From Melbourne hospitals to Sydney arrests linked to the Nth Room, Australia is already enmeshed in global infrastructures of digital misogyny. Treating these crimes as isolated risks repeating the failures of other states.
The arrest of junior doctor Ryan Cho in July 2025 for allegedly installing spycams in a Melbourne hospital shocked many Australians. At first glance, it might appear as an aberrant breach of trust: a young professional exploiting his position in a space meant to guarantee care and safety. Yet Cho’s crime is not best understood in isolation. It reflects a broader infrastructure of digital sex crimes that link hidden cameras, encrypted platforms, and online communities across borders. What unfolded in an Australian hospital echoes patterns already exposed elsewhere, most starkly in South Korea’s epidemic of spycam abuse and the Nth Room scandal. Australians often imagine these kinds of digital sex scandals as happening elsewhere – in Seoul, Tokyo, or hidden corners of the internet. Yet Cho’s conviction makes clear that the same infrastructures are present here, and that Australia is already implicated in them.
Australia has long invested in countering Islamist and far-right extremism, recognising their ideological drivers and destabilising effects. Gender-based extremism, however, has rarely been treated with the same urgency. Digital sex crimes are usually classified as privacy violations or cyber offences. While not inaccurate, such framings strip away the ideological and systemic dimensions. Crimes like Cho’s are part of a pattern of gendered violence that flourishes in online communities, validates the degradation of women, and exploits digital infrastructures for circulation on a global scale.
South Korea provides a warning of what happens when such crimes are underestimated. For years, spycam abuse was treated as a nuisance rather than systemic violence. Over time, the scale became undeniable. Women discovered they had been filmed in workplaces, public bathrooms, and hotels, while images circulated for profit and entertainment. Mass protests erupted, demanding recognition of these practices as structural attacks on women’s security. The 2019 Nth Room scandal revealed the extent of the problem. Encrypted Telegram groups coerced and exploited women and girls, broadcasting them to tens of thousands of participants. It was not just a handful of organisers but a vast community of paying subscribers who normalised abuse as entertainment. This was not the work of isolated deviants but a collective practice that turned voyeuristic abuse into a national crisis of trust in law enforcement and institutions.
Australia should not assume it is immune. The same conditions are already present here, including cheap and discreet surveillance technologies, global online markets, encrypted platforms that defy borders, and communities that encourage consumption. Even when perpetrators face prosecution, the digital traces they create live on. Images are copied, shared, and archived in spaces far beyond the reach of domestic law, making digital sex crimes uniquely transnational and corrosive to the sense of security that institutions such as hospitals, universities, and workplaces are meant to provide. Australia is already entangled in these networks. In 2021, a Sydney man was charged for alleged involvement in a second Nth Room cyber-sex ring, underscoring how Australian users participate in crimes originating abroad. In a separate case, the Australian Federal Police arrested a South Korean national in Sydney for possessing child abuse material linked to online distribution platforms. These cases show that Australia is not a passive observer to digital misogyny abroad but directly implicated in the infrastructures and encrypted channels that sustain gender-based extremism.
Recognising this phenomenon as gender-based extremism makes its significance clear. Like other forms of extremism, it thrives on ideology, shared identity, and networked infrastructures. It does not merely harm individuals but normalises systemic violence, embedding misogyny in the digital architecture of everyday life. By eroding institutional trust and corroding democratic resilience, gender-based extremism is more than a social problem. It is a security challenge with implications that cut across domestic and international policy.
Australia has tools it can build upon. The Online Safety Act 2021 and the Office of the eSafety Commissioner are widely recognised as global firsts, and the government’s 2023-2030 Cyber Security Strategy aspires for Australia to become “a world leader in cyber security by 2030.” Yet these achievements remain limited when it comes to gender-based extremism. Treating cases like Cho’s as aberrations risks reinforcing the assumption that digital misogyny is peripheral. In reality, it is central to the infrastructures of online harm that threaten both national resilience and Australia’s credibility as a cyber governance leader.
South Korea’s trajectory shows what happens when governments respond too late. Crimes escalate, institutional trust collapses, and public outrage erupts. Australia still has time to act before such a crisis takes root. This requires bridging the gap between online safety and national security, resourcing law enforcement to cooperate internationally, and embedding gender perspectives into regional cyber governance agendas. Australia’s partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, including through ASEAN and the Quad, are crucial venues for pushing these issues onto the diplomatic agenda.
The next frontier of extremism is already visible in the infrastructures of digital life. Gender-based extremism corrodes trust, undermines women’s safety, and embeds insecurity across borders. Ryan Cho’s conviction, alongside Australia’s connection to Nth Room-style networks, should be seen as early warnings of how global misogyny manifests here. If Canberra continues to treat such cases as matters of privacy or morality, it risks neglecting one of the defining security challenges of the digital age. By recognising digital misogyny as extremism and acting decisively, Australia can avoid repeating others’ failures and demonstrate leadership in building a more secure and inclusive digital future.
Dr Se Youn Park is Director of Research at Women in International Security – Australia Inc (WIIS-A) and holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland. Her work investigates how gendered institutions and digital infrastructures produce and perpetuate insecurity across different domains of security policy and practice, with regional expertise in Australia, South Korea, and the UK.
This blog is part of a joint series between AIIA and WIIS-A, which aims to elevate the work of female and gender-diverse individuals in the field of international affairs.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
