Even though there is no penetration or in soft porn and there is no hardcore sex action, it is still pornography because it is depicting explicit sexual activity. It is not as explicit as hardcore porn is, but it is still pornography. Usually in soft porn, the models are either semi nude or fully nude, but the sexual encounters are not graphic. The contact between the characters in soft porn are more casual and definitely not as graphic as they are in regular porn.
Usually there will be some type of masturbatory scenes involved in soft porn, but these will not be graphic sense either. In these scenes, it will be obviously implied that they person is masturbating, even though you are not seeing the penis or vagina being stimulated. Of course, the thing that separates softcore from hardcore porn is that there is no explicit vaginal or anal penetration. There is also no oral sex being explicitly depicted and there are no graphic ejaculation scenes either. Usually, female breasts will be displayed fully in soft porn, but the vagina and erect penis will almost never make an appearance. Since this type of porn is not as graphic, there are a lot of countries in Europe and around the world that will play these types of movies on cable television, even though they will usually be playing it very late at night when the chances of children being awake and watching them are much smaller.
In order to depict sex without showing too much, a lot of soft porn depends on angles and carefully planned clothing and filming. Usually sex scenes are filmed from angles where you cannot see the penetration that you are to infer is happening. Sometimes there will be a piece of clothing on the man or women that will mask the genitalia, or sometimes the camera will just shoot from an angle in which something is getting in the way of the act of penetration being visible to the viewer.
Usually, there is no penetration being going on either, in soft porn, the actors will be simulating the penetration, and that works out because the penetration is never explicitly shown. Sometimes hardcore movies will have edited softcore versions that can be shown on different mediums. These types of movies are very popular as pay-per-view movies in hotels and motels. In the 1980s, there was actually a period in which these softcore porno movies, but high budget and low budget, were being played in movie theaters, especially in drive-in ones.
It is not a very popular form of porn, because there is such easy access to hardcore porn these days via the Internet, but there are people who prefer softcore porn who say that it is more erotic and sensual.