{"id":4928,"date":"2026-04-15T13:11:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=4928"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:11:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:11:03","slug":"american-youtuber-jailed-in-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=4928","title":{"rendered":"American YouTuber jailed in South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He has been handed a prison sentence<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

An American livestreamer and YouTuber has been jailed in South Korea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Internet personality, Johnny Somali, caused controversy after kissing a statue representing World War Two sex slaves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

He is the latest in a growing trend of influencer-type people causing public nuisance in the pursuit of virality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The 25-year-old, whose real name is Ismael Ramsey Khalid, was handed a six-month prison sentence on Wednesday (15 April), as per BBC News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The case refers back to an incident in November 2024, when Khalid posted a video of himself kissing and performing lap dances on the statute while visiting the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

He has been barred from the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\"American\"Logo<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Khalid is known for his provocative content which has already seen him banned from multiple streaming platforms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

He has also been accused of harassing people while travelling in Japan and Israel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

A court in South Korea convicted Khalid of a number of charges which included being a public nuisance and distributing sexual deepfakes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

As per South Korean media, the court said: “The defendant repeatedly committed crimes against unspecified members of the public to generate profit via YouTube and distributed the content in disregard of Korean law.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The statue in question honours the almost quarter of a million women around Asia who were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Many of them were Korean, while others came from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

These women have come to be known as ‘Comfort Women’, but in South Korea many refer to them as ‘Grandma’ in a sign of respect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

There are a number of statues across South Korea honouring these women, with many depicting a young woman seated in a chair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The issue has been a contentious friction point in the past between South Korea and Japan, with the latter reluctant to fully acknowledge the full extent of events.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

South Korea has long called for reparations from Japan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

#American #YouTuber #jailed #South #Korea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He has been handed a prison sentence An American livestreamer and YouTuber has been jailed in South Korea. Internet personality, Johnny Somali, caused controversy after kissing a statue representing World War Two sex slaves. He is the latest in a growing trend of influencer-type people causing public nuisance in the pursuit of virality. The 25-year-old, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2200,1606,179,923,203,5104,4690,5105],"class_list":{"0":"post-4928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-jailed","10":"tag-korea","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-south","13":"tag-south-korea","14":"tag-youtube","15":"tag-youtuber"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}