South Korea vows tougher approach after outrage over sexual deepfakes in Telegram chat rooms

“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 request for comment.

South Korea has the fastest average internet speeds in the world, but activists say the country is also grappling with an acute epidemic of digital sex crimes, including spycams and revenge porn, and that laws to punish offenders are inadequate.

“Recently, deepfake videos targeting unknown individuals have been spreading rapidly on social media,” Yoon told a cabinet meeting, according to his office.

South Korean police say online deepfake sex crimes have skyrocketed, 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 the data was first 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 investigated Telegram channels where deepfakes of female university, high school and college students were allegedly being shared.

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union said this week that it has been notified of several cases in which schoolchildren have been victims of sexual deepfakes and has called on the Ministry of Education to investigate the matter.

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

“The biggest problem with online sexual abuse is that it is extremely difficult to remove. Victims often suffer without realizing it,” said Bae Bok-joo, a women’s rights activist and former member of the Minor Justice Party.

“I do not believe that this government, which dismisses structural gender discrimination as merely ‘personal disputes’, can effectively address these problems.”

The government should 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 material can be created in under a minute and anyone can enter the chat room without a verification process,” she wrote on the social media platform X.

“Such incidents are happening in high schools, colleges and universities across the country,” said Park, who claimed there are hundreds of thousands of perpetrators of such abuse.

South Korea has successfully prosecuted perpetrators of online abuse.

The mastermind behind a notorious online sex abuse ring that seduced and blackmailed at least 74 women, including teenagers, into sending degrading sexual images of themselves was sentenced to 42 years in prison in 2021.

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.

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.