- Illustrative image.
SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday (Aug 27) called for digital sex crimes to be thoroughly investigated after media reported that sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of South Korean women were often found in Telegram chat rooms.
The reports by domestic media have coincided with the arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian-born founder, over the weekend – part of a French probe into child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.
The Korea Communications Standards Commission, the state media regulator, plans to hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss measures to counter sexually explicit deepfakes.
“It’s an exploitation of technology while relying on the protection of anonymity. It’s a clear criminal act,” Yoon said during a televised cabinet meeting.
Yoon talked about sex crimes on social media in general and did not mention Telegram by name.
Telegram did not immediately respond to request for comment.
South Korea has the world’s fastest average internet speeds, but activists say it also has an acute epidemic of digital sex crimes, including spycams and revenge porn, with inadequate legislation to punish offenders.
“Recently, deepfake videos targeting unspecified individuals have been rapidly spreading through social media,” Yoon told a cabinet meeting, according to his office.
Online deepfake sex crimes have surged, according to South Korean police, who say 297 cases were reported in the first seven months of the year.
That’s up from 180 last year and nearly double the number in 2021 when data first began to be collated.
Most of the accused were teenagers and people in their 20s, the police said.
The local media reports included one analysis that went viral by the Hankyoreh newspaper which looked at Telegram channels where it said deepfakes of female university and high and middle school students were being shared.
The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union said this week it has been informed of some cases where school students have been the victims of sexual deepfakes.
It has called on the education ministry to investigate the matter.
Sexually explicit deepfakes targeting female military personnel have also been found in Telegram chat rooms, according to the Military Sexual Abuse Victim Support Center, a group that supports victims of sexual abuse in the military.
“The biggest issue with online sexual abuse is that their deletion is extremely difficult. Victims often suffer without even being aware of it,” Bae Bok-joo, a women’s rights activist and a former member of the minor Justice Party, said.
“I don’t believe this government, which dismisses structural gender discrimination as mere ‘personal disputes’, can effectively address these issues.”
The government needs to declare a “national emergency” over deepfake porn, said Park Ji-hyun, a women’s rights activist and former interim leader of the main opposition Democratic Party.
“Deepfake sexual abuse materials can be created in just one minute, and anyone can enter the chat room without any verification process,” she wrote on social media platform X.
“Such incidents are occurring in middle schools, high schools and universities across the country,” Park said, alleging there were hundreds of thousands of perpetrators of such abuse.
South Korea has successfully prosecuted perpetrators of online abuse.
The mastermind of a notorious online sex abuse ring, which lured and blackmailed at least 74 women, including teenagers, into sending degrading sexual imagery of themselves, was jailed for 42 years in jail in 2021.
Telegram’s reputation has been tarnished for some years in South Korea after it emerged that an online sexual blackmail ring was operating mostly in the app’s chat rooms.
Making sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention to distribute them is punishable by five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won (US$37,500) under South Korea’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act. - Reuters, AFP
