South Korea's president has called for an investigation into deepfake pornography after media reports, that unambiguous images of minors in schools and universities are shared on Telegram caused public outrage, NOVA reported.
South Korea has the fastest average internet speed in the world. Activists say it has an epidemic of digital sex crimes, including spy cams and revenge porn, and legislation to punish offenders is inadequate.
Last week, a South Korean broadcaster reported that university students maintained an illegal Telegram chat in which they shared fake pornographic material with female colleagues - one of a number of high-profile cases that have sparked public outrage.
„Recently, deepfake videos targeting unidentified individuals have been spreading rapidly on social media,” President Yoon Suk-yeol said at a cabinet meeting, according to his office. “Many of the victims are minors, and most of the perpetrators have also been identified as teenagers,” he said.
Yun called on the authorities to “thoroughly investigate and deal with these digital sex crimes to eradicate them completely”.
Perpetrators reportedly used social networking platforms such as Instagram to save or capture photographs of victims, which were then used to create fake pornographic material.
„The biggest problem with sexual harassment online is that it is extremely difficult to delete it. "Victims often suffer without even realizing it," Bae Bok-joo, a women's rights activist and former member of the small Justice Party, told AFP.
„I do not believe that this government, which dismisses structural gender discrimination as mere “personal disputes”, can effectively deal with these problems.“
Yun won office in 2022 in part on a campaign promise to scrap the Department of Gender Equality, which his supporters say is an outdated vestige of “radical feminism”.
Before being elected to the top post, Yoon also claimed that South Korean women did not suffer from “systemic gender discrimination”, despite evidence to the contrary regarding the gender pay gap and labor force participation.
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The government should declare a “national emergency” regarding deepfake porn, said Park Ji-hyun, a women's rights activist and former interim leader of the main opposition Democratic Party.
„Deeply fake material with sexual abuse can be created in just a minute and anyone can enter the chat without any verification,” she wrote on social media X “Such incidents happen in middle schools, high schools and universities across the country”, Pak said, claiming there are hundreds of thousands of perpetrators of such abuses.
South Korea has successfully prosecuted perpetrators of online abuse. In 2021, the head of a notorious online sex abuse network that recruited and blackmailed at least 74 women, including teenage girls, into sending humiliating sexual images of themselves was sentenced to 42 years in prison.