A 30-year-old South Korean woman is still undergoing treatment, three years after fake photos were found online that showed her naked. She has trouble talking to men. Using mobile phone brings back the nightmare.
“It completely crushed me, even though it was not a direct physical attack on my body,” he said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. She did not want her name to be revealed due to privacy concerns.
Several other South Korean women have recently come forward to share similar stories south korea is struggling with the flood of non-consensual, explicit deepfake videos and images that have become much more accessible and easier to create.
It wasn’t until last week that Parliament amended a law to make it illegal to view or possess deepfake porn content.
Most suspected criminals in South Korea are teenage boys. Observers say boys target female friends, relatives and acquaintances – mostly minors – as mischief out of curiosity or misogyny. The attacks raise serious questions about school programs but also threaten to worsen the already troubling divide between men and women.
Deepfake porn gained attention in South Korea after an unconfirmed list of victimized schools spread online in August. Many girls and women have hastily deleted photos and videos from their Instagram, Facebook and other social media accounts. Thousands of young women have protested demanding stronger action against deepfake porn. Politicians, academics and activists have organized forums.
“Teenagers (girls) may be feeling uneasy about whether their male classmates are okay or not. Their mutual trust is completely broken,” said Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at South Korea’s Halleum University.
The school lists have not been formally verified, but officials including the President yoon suk yeol has confirmed the rise of apparent deepfake content on social media. The police have started seven months of action.
Recent attention to the problem coincides with France’s arrest in August pavel durovThe founder of messaging app Telegram is accused of using his platform for illegal activities, including the distribution of child sexual abuse. South Korea’s telecommunications and broadcasting watchdog said on Monday that Telegram has promised to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on illegal deepfake content.
Police say they have detained 387 people over alleged deepfake crimes this year, more than 80% of whom are teenagers. Separately, the Education Ministry says about 800 students have reported intimate deepfake content to authorities this year.
Experts say the real scale of deepfake porn in the country is much larger.
American cybersecurity firm Security Hero last year called South Korea the “country most targeted by deepfake pornography.” A report says that more than half of the people involved in deepfakes are South Korean singers and actresses Pornography All over the world.
The prevalence of deepfake porn in South Korea reflects various factors, including heavy use of smart phones; According to Professor Hong Nam-hee of the Institute for Research, the lack of comprehensive sex and human rights education in schools and inadequate social media regulations for minors, as well as a “misogynistic culture” and social norms that “sexually objectify women” Are”. Urban Humanities at Seoul University.
Victims speak of extreme pain.
In Parliament, MLA kim name only Read a letter from an anonymous victim, in whom she said she tried to kill herself because she did not want to suffer anymore from an explicit deepfake video made by someone. Addressing a forum, former opposition party leader Park Ji-hyun read a letter from another victim, who said she was tortured after receiving sexually humiliating deepfake photos and being told by her perpetrators that they were stalking her. , she fainted and was taken to the emergency room.
The 30-year-old woman interviewed by the AP said her doctoral studies in the United States had been interrupted for a year. She is undergoing treatment after being diagnosed with panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in 2022.
Police said they have detained five people for creating and spreading fake explicit material featuring around 20 women, including her. All the victims graduated from Seoul National University, the country’s top school. Two men, including the one who allegedly sent her fake nude photos, attended the same university in 2021, but she said she had no meaningful memories of them.
The woman said the photos she found on Telegram were photos she had posted on the local messaging app Kakao TalkCombined with nude photos of strangers. There were also videos that showed men masturbating and messages describing her as a promiscuous woman or prostitute. One photo shows a screen shot of a Telegram chat room with 42 people where her fake photos were posted.
The fake photos were brutally created but the woman was left humiliated and traumatized as dozens of people – some of whom she probably knew – were sexually harassing her through those photos.
Building trust with men is stressful, she said, because she worries that “normal-looking guys might do things like this behind my back.”
Using smart phones sometimes brings back memories of fake images.
“Nowadays, people spend more time on their mobile phones rather than talking to others face-to-face. So if digital crimes happen on our phones we really can’t easily escape their traumatic experience,” he said. “I was very sociable and I loved meeting new people, but since that incident my personality has completely changed. It has made my life really difficult and I am sad.”
Critics say authorities have not done enough to combat deepfake porn despite an epidemic of online sex crimes such as spy cam videos of women in public toilets and other places in recent years. In 2020, members of a criminal gang were arrested and convicted of blackmailing dozens of women into making sexually explicit videos in order to sell them.
“The number of male teenagers viewing deepfake porn for entertainment has increased as authorities ignore the voices of women demanding tougher punishment for digital sex crimes,” the monitoring group ReSET said in comments sent to the AP. ”
South Korea has no official record of the extent of deepfake online porn. But Reset said a recent random search of an online chat room turned up more than 4,000 sexually exploitative images, videos and other items.
A review of district court rulings showed that less than a third of the 87 people convicted of deepfraud crimes by prosecutors since 2021 were sent to prison. According to lawmaker Kim’s office, about 60% avoided jail by receiving suspended terms, fines or a not guilty verdict. Judges lightened their sentences when convicted people repented of their crimes or were first-time offenders.
The deepfake problem has gained urgency given the serious differences in South Korea over gender roles, workplace discrimination, mandatory military service for men, and social burdens on men and women.
kim Chae-won, a 25-year-old office worker, said some of her male friends shunned her when she asked them what they thought about digital sexual violence targeting women.
“I am afraid to live as a woman in South Korea,” she said. kim hyun17-year-old high school student who recently deleted all of her photos on Instagram. She said she feels awkward when talking to male friends and tries to distance herself from boys she doesn’t know well.
She said, “Most sexual crimes target women. And when they do happen, I think we are often helpless.”
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