In South Korea, an epidemic of online sex crimes is driving women to suicide and despair, according to a sweeping new report published this week by Human Rights Watch. 

The study outlines the dark underbelly of a tech-forward culture that boasts the highest rate of smartphone ownership in the world. A wave of abuses is battering women through covert spy cams and the distribution of nonconsensual images. The phenomenon has inflicted lifelong trauma on victims, researchers found, forcing some women to flee the country, forgo intimate relationships, defect from the internet, contemplate self-harm, or end their lives. 

The CEO of a company working with women to take down unwanted digital content estimated that about four of his clients die by suicide each year. 

“I was really shocked by how many of the women talked about killing themselves,” said report author Heather Barr, the interim co-director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch. Barr based the report on interviews with 38 subjects, including digital sex crime survivors, government officials, activists, and direct service providers for online abuse victims, as well as an online survey distributed to hundreds of women. “I think that’s an illustration of what the impact is for people. There’s something unique about this particular crime and I think it’s because it never ends.”