The site, www.kiswoman.com, featured testimony about the dire state of human
rights and food shortages in the communist state, together with photos of a
shapely Joo Soon-Young.
Kim Dae-Ho, another North Korean defector who lives in Seoul, said he launched
it to raise donations for compatriots who fled to China.
It could be accessed earlier on Friday but was inoperative later in the day
after local media reported its existence.
"The website was closed, apparently under pressure from other North Korean
defectors," Professor Kim Young-Soo of Sogang University, an expert on refugee
affairs, told AFP.
Kim Dae-Ho said in an internet message that while there are several websites
publicising the plight of North Korean refugees, very few people clicked on
them.
"So I've decided to use nude pictures to help draw public attention," he wrote.
"Animal rights activists do not hesitate to go naked in protest to help rescue
endangered animals. It is rather a sacred act to stage a nude protest for our
dying brothers and sisters."
The site charged $25 or 2 500 yen for access to most of Joo's photos, with thin
fabric covering strategic areas. All-nude photos are banned under a law against
obscenity.
Kim Dae-Ho said 70% of the proceeds would go to help North Korean refugees. The
actress would get six percent and he would take the remaining 24%.
He was unavailable for comment about the apparent shutdown of his site.
Other activists were unenthusiastic about the kiswoman concept.
"This is a very bizarre idea. It won't help at all in promoting the campaign
for improving North Korean human rights," an official of the Citizens'
Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees told AFP.
Joo, 41, allegedly once worked with a "pleasure troupe" which entertained North
Korean leaders. She claims to have starred as the mother of North Korea's
leader Kim Jong-Il in movies and dramas.
Joo was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying that Kim had put her pictures on
the internet without her consent, although she agreed to have them taken in
return for Kim repaying debts she had incurred in the South.
She defected in 2003.
