Police on Thursday cautioned against a new type of Internet blackmail on South Korean men interacting with women in video chat rooms.

Police said they have recently received a number of reports from men claiming to have been blackmailed and extorted after engaging in sexually explicit acts with young women during anonymous video chats.

Police suspect the scam involves a criminal ring based in China hiring mostly North Korean defectors or ethnic Korean residents in China who can speak Korean fluently.

The suspect demanded the men transfer money and threatened to circulate online video footage of them engaging in explicit acts if they refused to do so, the police added.

“The IP addresses of the women were traced back to China,” a police officer close to the investigation said, adding that most of the transfered money was withdrawn in China.

Despite the increasing number of reported crimes, the men usually refuse to file formal complaints or show up for police questioning, as they fear that they themselves performed shameful acts, the police said.

“There was a male victim who paid hundreds of thousands of won after being extorted by a culprit,” the officer said. “He adamantly asked to speak only through a phone counseling service.” (Yonhap News)