South Korea Faces Digital Sex Crimes Emergency; What is Deepfake?

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called for an investigation into deepfake porn on Tuesday, August 27, 2024. Media previously reported that Telegram chatrooms were sharing explicit images of minors at schools and universities and sparked public outrage.

Citing Channel News Asia, activists say South Korea has an acute epidemic of digital sex crimes, including revenge porn and the use of spy cameras, with inadequate legislation to punish offenders.

What is happening in South Korea?

A South Korean broadcaster reported last week that students at a university were running an illegal Telegram chatroom where they shared deepfake pornographic material of female colleagues, one of a slew of high-profile cases that has triggered public anger.

"Recently, deepfake videos targeting unspecified individuals have been rapidly spreading through social media," President Yoon Suk Yeol told a Cabinet meeting, quoted from CNA.

Many victims are minors, and most perpetrators have also been identified as teenagers. Yoon called for authorities to "thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them completely."

Perpetrators reportedly used social media platforms such as Instagram to save or screen-capture photos of victims, which were then used to create deepfake pornographic materials.

"The biggest issue with online sexual abuse is that their deletion is extremely difficult. Victims often suffer without even being aware of it," Bae Bok-joo, a women's rights activist and a former member of the minor Justice Party, told AFP.

Yoon won office in 2022 in part on a campaign pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality. Before being elected to the top office, Yoon also claimed South Korean women did not suffer from "systemic gender discrimination,"  despite evidence to the contrary on the gender wage gap and female workforce participation.

The government needs to declare a "national emergency" over deepfake porn, said Park Ji-hyun, a women's rights activist and former interim leader of the main opposition Democratic Party.

"Deepfake sexual abuse materials can be created in just one minute, and anyone can enter the chatroom without any verification process," she wrote on social media platform X. "Such incidents are occurring in middle schools, high schools, and universities across the country.”

What is deepfake?

Manipulated content created with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, or deepfake, has rapidly been gaining popularity in cyberspace, including for underground forum users. The growing interest in deepfake, generally in the form of videos or photos, has sparked concerns that deepfake could be used as a new mode of extortion based on ransomware attacks.

Citing HopeHelps UGM, deepfake has opened up a new dimension in cybercrime, especially related to sexual violence, privacy violations, and human rights. 

Deepfake originated from the concept of Deep Learning developed by Geoffrey Hinton and his colleagues. This technology allows for highly realistic data manipulation, including video, audio, and text.

Deep Learning is commonly used in the industry for a plethora of things, from facial and voice recognition to self-driving cars. Its ability to recognize faces and voices is what ultimately gives rise to a new problem, namely deepfake.

Furthermore, not only is deepfake technology apt in visual manipulation, but it could also mix in fake audio and artificial text, further exacerbating the problem. With the ability to replace faces, lip sync, and even create realistic body movements, deepfakes open up the potential for reputation-damaging identity theft and a threat to individual security, as South Koreans are currently worried about.

NI KADEK TRISNA CINTYA DEWI | CHANNEL NEWS ASIA

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