Original date: March 2nd, 2022
Remember the controversy that involved an talented artist whose art is mainly inspired by those realistic female characters shown in the Korean MMOs Vindictus/Mabinogi Heroes, Black Desert Online and Lost Ark as well as being similar to SakimiChan's art?
Well, if you didn't know, Kidmo was an talented artist who has a passion for drawing and notorious for drawing NSFW art, in which I wouldn't show you due to DeviantArt's policy towards adult content, but I'll show you some of his SFW art before talking about how his career went downfall.
Apparently, prior to the controversy, which will be the main subject of this journal, he was an established YouTuber on his own right who taught people how to draw art and was good friends with other YouTubers, who later cut ties with him due to the incident.
Back in November 2020, South Korean news outlet Yonhap News posted an news article and uploaded a video on YouTube titled "'19금 일러스트' 그려서 연봉 5억 번다고? (lit. Saying that you made 500 million won a year by drawing NSFW?)", with an image of Kidmo's art, along with a screenshot from his KDA Ahri speedpaint video, in which the finished art is currently his profile picture.
Not only that, 2 months prior to Yonhap's video, an underrated Korean channel dedicated to Dungeon Fighter Online which is also known as Dungeon and Fighter in Korea, uploaded a video about the incident which became the most popular video on that channel.
In addition to these two videos, Kidmo mainly uploads his own videos through his YouTube channel, which hasn't been updated since June 2021, so here are some of his videos before giving you a proper summary.
How was these three videos? Anyways, without further ado, here's a summary of the incident.
Kidmo found out that his art was stolen without his permission by someone on a piracy website and asked them to take it down only for them to reject his request unless the original copyright holder can only request their works to be taken down.
In the end, Kidmo decided to prove to the piracy website that he was the original copyright holder of his art by registering the copyright for it with his personal information only to get in trouble for violating the Act on the Protection of Children and Youth against Sex Offenses last year.
In addition to the trouble, the reason I think was because the characters in his art were considered minors by South Korean law.
Anyways, in addition to his art which mainly consists of fanart and realistic women and comics, Kidmo drew art for three Steam games called Wish Paradise High, Secret Pie and Secret Series: BJ, all produced by the developer Momentum Games.
A month prior to his disappearance, Kidmo posted his last Patreon post where he gave his patrons game activation keys to Wish Paradise High and instructed them on how to put the keys on the Steam client which will automatically install the game on their computer.
Additionally, to make matters worse, there were also leaked KakaoTalk screenshots of him allegedly committing tax evasion and making disparaging comments about job applicants and college students, and currently, the tax evasion situation is under investigation as of writing.
Apparently, Kidmo came back on April 28th, 2022 and uploaded an new artwork while at the same time deleting his NSFW art from his Pixiv and Twitter accounts as well as taking down his Patreon and Gumroad pages.
However, the NSFW art in question still remains on his account on here, Newgrounds and other platforms to this day.
Not only that, he posted an fanart of Yor from SPYxFAMILY taking a blood bath 3 days later, with an DC Inside user getting their comment deleted from the Pixiv comments of the post in the same day as well as the post getting deleted after.
There were also 2 posts related to the situation on DC Inside, with OP posting a screenshot of the results they found on the Korean criminal justice portal website with their phone and along with posting a screenshot of their KakaoTalk texts in the first post along with a second one in which OP sent a screenshot dating back to February 2022.
Apparently, Kidmo came back to post two fanarts for a obscure Japanese mobile game called Yggdra Resonance in a single week, which looks great, but sadly, he posted a message implying his return and since then there have been no updates from him afterwards.
UPDATE (as of April 8th, 2023):
Since it's been a year since the persecutor for the case involved were changed, there have been no updates on the trial whatsoever and we have no updates from both parties involved, to this day.
UPDATE (as of November 13th, 2023):
2 weeks ago, Kidmo recently posted a new fanart, this time of Ahri from League of Legends, on his pixiv account and started livestreaming and uploading on YouTube a year after he stopped uploading videos there in 2021 and his final video and post was yesterday.
Not to mention, according to his livestream, Kidmo was sentenced to 3 years of prison, community service, 4 years of probation, along with the money he earned from his Patreon and Gumroad accounts and the hard drive being seized.
UPDATE (as of February 21st, 2024):
It has been almost 2 years since this journal has been written. After a 2-year disappearance, Kidmo finally came back on November 2023, posting an new fanart of Ahri from League of Legends, on his pixiv account, and going live days later.
