Police in South Korea announced the launch of an investigation after detaining four middle school students on suspicion of creating, possessing and distributing deepfake pornography, according to local media.
The Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Department launched the investigation on 26 October after police identified nine female victims, although the number may increase. Police officials confirmed that two of the four suspects are suspected of using photos of their female classmates to create sexually explicit deepfake content from November 2023.
The four students are all being prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Punishment Special Cases Act, which criminalises the possession of sexually explicit doctored images of minors in South Korea. The other two students are charged solely with possession.
The victims also reported to their school the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images featuring them and their friends. The school referred the case to the Guri Namyangju Office of Education, which set up School Violence Countermeasures Review Committee.
The committee decided that the students responsible for creating the content should be transferred and the rest would be suspended. The two-month wait to separate victims from suspects, however, compounded the trauma of the affected students.
In South Korea, the creation of sexually explicit deepfake materials for the purpose of distributing such content is illegal. However, the spread of deepfakes among young people in the country is a wide-ranging concern. Between 2021 and August 2024, there were 1,727 cases of digital sexual offences by students, statistics from the Committee for Monitoring Measures Against School Violence show.
