Deepfake sex crimes spread among South Korean teenagers

SEOUL – Recent advances in video technology have had worrying implications in South Korea, as more tech-savvy youth are using deepfake technology to create sexual images of people – often their peers – without their consent.

A recent report showed that there were 180 criminal cases related to deepfake images last year. Of the 120 people convicted of these crimes, 91 were teenagers, according to a report by Rep. Cho Eun-hee of the ruling People Power Party, who used data from the National Police Agency.

The number of deepfake-related crimes has been rising since 156 in 2022, as has the proportion of teenagers among those punished for these crimes. In 2022, 61 percent of convictions involved teenagers, and in 2023, this figure had risen to 75.8 percent.

“These digital sex crimes, which cause irreversible harm to victims, are spreading among teenagers as if it were a game,” Cho said, calling for systematic review to prevent such crimes.

Spread of deepfake crime

On Wednesday, the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education said four middle school students were being investigated by police for using deepfake technology to digitally clone the faces of 18 students and two teachers. They created about 80 pornographic images of the victims, which they shared via mobile messaging apps.

Last year, there were 12 cases of students in Busan distributing pornographic deepfakes of their fellow students, but in the first six months of this year alone, there were 15 cases.

On Jeju Island, police recently caught a teenager at an international school creating deepfake porn using the faces of his classmates. At least eleven students were victims of this crime.

Deepfake crimes can take a variety of forms. Sometimes the images are used to bully a victim, but other times they are created to make money. In 2022, a high school student was found guilty of selling pornographic content – including doctored photos of real people – to 110 people online in exchange for gift cards.

Representatives of the state-run Sunflower Center, which provides counseling services to victims of sexual abuse, say sex crimes involving deepfakes can take many forms. A representative of the center told local media that the vast majority of cases involve male students abusing female students, but there are also reports of students of both sexes abusing other students of the same sex.

South Korean teenagers have easy access to artificial intelligence services. A survey of 2,261 teenagers released by the National Information Society Agency in May found that about 77.5 percent of young people here said they were aware of generative AI, and more than half, 52.1 percent, said they had actually used it.

Generative technology itself can be used to create all kinds of images, text, and music, and is a tool used in numerous industries. As the NPA data above shows, very few of these tech-savvy Korean teenagers are using it for illegal purposes.

But like any tool, it can cause harm in the wrong hands, and there is growing concern about the damage that can be caused by its misuse.

Concern about misuse of AI technology

Although more and more teens are being punished for using deepfake technology, very few are being punished seriously. This is in part because minors are generally subject to more lenient penalties.

Adults who process or edit false video, audio or photo content of another person in a form that causes sexual shame against the other person's will and who intend to distribute it may be punished with up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won (US$37,000) under Article 14-1 of the Law on Special Cases Concerning Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes.

But the Hankyoreh newspaper recently reported that the actual punishments are far more lenient than the law provides. The newspaper's analysis of 46 court rulings related to fake videos found that of the 18 defendants charged only with distributing fake videos – apart from those who were also accused of other crimes – only one person received a prison sentence, 15 got a suspended sentence, while two received a fine.

In one case, a young man who doctored a photo of his teenage cousin and shared it via a mobile messenger was initially sentenced to two years in prison. However, an appeals court reduced the sentence to a suspended sentence. The court stated in its verdict that the defendant was young, had no previous convictions and that his parents had promised to dissuade him from the crime.

The law also requires that the perpetrator must have the intent to distribute it, meaning that punishment for those in possession of such deepfake pornography is a legal grey area.

Crime experts therefore stress that the government must increase education among students to ensure that they are aware of the seriousness of the crime.

Lee Soo-jung, a professor of criminal psychology at Kyunggi University, said in an interview with local media that teaching computer technology such as programming must cover the legal and ethical aspects of the technology. She stressed that such training must begin at a very young age because younger children are at higher risk of mistaking such crimes as pranks.