South Korea Asks Telegram And Other Social Media To Help Overcome Digital Sexual Crimes

JAKARTA - The South Korean authorities on Wednesday, August 28 asked Telegram and other social media platforms to work together to remove and block sexual deepfake content. This was done as an effort to defuse public and political anger over this issue.

These measures came after reports from several domestic media stated that images and deepfake videos of South Korean women were often found in Telegram chat rooms.

The Korean Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) announced it would set up a 24-hour hotline for victims, and the number of surveillance personnel monitoring digital sexual crimes will be doubled from 70 to 140 people. The Korean National Police Agency also stated that it would make efforts for seven months to eradicate online sexual crimes.

KCSC chairman Ryu Hee-lim said in an emergency meeting that the commission plans to form a consulatative agency to improve communication with social media companies about the removal and blocking of sexual deepfake content. For companies that do not have offices in South Korea, it wants to open face-to-face channels for regular consultations.

"Production, ownership, and distribution of video of deepfake sexual crimes are serious crimes that destroy individual dignity and personal rights," Ryu said.

Apart from Telegram, KCSC will ask for cooperation from platform X, as well as Meta's Facebook and Instagram, and Google's YouTube. Until now, these companies have not responded to requests for comment from the media.

Criticism of Telegram in South Korea intensified after the arrest of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram from Russia, last weekend as part of a French investigation into child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.

Cases of deepfake sexual crimes in South Korea increased from 156 cases in 2021 when data was first collected, to 297 cases as of this year, where most of the perpetrators were teenagers, according to the police. The victims are usually women, including school students and women's soldiers in the South Korean military.

This year, the people of South Korea have made more than 6,300 requests for assistance to KCSC to remove sexual deepfake content. In comparison, last year there were nearly 7,200 cases where the commission agreed to help remove content.

"Telegram is now the main choice platform for perpetrators of deepfake sexual crimes," said Kim Yeo-jin, head of Korea's Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, adding that police need to take more action.

In many cases, the victim was told by police that reporting the incident would not be effective because the content was on Telegram, which made the arrest of the perpetrators difficult, he added.

Information about how social media companies responded to requests from South Korean authorities was difficult to obtain. However, police data published by lawmaker Kim Young-bae in 2020 showed that police sent seven requests for assistance to Telegram via email for an investigation into digital sexual crimes between February and August of the year, but Telegram did not respond to any of the requests.