On Wednesday, authorities in South Korea have called on Telegram and other social media platforms to work with the nation in bringing down their high digital crime rate. The intention of the nation is to delete and block sexually explicit deepfake content that has been circulating online.
There have been several reports from domestic media outlets that deepfake videos and pictures are found in various Telegram chatrooms. Telegram has said that the platform actively moderates harmful content which includes illegal sexual content.
Authorities Respond
According to a statement put forward by the Korea Communications Standards Commission, a 24-hour hotline will be set up for victims. Along with that, the number of regulatory personnel monitoring digital sex crimes will be doubled from the current number, which is 70 personnel.
The Korean National Police Agency has also stated that they would make a seven-month push to “crackdown on online sex crimes”. The police will “aggressively” pursue the people who make and spread the illegal and inappropriate material during the seven-month campaign.
There are plans that would set up a consultative body in order to enhance communication with social media firms with regard to blocking and deleting sexual deepfake content conveyed the Chairman of the Korea Communications Standards Commission, Ryu Hee-lim. He would go on to state that a face-to-face channel would be set up for the companies that do not have offices in South Korea for consultation.
Ryu Hee-lim said that the “production, possession, and distribution of deepfake sex crime videos,” are a serious crime that destroys a victim’s “individual dignity and personal rights.”
The commission has added that they are not only seeking cooperation from the instant messaging and social media app, Telegram but are also looking at X, Google’s YouTube, and Meta’s popular social media apps Facebook and Instagram.
Both South Korea and Telegram have found themselves as the topic of many headlines for the past few weeks, the former for the reports of a new “Nth Room”.
Recent Telegram Chatroom and the Looming Issue of the Nth Room
Between the years of 2018 and 2020, South Korea witnessed a series of criminal cases that involved blackmail, cybersex trafficking, as well as the spread of sexually exploitative videos through Telegram which is referred to as the “Nth Room”.
The recent rise in explicit deepfake content has been labelled as the “New Nth Room”. Various sources and victims of the crime, have reported that there are a set of Telegram rooms with over 212,000 participants have been exposed. In order to gain access to these chatrooms, one has to provide a set of photos of any girl or woman around them along with her personal details.
over 250,000 korean men were involved in nth room – a chatroom used to share and get off to hidden camera videos of men sexually abusing women and filming women without their consent.
— star ⭐️ (@starboywonbin) August 28, 2024
that’s 1 in 100 korean men…let that sink in.
solidarity to korean women always.
Other chatrooms have been exposed for containing sexually explicit deepfake pictures and videos along with a list of schools where the perpetrators and victims have come from. The list has schools ranging from middle and high schools to some of the most famous universities such as Yonsei University, Seoul National University, and Korea University. Internet users, or netizens, have also revealed the identities of some of the perpetrators and some of them are, shockingly, as young as middle schoolers.
Korean women are currently fighting against widespread deepfake child pornography by spreading awareness on social media and demanding accountability.
— Women Posting W's (@womenpostingws) August 28, 2024
There are an estimated ~220,000 telegram users sharing deepfake child pornography in rooms with no repercussions. It's sickening pic.twitter.com/PFn4gBnJHH
Many of the victims of the digital sex crimes have been identified to be minors along with university students, teachers, and military personnel. The Centre for Military Human Rights Korea has revealed that the perpetrators use photos of women in their military uniform in order to treat them as “sexual objects”.
It is reported that social media platforms are used to save the pictures of the victims which are then doctored to create the sexually explicit deepfake material.