Turns out, according to his livestream, he was sentenced to three years in prison and a four-year suspension along with the money he earned from both his Patreon and Gumroad accounts being seized, which turned out to be most of his fortune, according to him.
Not to mention, in his livestream, he told the story about what happened a few years ago, and mentioned that after his house got raided by the police, he was forced to sort the files, which was worth four terabytes to determine the way he had drawn, before claiming that he was on vacation and was later treated as if he turned himself to the justice.
While in trial, he claimed that the prosecutor who was in charge of his case asked for a three-year prison sentence for an another individual when the judge actually sentenced the individual to a year and a 2-year probation, (taking account that in South Korea, rape isn't punished this severely), while also claiming that the said prosecutor asked for a five-year prison sentence, ten years of disclosure along with the seizure of his house when the judge actually sentenced him to three years in prison, community service, a restriction on job offers, four years of probation, a sexual assault treatment class, the seizure of his house and fortune, and to make matters worse, his appeal was denied even though he primarily drew fictional characters and the individual who the prosecutor of his case was in charge of, got away with rape scot-free.
The main reason as for why Kidmo hasn't made a public statement, was because he was in the middle of a trial, and after the trial was over, he made an constitutional complaint and claimed that the content of the KakaoTalk screenshots was fake while the contents couldn't be released because the chat in question got nuked, and that's because the person who was saying about the derogatory remarks never said anything, so its authenticity is unknown.
On the other hand, 3 months after his return livestream, Kidmo's YouTube livestreams were being mass reported for no absolute reason, so he announced that he'll be livestreaming on CHZZK, which was created by NAVER as a refuge for Korean streamers after the announcement that Twitch was ceasing operations in South Korea, but unfortunately, his stream was cut short thereby after and his beta tester rights were revoked, due to CHZZK's policy of banning streamers who have a criminal record, in similar fashion to Twitch's off-service conduct policy, and he announced on his YouTube community post that he was permanently banned from the platform and decided to move into an another platform to livestream.
UPDATE (as of November 25th, 2024):
It's been 9 months since Kidmo stopped posting content on social media, including both his YouTube and AfreecaTV channels.
Eventually, his first trial was made public through Namuwiki, and turns out, the final verdict on the first trial was that the court sentenced him to 3 years in prison, a 4-year suspended sentence, attend 40 hours of sexual assault treatment classes, 480 hours of community service, along with a 3-year ban on working in youth-related organizations and welfare facilities for people with disabilities, and a fine of 200 million Korean won (equivalent to 191K USD) that he has to pay, after his computer and external HDD got seized.
However, he tried to appeal for the first time, only for his sentence to be upheld and this led to him appealing for the second time, which led to it being reversed and the sentence being affirmed, with his arguments being rejected.
At least things are going well for him in the end.
It's been a year since Kidmo stopped posting content on social media.
UPDATE (as of March 20th, 2025):
Recently, earlier this year, he's finally back with new art for his new game on his Twitter and pixiv account, and thankfully, he's alive and doing okay the whole time, as a new game featuring his own art was launched on Steam by Momentum Games, which was the same company, whom he outsourced most of his art to and worked with on their previous games Wish Paradise High and the first two installments of their Secret Pie series, and is planned to release within Q1 2025.
Unlike his other games, this game in particular, Streaming ON! VTuber Training, actually has an interesting premise of the two leads starting a new VTuber agency from scratch after a betrayal, but sadly, it contains AI-generated content, as shown on the female lead's VTuber chibi portrait, along its involvement within some of the backgrounds and the NSFW scenes.
In this game, the player plays as a male lead, who starts a VTuber company, consisting of several well-known streamers, but everything came crashing down on him after he lost his job, money and home all thanks to Bitna's false accusations, and thankfully for him, he actually has people who are still on his side, including the female lead Hanna, and together, they both created a new company with the goal of making her the most successful in the entire industry.
Not only that, Kidmo also commented on a YouTube video, confirming that he was being investigated for violating the said law even though there were no victims involved and that the uploader was right the whole time, as he was found guilty in the first trial and appealed several times to Korean court only for them to be dismissed, in which he also said that his constitutional appeal is in progress, but the court refused to address his case and extended it for an indefinite amount of time.
5 years had passed since, and he's almost letting go of this situation, only to never return again.
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