South Koreanized President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed a desire for concrete steps to be taken regarding an investigation why this possibility of illicit activities exists in regard to sharing deepfakes of South Korean women in social media chats in response to media reports. It further led to shame when the president questioned the advancement of technology being used for wrong purposes according to Reuters.
“This is an abuse of technology under the veil of anonymity. This is pure criminal activity,” Yoon who was at the head of the cabinet at a general meeting telecast on Tuesday said. However, during this time the president has not mentioned Telegram but his statements comes at a time the app is receiving a backlash after the arrest of its owner Godon Pavel Durov over the weekend. Durov was arrested in France in connection with an investigation involving child pornography, the sale of drugs, and other crimes carried out through the encrypted messaging app.
The country’s media control body, the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), will acquire pre-scheduled conduct as a meeting on the 25th is designed to address the issues of increasing the possibility of deepfake crime in the future. This follows reports that deepfakes of female students and soldiers have recently circulated in telegram rooms.
The situation has gotten out of control in Korea, with police authorities noticing an increase in the number of online deepfake sex crime incidences. Police recorded a total of 297 incidents during the first seven months of this year alone, compared to 180 last year and almost 2 times as that number in 2021, when data collection on this crime began. Most suspects […] often belong to teenage and twenty something years of age group, say the critics.
One remarkable article in ‘Hankyoreh’ newspaper covered the spreading of deepfakes of university, High school and middle school girls in some telegram channels which attracted attention of many. This made it necessary for the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union to urge the education ministry to look into such claims concerning students being already exposed to such a crime.
Also, privately conveyed sexually explicit deepfake content aimed at female service members was revealed in the Telegram chat rooms, as reported by the Military Sexual Abuse Victim Support Center, which helps Military Sexual Abuse Victims.
For quite some time now, Telegram has had a bad reputation in Korea, particularly after the discovery of an online sexual extortion ring that was operating in its messaging application. In 2020, the head of the group threw himself to the consumption of minors for sexual violent, Cho Ju-bin was convicted of 40 years in prison for blackmailing no less than 74 women, out of whom 16 were adolescent minors.
The prevention of sexual violence and protection of victims act in South Korea provides harsh punishment for making and disseminating sexually abusive deepfakes with a maximum punishment of incarceration of five years or a 50 million won ($37,500) fine.
