South Korea’s president has called on authorities to take stronger action to eradicate the nation’s digital sex crime crisis, following a surge in deepfake pornography aimed at young women.
Recently, authorities, journalists, and social media users discovered numerous chat groups where members were producing and distributing sexually explicit deepfake images, including some involving underage girls.
Deepfakes are created using artificial intelligence, typically merging a real person’s face with a synthetic body.
In response to these findings, South Korea’s media regulator is convening an emergency meeting.
On Tuesday,August 27, South Korean President directed authorities to thoroughly investigate and tackle these digital sex crimes in order to eliminate them.
“Recently, deepfake videos targeting an unspecified number of people have been circulating rapidly on social media,” the president said at a cabinet meeting.
“The victims are often minors and the perpetrators are mostly teenagers.”
In the past week, a series of chat groups tied to various schools and universities across the country were found on the social media app Telegram.
Users, mostly teenage students, uploaded photos of people they knew, including classmates and teachers, which were then transformed into sexually explicit deepfake images by other members.
These findings come after the arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian born founder of Telegram, on Saturday, August 17.
He was detained following allegations that child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud were occurring on the encrypted messaging app.
A women’s rights activist and former interim leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, argued that the government should declare a national emergency to address South Korea’s deepfake porn issue.
“Deepfake sexual abuse materials can be created in just one minute, and anyone can enter the chatroom without any verification process,” she wrote on X.
“Such incidents are occurring in middle schools, high schools, and universities across the country.”
To foster a healthy media culture, the president said that young men needed improved education.
“Although it is often dismissed as just a prank, it is clearly a criminal act that exploits technology to hide behind the shield of anonymity,” he said.
Korea’s media regulator will meet on Wednesday, August 28 to address this latest crisis, but critics of the government have raised doubts about its ability to handle the situation effectively.
“I don’t believe this government, which dismisses structural gender discrimination as mere personal disputes, can effectively address these issues,”a women’s rights activist and a former member of the minor Justice Party said.
Before taking office, the President claimed that South Korean women did not face systemic gender discrimination, despite evidence to the contrary.
Women occupy only 5.8 percent of executive roles in South Korea’s publicly listed companies and earn, on average, about a third less than their male counterparts, making the country’s gender pay gap the largest among wealthy nations.
This issue is exacerbated by a widespread culture of sexual harassment, driven in part by the expanding tech industry, which has led to a surge in digital sex crimes.
These crimes have previously involved women being secretly filmed by tiny hidden cameras, or spycams, while using the toilet or changing in dressing rooms.
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