By Hyunsu Yim
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday known as for digital intercourse crimes to be totally investigated after media reported that sexually express deepfake photos and movies of South Korean ladies had been typically present in Telegram chatrooms.
The experiences by home media over latest days have coincided with the arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s Russian-born founder, on the weekend – a part of a French probe into youngster pornography, drug trafficking and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.
The Korea Communications Requirements Fee, the state media regulator, plans to carry a gathering on Wednesday to debate measures to counter sexually express deepfakes.
“It’s an exploitation of technology while relying on the protection of anonymity. It’s a clear criminal act,” Yoon mentioned throughout a televised cupboard assembly.
Yoon talked about intercourse crimes on social media basically and didn’t point out Telegram by title.
Telegram didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark.
On-line deepfake intercourse crimes have surged, in keeping with South Korean police who say 297 circumstances had been reported within the first seven months of the yr. That is up from 180 final yr and almost double the quantity in 2021 when information first started to be collated.
A lot of the accused had been youngsters and other people of their 20s, the police mentioned.
The native media experiences included one evaluation that went viral by the Hankyoreh newspaper which checked out Telegram channels the place it mentioned deepfakes of feminine college and excessive and center college college students had been being shared.
The Korean Academics and Training Staff Union mentioned this week it has been knowledgeable of some circumstances the place college college students have been the victims of sexual deepfakes. It has known as on the training ministry to analyze the matter.
Sexually express deepfakes concentrating on feminine navy personnel have additionally been present in Telegram chatrooms, in keeping with the Navy Sexual Abuse Sufferer Help Middle, a bunch that helps victims of sexual abuse within the navy.
Telegram’s repute has been tarnished for some years in South Korea after it emerged that a web-based sexual blackmail ring was working principally within the app’s chatrooms.
In 2020, the chief of the ring, Cho Ju-bin, was sentenced to 40 years in jail for blackmailing not less than 74 ladies, together with 16 youngsters into sending more and more degrading and generally violent sexual imagery of themselves.
Making sexually express deepfakes with the intention to distribute them is punishable by 5 years in jail or a effective of fifty million received ($37,500) underneath South Korea’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Safety Act.
($1 = 1,331.8500 received)
