‘Taxi Driver’ Season 2: Real-Life ‘Nth Room’ Crime Case Was Used in the K-Drama’s First Episode
Actor Lee Je-hoon returns as Kim Do-gi in Taxi Driver Season 2. The popular crime K-drama has the Rainbow Taxi company pick up where they left off. They seek revenge for people who were failed by the justice system. Taxi Driver is well known for using real-life criminal cases to inspire their storylines. The first episode of Taxi Driver Season 2 used the real 2018 to 2020 case called Nth Room about blackmailing and cybersex trafficking.
Lee Do-gi went to prison to seek revenge against heinous perpetrators in ‘Taxi Driver’ Season 2
The new season began with local news of heinous crimes and how the justice system responded. One news anchor reports the discovery of an online sex trafficking ring with the perpetrators sentenced to three years and awaiting an appeal. The scene change to Do-gi inside a prison facility sporting long hair and a chiseled physique.
Do-gi is on a case and infiltrated the prison to get close to three inmates. As Do-gi and the three inmates are led outside to a bus in handcuffs, one of the inmates speaks with another in the courtyard about getting probation after the appeal.
While driving through a remote location, the head inmate explains they had secured footage before arrest. They also secured the location of a down payment for a 2-year subscription. In a turn of events, Do-gi tells them to secure their seatbelts, and before long, the bus crashes. Do-gi poses as a criminal and helps them escape. He pretends and tells them he is an avid subscriber of their site.
In an abandoned building, the three inmates learn the news is calling them escaped convicts. Before they can turn themselves in, a SWAT team rushes in to arrest them. The three inmates will now get a longer prison sentence. But who were the inmates? Taxi Driver Season 2 fans aware of Korean crime cases would have picked up that the Nth Room case inspired the story.
Nth Room was a cybersex trafficking case used for ‘Taxi Driver’ Season 2
Taxi Driver Season 2 had Do-gi and the Rainbow Taxi team seeking revenge against the Nth Room crime case perpetrators. The real-life crime case made news headlines all over South Korea and global news. Between 2018 and 2020, three perpetrators blackmailed women into sending exploitive and sexual content of themselves through a messaging app named Telegram.
A man under the monicker “God god” sold the videos through the app for profit in a cybersex trafficking system. But Nth Room was only one of the chat rooms created to distribute illegal content. God god created eight other chatrooms using ordinal numbers. He would send his victims a Twitter link claiming their information was stolen. But the link was a trap to steal their information. God god would then blackmail them into compliance.
The worst was far from over as the investigation revealed another main site: Doctor’s Room, modeled after Nth Room. It was run by someone named “Baksa.” The perpetrator would post false model job listings to get information from women and have them send suggestive photos. But a nightmare ensued as he would use the information to blackmail the women into performing lewd acts, videos, and photos. As a form of control, he would post their addresses on Telegram. It led to some victims to be assaulted and filmed. The sexual content was sold using cryptocurrency.
Public outrage ensued when the case became known. According to Netflix Tudum, Baksa, and God god were arrested for the crimes. Baksa was a 25-year-old Cho Ju-bin and was arrested in March 2020. A 24-year-old college student named Moon Hyung-wook was revealed to be God god. His accomplice, Ahn Seung-jin, was also arrested. Their victims ranged from teenagers to women, including 26 minors.
Netflix created the documentary ‘Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror’ about the criminal case
Besides Taxi Driver Season 2, in 2022, Netflix premiered Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror. Like its other infamous crime docs on Netflix, Cyber Hell took audiences through the investigative process behind uncovering the heinous crimes of Nth Room. It follows journalist Kim Wan of The Hankyoreh. His boss informed him of an anonymous tip about a high school student distributing illegal sexual content on Telegram.
Kim wrote the article and thought it was over. He soon received emails from people claiming their information was illegally shared on Telegram. According to Netflix, the documentary explores “how a group of journalists, cybercrime detectives, and two college students took down one of the biggest sex abuse rings in South Korea.”
The Nth Room criminal case led to a change in the justice system regarding cybersex trafficking. The South Korean National Assembly put stricter laws, harsher punishment for anyone found possessing illegal sexual content, longer prison sentences, and heftier fines. But The Hankyoreh journalist Oh Yeon-seo explained the vast rate of the internet still causes issues with deleting all exploitive material related to the case.
Taxi Driver Season 2 is available to stream on Netflix.
