IThe anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country led the #MeToo movement in Asia, the culprit was Molca – spy cameras that recorded women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography.
For Juhee Jin, a 26-year-old Seoul resident and women’s rights advocate, the emergence of this new threat, where women and girls are once again the targets of attacks, was sadly foreseeable. “This should have been addressed a long time ago,” says Jin, a translator. “I hope authorities will take precautions and provide proper education so people can prevent these crimes from happening.”
The national police agency said this week it was investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography, in which the faces of real women and girls are digitally superimposed onto a body without their knowledge or consent. That represents a 70% increase in cases in just 40 days, Yonhap news agency said, underscoring the country’s struggle to control the use of digital technology to sexually abuse women and girls.
Recent reports of the rapid rise of deepfake pornography have sparked a new round of soul-searching in a country whose positive contribution to global pop culture is being overshadowed by its status as the world capital of digital sex crimes.
The exact number of victims is difficult to verify, but if the current trend continues, South Korea is expected to hit a record high by the end of the year. The number of reported cases of deepfake pornography has been steadily increasing in recent years, from 156 in 2021 to 180 in 2023.
The victims are mostly young women and girls, including students, teachers and soldiers. Last year, nearly two-thirds of those arrested were teenagers. According to local media, the perpetrators are also often minors. Teenagers accounted for 79% of those arrested in the first nine months of this year, according to Yonhap.
The scale of the problem has surprised many South Koreans. One Telegram chatroom known for creating and distributing deepfake pornography reportedly had 220,000 members, and another had more than 400,000 users. Some rooms encouraged members to humiliate or degrade women through deepfakes.
Several years after South Korea made international news with its Molca The problem is that the government is under pressure to crack down on this wave of online sex crimes. A major protest is planned for September 21 in Seoul.
The world capital of deepfakes
South Korea holds the unenviable title of the country most targeted by deepfake pornography. Its singers and actresses make up 53% of people appearing in deepfakes worldwide, according to a 2023 report by Security Hero, a US startup focused on identity theft protection.
The police have launched a Telegram InvestigationThe country’s media regulator plans to hold talks with representatives of the messaging app to discuss a joint response to the problem. The Ministry of Education has set up a task force to investigate incidents in schools, teach children how to protect their image and support victims.
John McGuire, a philosophy professor at Hanyang University, said digital ethics education was not a realistic solution to problems related to AI. “South Korea has just emerged as a test case for this challenge,” he says. “We are going to need all the tools at our disposal to address the present and future problems associated with AI technology.”
Telegram, whose founder was arrested last month as part of a French investigation into child sexual abuse, He apologized “If there had been an element of misunderstanding,” he said, adding that he had taken down dozens of videos, some at the request of the country’s media watchdog. The South Korean government said it would push for stricter laws to make buying or viewing sexually exploitative deepfakes a crime.
However, activists say the measures are unlikely to dampen the appetite for digitally altered sexually explicit material. South Koreans enjoy some of the fastest average internet speeds and smartphone usage rates in the world, but that combined with the popularity of Telegram, advances in artificial intelligence and lax laws have exacerbated the problem.
The country’s prime minister, Han Duck-soo, on Thursday blamed the crisis on “abnormal development” of social media and advances in artificial intelligence, rather than government failures.
However, South Korean authorities have been aware of the dangers of digital manipulation since 2019, when the so-called “nth room” case revealed that women, including underage girls, had been forced to send sexually explicit videos that circulated online.
Police asked Telegram to help with their investigation, but reportedly, ignoredThe ringleader was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison, but no action was taken against Telegram amid concerns about censorship.
“Online gender-based violence is a growing problem globally, but it is especially widespread in South Korea,” said Heather Barr, associate director of Human Rights Watch.
“South Korean judges, prosecutors, police and legislators, the vast majority of whom are men, do not take these crimes seriously enough. Women who go to the police are often fired, re-traumatized and even ridiculed. There is very little sex education in South Korean schools to help young people understand how wrong this behavior is.”
‘The world I knew completely collapsed’
As politicians and authorities scramble to find solutions, there is palpable anger online, prompting petitions on the National Assembly’s website calling for stricter laws.
The crisis has affected online behaviour, with reports suggesting that many children are deleting photos from social media or deactivating their accounts.
One adult victim said it had been “hugely traumatic” to bring her attacker to justice after receiving a flood of Telegram messages in 2021 containing deepfake images showing her being sexually assaulted.
Her attacker was a fellow student at the prestigious Seoul National University with whom she had barely interacted but whom she considered friendly. “It was difficult to accept it,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.
“The world I thought I knew has completely collapsed,” she said in a letter she plans to file with a court later this month. “No one should be treated as an object or used as a means to compensate for the inferiority complexes of individuals like the defendant, simply because they are women.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has urged police to crack down on deepfake crimes. At a recent cabinet meeting, he said: “Some people may dismiss it as a simple prank, but it is clearly a criminal act that exploits the technology behind the shield of anonymity.”
More than 80 women’s rights groups have criticized the official response to deepfakes, framing the crisis as evidence of deep-rooted gender discrimination in one of Asia’s largest economic and cultural powerhouses.
“The root cause is structural gender discrimination and the solution is gender equality,” they said in a statement.
“It is not female self-expression that needs to be banished from online spaces, but deeply rooted male culture. Neither Telegram nor so-called ‘acquaintance shaming’ behaviour is new. Deepfake technology has simply been superimposed, as if it were something new, on top of the misogyny that photographs, synthesizes, edits and processes women’s bodies without consent and does not consider them fellow citizens.”
K-pop labels whose stars are among the victims have been dragged into the debate. JYP Entertainment has described deepfake pornography as “a flagrant violation of the law.”
The large number of teenagers among perpetrators and victims means that the repercussions of deepfakes are being felt in South Korean schools. According to the Korean Federation of Teachers union, even students and teachers who have not been directly affected “are experiencing extreme fear and anxiety about the possibility of being used to commit sexual crimes or being distributed online without their knowledge.”
Agencies that contributed to this report