South Korea vows tough stance after outrage over deepfake porn in Telegram

South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol said using technology while “protected” by anonymity was a “clear criminal act.” (Pool/AP pic)

SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol today called for a thorough investigation into digital sex crimes after media reports that sexually explicit deepfake photos and videos of South Korean women were frequently found in Telegram chat rooms.

The domestic media reports of the past few days coincide with the arrest of Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, over the weekend as part of a French investigation into child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud via the encrypted messaging app.

The Korean Communications Standards Commission, the state media regulator, is holding a meeting tomorrow to discuss measures to counter sexually explicit deepfakes.

“It is an exploitation of technology while relying on the protection of anonymity. It is a clear criminal act,” Yoon said during a televised cabinet meeting.

Yoon spoke about sexual crimes on social media in general and did not mention Telegram by name.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

South Korean police say there has been a surge in online deepfake sex crimes, with 297 cases reported in the first seven months of the year, up from 180 last year and nearly double the number in 2021, when data first began to be collected.

According to police, most of the suspects are teenagers and people in their twenties.

Local media reports included a viral analysis by the Hankyoreh newspaper, which had reviewed Telegram channels that reported sharing deepfakes of female university and high school students.

The Korean Teachers and Education Employees Union said this week it was aware of several cases in which schoolchildren were victims of sexual deepfakes and called on the Ministry of Education to investigate the matter.

According to the Military Sexual Abuse Bictim Support Center, a group that supports victims of sexual abuse in the military, sexually explicit deepfakes have also been found in Telegram chat rooms targeting female military personnel.

Telegram’s reputation has been discredited in South Korea for several years after it came to light that an online blackmail network was operating primarily in the app’s chat rooms.

In 2020, the gang’s leader, Cho Ju-bin, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for blackmailing at least 74 women, including 16 teenagers, into sending them increasingly degrading and sometimes violent sexual images of themselves.

Creating sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention of distributing 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 Victim Protection Act.