In South Korea, deepfake porn is ruining women's lives and exacerbating gender tensions

SEOUL, South Korea – Three years after the 30-year-old South Korean woman received a flood of fake images online showing her naked, she is still being treated for trauma. She finds it difficult to talk to men. Using a cell phone brings back the nightmare.

“It completely trampled me, even though it wasn't a direct physical attack on my body,” she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. For privacy reasons, she did not want to reveal her name.

Many other South Korean women have recently come forward to tell similar stories as South Korea grapples with a surge of non-consensual, explicit deepfake videos and images that are much more accessible and easier to create.

Just last week, Parliament revised a law making it illegal to watch or own deepfake porn content.

Most suspected perpetrators in South Korea are teenagers. According to observers, the boys target friends, relatives and acquaintances – usually also minors – to play pranks on them, out of curiosity or misogyny. The attacks raise serious questions about school programs, but also threaten to exacerbate the already existing gap between men and women.

Deepfake porn in South Korea gained attention after unverified lists of schools where victims were targeted were spread online in August. Many girls and women have hastily removed photos and videos from their Instagram, Facebook and other social media accounts. Thousands of young women have staged protests demanding tougher action against deepfake porn. Politicians, scientists and activists have held forums.

“Teenagers (girls) have to feel uncomfortable about whether their male classmates are okay. Their mutual trust has been completely destroyed,” said Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at South Korea’s Hallym University.

The school lists have not been officially verified, but officials including President Yoon Suk Yeol have confirmed a wave of explicit deepfake content on social media. Police have launched a seven-month crackdown.

Recent attention to the issue coincided with the arrest in France in August of Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging app Telegram, on allegations that his platform was being used for illegal activities including the spread of child sexual abuse. South Korea's telecommunications and broadcasting regulator said Monday that Telegram is committed to enforcing a zero-tolerance policy against illegal deepfake content.

Police say they have arrested 387 people for suspected deepfake crimes this year, more than 80% of them teenagers. Separately, about 800 students have informed authorities this year about sensitive deepfake content in which they were involved, according to the Education Department.

Experts say the true extent of deepfake porn in the country is far greater.

U.S. cybersecurity firm Security Hero last year called South Korea “the country most affected by deepfake pornography.” A report says South Korean singers and actresses make up more than half of the people featured in deepfake pornography worldwide.

The prevalence of deepfake porn in South Korea reflects several factors, including heavy use of smartphones; a 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,” according to Hong Nam-hee, research professor at the Institute for Urban Humanities at the University of Seoul.

Victims report great suffering.

In Parliament, MP Kim Nam Hee read out a letter from an unidentified victim who she said tried to kill herself because she no longer wanted to suffer from explicit deepfake videos someone had made of her. In a forum, former opposition leader Park Ji-hyun read a letter from another victim who said she fainted and was taken to an emergency room after receiving sexually abusive deepfake images and learning from her abusers that she would stalk them.

The 30-year-old woman interviewed by The AP said her doctoral studies in the United States were interrupted for a year. She is receiving treatment after being diagnosed with panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in 2022.

Police said they arrested five men for allegedly producing and distributing fake, explicit content from about 20 women, including her. The victims are all graduates of Seoul National University, the country's top university. Two of the men, including one who allegedly sent her fake nude photos in 2021, attended the same university, but she said she had no significant memory of them.

The woman said the images she received on Telegram used photos she posted on local messaging app Kakao Talk combined with nude photos of strangers. There were also videos showing men masturbating and messages describing her as a promiscuous woman or prostitute. One photo shows a screenshot of a Telegram chat room with 42 people where their fake pictures were posted.

The fake images were very crudely made, but the woman felt deeply humiliated and shocked because dozens of people – some of whom she probably knows – were sexually harassing her with these photos.

Building trust with men was stressful, she said, because she feared that “normal-looking people might do these things behind my back.”

Using a smartphone sometimes brings back memories of the fake images.

“Today, people spend more time on their cell phones than in face-to-face conversations. Therefore, we cannot easily escape the traumatic experience of digital crimes when they happen on our mobile phones,” she said. “I was very outgoing and really enjoyed meeting new people, but my personality has completely changed since this incident. This has made my life really difficult and I’m sad.”

Critics say that despite an epidemic of online sex crimes in recent years, authorities have not done enough to combat deepfake porn, such as spy camera videos of women in public toilets and other places. In 2020, members of a crime gang were arrested and convicted of blackmailing dozens of women into making sexually explicit videos to sell.

“The number of male teenagers consuming deepfake porn for fun has increased because authorities have overlooked the voices of women,” the watchdog group ReSET said in a commentary sent to AP, calling for tougher punishment for digital sex crimes.

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 found more than 4,000 sexually exploitative images, videos and other items.

Reviews of district court verdicts found that fewer than a third of the 87 people charged by prosecutors with deepfake crimes since 2021 were sent to prison. According to Rep. Kim's office, nearly 60% of respondents avoided prison time by receiving suspended sentences, fines or acquittal verdicts. Judges tended to reduce sentences when convicts repented of their crimes or were first-time offenders.

The deepfake problem has gained urgency given South Korea's serious disagreements over gender roles, workplace discrimination, military conscription for men, and social pressures on men and women.

Kim Chae-won, a 25-year-old office worker, said some of her male friends avoided her after she asked them what they thought about digital sexual violence against women.

“I'm afraid of living as a woman in South Korea,” said Kim Haeun, a 17-year-old high school student who recently removed all of her photos on Instagram. She said she feels uncomfortable talking to male friends and tries to distance herself from boys she doesn't know well.

“Most sexual crimes are directed against women. And when they happen, I think we are often helpless,” she said.