In South Korea, fake porn ruins women’s lives and increases gender conflict

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Three years after a 30-year-old South Korean woman received fake pictures online depicting her nude, she is still being treated for trauma. She struggled to talk to men. Using a cell phone brings back nightmares.

“It completely trampled me, although it was not a direct physical attack on the body,” she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He did not want his name revealed due to privacy concerns.

Many other South Korean women have recently come forward to share similar stories as South Korea faces a flood of non-consensual and blatantly fake videos and images that are becoming more accessible and easier to create.

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It wasn’t until last week that parliament changed the law to make watching or possessing fake porn content illegal.

Most suspected perpetrators in South Korea are teenage boys. Observers say that men target female friends, relatives and acquaintances -_ also usually minors _- as a prank, out of curiosity or misogyny. The attack raises serious questions about the school program but also threatens to further exacerbate the already problematic gap between boys and girls.

Deepfake porn in South Korea gained attention after a list of unverified schools where victims were victims circulated online in August. Many girls and women are quick to delete photos and videos from Instagram, Facebook and other social media accounts. Thousands of young women have staged protests demanding stronger measures against fake porn. Politicians, academics and activists have held forums.

“Teenagers (girls) are always uncomfortable if their male friends are okay. Mutual trust has been severely damaged,” said Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at South Korea’s Hallym University.

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The list of schools has not been officially verified, but officials including President Yoon Suk Yeol have confirmed a surge in explicit deepfake content on social media. Police have launched a seven-month crackdown.

The renewed attention to the issue coincided with the French arrest in August of Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging app Telegram, over allegations that the platform was used for illegal activities including the distribution of child sexual abuse. The South Korean government said Monday that Telegram has pledged to implement a zero-tolerance policy on illegal deepfake content.

Police say they have detained 387 people on false criminal charges this year, more than 80% of them teenagers. Separately, the Ministry of Education said that around 800 students had informed the authorities about the fake content this year.

Experts say that the size of fake deep porn in the country is even bigger.

US cybersecurity firm Security Hero called South Korea “the country most targeted by fake pornography” last year. In a report, it said South Korean singers and actresses are among more than half of the people featured in fake pornography around the world.

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The prevalence of deepfake porn in South Korea reflects a variety of factors including the widespread use of smart phones; the lack of comprehensive sex and human rights education in schools and inadequate regulation of social media for young children as well as “misogynic culture” and social norms that “sexually harm women,” according to Hong Nam-hee, a research professor at the Institute for the Humanities Urban at Seoul University.

Victims spoke of severe suffering.

In parliament, lawmaker Kim Nam Hee read a letter from an unidentified victim who said she tried to kill herself because she didn’t want to suffer anymore from the obviously fake video people made. Addressing the forum, former opposition party leader Park Ji-hyun read a letter from another victim who said she fainted and was taken to the emergency room after receiving violent deepfake images and was told by the perpetrators that they were stalking her.

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

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Police said they have detained five men for allegedly producing and spreading fake content about 20 women, including her. The victims were all graduates of Seoul National University, the country’s top school. Two men, including one accused of posting fake nude pictures in 2021, attended the same university, but they have no significant memories.

The woman said the images she received on Telegram used photos she had sent on the local messaging app Kakao Talk, combined with nude photos of foreigners. There are also videos showing men masturbating and messages depicting them as promiscuous women or prostitutes. One photo shows a screenshot of a Telegram chat with 42 people where he posted a fake picture.

The fake images were crudely created but the woman felt humiliated and shocked that dozens of people – some of whom she knew – harassed her with the photos.

Building trust with men is stressful, she says, because she worries that “people who seem normal might do these things behind my back.”

Using a smart phone sometimes relives memories of false images.

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“Today, people use their cell phones more than they talk face to face with others. So, we cannot easily escape from the traumatic experience of digital crime if it happens on our cell phones,” he said. “I’m very sociable and I love meeting new people, but my personality has changed completely since that happened. It’s made my life very difficult and I’m sad.”

Critics say authorities have not done enough to combat fake porn despite an outbreak of online sex crimes in recent years, such as spy cam videos of women in public toilets and other places. In 2020, members of a criminal ring were arrested and convicted of blackmailing dozens of women into filming sexual videos for sale.

“The number of teenage boys who consume fake porn for fun is increasing because the authorities ignore the voice of women” demanding stronger punishment for digital sex crimes, the monitoring group ReSET said in comments sent to the AP.

South Korea has no official record of deep online porn. But Reset said a recent random search of online chatrooms found more than 4,000 sexually exploitative images, videos and other items.

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Reviews of district court decisions show less than a third of the 87 people charged by prosecutors with false crimes since 2021 have been sent to prison. Nearly 60% avoided jail by receiving suspended terms, fines or not guilty verdicts, according to Kim’s parliamentary office. Judges tend to lighten sentences when those convicted repent for their crimes or are first-time offenders.

The problem of deepfakes has accelerated due to South Korea’s serious conflict over gender roles, workplace discrimination, conscription for men and social burdens for men and women.

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

“I feel scared to live as a woman in South Korea,” said Kim Haeun, a 17-year-old high school student who recently deleted all her photos on Instagram. She said she felt awkward talking to her male friends and tried to avoid boys she didn’t know.

“A lot of sex crimes target women. And when that happens, I feel like I’m often helpless,” he said.

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