Telegram Under Probe In South Korea Over Online Sex Crimes Reports (Image @Pixabay)
South Korea launched probe into the messaging platform Telegram over the deepfake online sex crimes, said Yonhap news agency, citing a senior police official. The investigation will look into whether the app had been abetting distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content, said the report.
Reuters said an official at the National Police Agency cyber investigation bureau refused to confirm the event when reached by telephone. The South Korean authorities have called on social media platforms including Telegram to cooperate in fighting the sexually explicit deepfake content.
The new move follow reports by several domestic media outlets that sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of South Korean women were often spotted in Telegram chatrooms.
Last week, Telegram said it actively moderates harmful content on its platform including illegal pornography. “Moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring of public parts of the platform, sophisticated AI tools and user reports in order to remove millions of pieces of harmful content each day”, read the platform’s statement.
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Last week, Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korean President, called for digital sex crimes to be thoroughly investigated after media reports of deepfake images and videos of South Korean women were often found in Telegram chatrooms.
The reports coincided with the app’s founder Pavel Durov in France. Durov was arrested as a part of a French probe into child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.
According to the South Korean police, online deepfake sex crimes have surged in the country with over 297 cases reported in the first seven months of the year. the figure was 180 last year, and nearly double the number in 2021, when the data first began to be recorded. Most of the accused in the cases are said were teenagers and individuals in their 20s, said the police.
The country’s Teachers and Education Workers Union said it has been informed of some cases where school students have been the victims of sexual deepfakes, and called on the education ministry to investigate the matter.
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Deepfake images targeting female military personnel have also been found in the Telegram chatroom, as per the Military Sexual Abuse Victim Support Center, a group that supports victims of sexual abuse in the military.
In South Korea, Telegram has been marked. The apps reputation were tarnished for some years in South Korea after the reporting of sexual blackmailing ring that was operating mostly in the app’s chatroom. In 2020, the alleged leader of the ring, Cho Ju-bin was sentenced to 40 years in prison for blackmailing at least 74 women, including 16 teenagers into sending increasingly degrading and sometimes violent sexual imagery of themselves, said Reuters.
Under Seoul’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act, making sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention to distribute them is punishable by five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won ($37,500).
