**78% in Their Teens and Twenties… Many Elementary Students Involved**
Deepfake incidents have more than tripled, and there is a growing concern over distribution, making people anxious about whether they might also be victims.
An individual, identified as A, was shocked to receive a call from a male friend, who is not romantically involved but rather a platonic friend. He cautiously informed A that illegal footage featuring her had been discovered on an adult website. Terrified, A sought help from the Women’s Human Rights Institute of Korea’s Central Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center (Disung Center). The center monitored 310 domestic and international adult sites and SNS platforms to find the places where the content had been distributed. They then requested the removal of the content from each channel and performed a follow-up check to ensure the deletions were carried out. A month later, they sent A a report on the deletion status.
Although the case of the fictional A is a reconstruction based on the deletion support process at the Disung Center, the “2024 Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Report” released by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea Women’s Human Rights Institute reveals that 10,305 victims received support from the Disung Center in this manner last year. This marks a 14.7% increase from the previous year (8,983 victims).
Support includes counseling, deletion assistance, investigations, legal and medical support. Due to overlapping cases where one victim receives multiple forms of support, the total number of cases supported by the center last year reached approximately 333,000.
For the first time since the Disung Center was established in 2018, the number of victims surpassed 10,000. Kim Mi-sun, the director of the center, noted, “Online victimization is on the rise. There are likely many who are unaware of being victims.” This increase is attributed to the advancements in digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). The number of cases involving “deepfake” production and editing rose to 1,384, more than triple the figure from the previous year (423 cases).
A breakdown by age reveals that individuals in their teens and twenties numbered 8,105, accounting for 78.7% of all victims. A staggering 92.6% of the synthetic and edited content victimization involved this age group, indicating a concentration of cases among those who frequently use social media. Park Seong-hye, the head of the deletion support team at the Disung Center, expressed concern, pointing out that many victims are even elementary school students who approach deepfake crimes as if they were games.
Digital sexual crimes are often discovered by acquaintances who then inform the victims, adding to the shock and fear of dissemination. With digital sexual crimes being widespread, many worry whether they too may have been victimized. The most common concern reported to the Center is “fear of distribution” (25.9%).
There were numerous instances where both the victim’s video and personal information were leaked simultaneously. Among the confirmed cases, 77,652 (25.9%) included personal information, underscoring the urgency for rapid deletion support. Park emphasized, “The golden time for deletion support is three months. If deletion efforts commence within this period, most of the spread can be prevented, so do not hesitate to seek help.”