spend each night jumping from site to site,
searching for photos
Of me.

[verse 2]
If you don’t want to speak, 
That’s okay, don’t talk.
If you need to let go, then let it all go. 
If you’re tired, just take a breath.
And instead of saying “It’s okay,” 
I’ll be here ’til the end. 
Right by your side.

[rap]
Just like those girls over there, 
I want to drink coffee and talk. 
I just want to live a normal life.

[bridge]
Even if we stumble along the way, 
Let’s keep going.
Even if the road gets rough,
Let’s walk together toward a bright spring day.

[rap]
There are days I just want to be alone, 
And days I wish someone would hold me. 
And still, I hesitate to ask,
Can I rest with you? 
Rain falls over my head (drip drip)
And my tears follow (drip drip)
Will you stay here with me until the rain stops? (drip drip)
I’ll stay here with you until the rain stops (drip drip)
We’ll stay right here together (pat pat) 
We’ll keep each other safe (pat pat)

[bridge]
And instead of saying “It’s okay,” 
I’ll be here ’til the end. 
Right by your side.
(Break free from that tiny world in your hand,
Step out of that little screen.)
Even if we stumble along the way, 
Let’s keep going.
Even if the road gets rough,
Let’s walk together toward a bright spring day.

[verse 3]
’Cause we know it’s not your fault. 
From deep within our hearts,
We’re wishing you peace,
We’re wishing you comfort.
Waiting for that day.
Waiting for that day.
Waiting for that day.
Still waiting for that day. 

This song might have been just another unfamiliar tune—easy to overlook. Yet feminist translation expands the scope of solidarity from uri into we who encounter the song in English. In this act, translation becomes a practice of transnational feminism, carrying local struggles into global conversations and weaving solidarities across borders.

Notes

Author Biography

Melina Jung is a PhD candidate in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Her research sits at the intersection of feminist theory, memory studies, and transcolonial studies, with a regional focus on South America and East Asia. Her current project examines feminist speculative fiction and transnational movements against gendered and environmental violence, exploring how literature and performance generate counter-temporalities that resist necropatriarchal regimes of power. She also teaches Korean language courses and has worked as a Spanish–Korean translator with the Translation Cooperative since 2013. Her broader interests include sound studies, new media, K-pop, and feminist artivism.

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