South Korea Will Be More Firm Against Deepfake Sexual At Telegram Chatroom

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has called for a thorough investigation into digital sexual crimes (photo; x @President_KR)

JAKARTA - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday 27 August called for a thorough investigation into digital sexual crimes after media reports revealed that images and explicit sexual deepfake videos of South Korean women are often found in Telegram chatrooms.

The report from domestic media coincided with the arrest of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram who was born in Russia, last weekend as part of a French investigation into child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.

The Korean Communications Standards Commission, the state media regulatory agency, plans to hold a meeting on Wednesday, August 28 to discuss steps to deal with explicit sexual deepfakes.

"This is a technological exploitation by relying on protection of anonymity. It is a clear criminal act," Yoon said in a televised cabinet meeting. Yoon discussed sexual crimes on social media in general and did not mention Telegram specifically.

Online sexual crimes involving deepfakes have soared, according to South Korean police who said 297 cases were reported in the first seven months of this year. This figure is up from 180 years ago and nearly double the amount in 2021 when data was first collected.

"Most of the perpetrators are teenagers and people in their 20s," the police said.

Local media reports, including an analysis that went viral by the Hankyoreh newspaper, saw the Telegram channel where deepfakes from university students as well as high school and junior high school students were distributed.

The Korean Teachers' Union and Education Workers this week revealed that they received reports of several cases in which school students were victims of sexual deepfakes. They asked the education ministry to investigate the matter.

An explicit sexual Deepfake targeting female military personnel was also found in Telegram chatroom, according to the Center for Support for Victims of Military Sexual Violence, a group supporting victims of sexual violence in the military.

Telegram's reputation has been tarnished for several years in South Korea after it was revealed that online sexual extortion rings mostly operate in chatrooms of the app. In 2020, the ring leader, Cho Ju-bin, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for extorting at least 74 women, including 16 teenagers, to send increasingly demeaning and sometimes full of violence from themselves.

The creation of a sexual deepfake with the aim of distributing it can be punished with five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won (IDR 579.5 million) under the Law on the Prevention of Sexual Violence and Protection of South Korean Victims.