In South Korea, extreme pornography damages women’s lives and deepens gender conflict

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Three years after a 30-year-old South Korean woman found dozens of fake nude photos of herself online, she is receiving treatment for trauma. He tries to talk to men. Using a cell phone brings back a nightmare.

“It completely trampled me, although it wasn’t a direct attack on my body,” he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. He did not want his name revealed due to privacy concerns.

Many other South Korean women have recently come forward to share similar stories as South Korea faces a flood of videos and images that are deeply offensive and easily accessible and easy to make.

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It wasn’t until last week that parliament revised the law to make viewing or possessing pornographic images illegal.

Most of the suspects in South Korea are young boys. Observers say that boys target female friends, relatives and acquaintances -_ and especially children _- as a game, out of curiosity or insult. The attack raises serious questions about school systems but also threatens to exacerbate the already problematic divide between men and women.

Deepfake porn in South Korea gained attention after an unverified list of schools with victims was circulated online in August. Many girls and women are quick to delete photos and videos from Instagram, Facebook and other social media accounts. Thousands of young women have held protests demanding stricter measures against deepfake porn. Politicians, academics and activists have held forums.

“Young people (girls) should feel bad about whether the children they study with are healthy. Their trust has been completely destroyed,” said Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at South Korea’s Hallym University.

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The list of schools has not been officially confirmed, but officials including President Yoon Suk Yeol confirmed the increase in secret content being exposed on social media. The police came out of a seven-month operation.

The latest attention to the problem coincided with the arrest in France in August of Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging app Telegram, on allegations that his platform was used for illegal activities including the distribution of child sexual abuse. The South Korean government said on Monday that Telegram had promised to implement a zero-tolerance policy for illegal private content.

The police said they arrested 387 people on suspicion of serious crimes this year, more than 80% of them young people. Separately, the Department of Education says about 800 students have notified authorities about confidential content involving them this year.

Experts say the real rate of deepfake porn in the country is much higher.

US cybersecurity firm Security Hero called South Korea the “most targeted country for fake pornography” last year. In the report, it said that South Korean singers and actresses are more than half of the people exposed in pornographic images worldwide.

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The prevalence of pornography in South Korea reflects a variety of factors including heavy use of smart phones; the lack of comprehensive sex and human rights education in schools and inadequate social media laws for children and “unfeminine culture” and social norms that “gender empower women,” according to Hong Nam-hee, a research professor at the Research Institute. Urban Humanities at Seoul University.

Victims speak of great suffering.

In parliament, lawyer Kim Nam Hee read a letter written by an unknown victim who said he tried to kill himself because he no longer wanted to suffer because of the fake videos that someone had made about him. Speaking at the forum, former opposition leader Park Ji-hyun read a letter from another victim who said she fainted and was taken to the emergency room after receiving graphic images of sexual abuse and being told by the perpetrators that they were stalking her.

The 30-year-old woman interviewed by AP said her medical studies in the United States were interrupted for a year. He is receiving treatment after being diagnosed with panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in 2022.

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The police said they arrested five men for allegedly producing and distributing fake photos of about 20 women, including herself. The victims all graduated from Seoul National University, the country’s top school. Two of the men, including one who allegedly sent her fake nude photos in 2021, attended the same university, but she said she could not remember.

The woman said the images she found on Telegram were photos she uploaded to the local messaging app Kakao Talk, which were mixed with nude photos of people she didn’t know. There were also videos showing men masturbating and messages describing her as a woman or a prostitute. One image shows a screenshot of a Telegram chat with 42 people in which fake photos of him were posted.

The fake photos were made very cruelly but the woman felt very embarrassed and scared because a lot of people – who she probably knows – were sexually harassing her with those photos.

Building trust with men is stressful, she said, because she worries that “normal-looking people would do things like that behind my back.”

Using a smart phone sometimes triggers false photo memories.

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“These days people spend more time using mobile phones than talking face to face with others. Therefore, we will not be able to escape easily from digital crime if that happens on our phones,” he said. “I was friendly and really liked meeting new people, but my personality has completely changed since that incident. That made my life very difficult and sad.”

Critics say authorities have not done enough to fight fake porn despite an epidemic of sex-related crimes on the Internet in recent years, such as videos of female spies in public toilets and other places. In 2020, gang members were arrested and found guilty of tricking dozens of women into recording sex videos to sell.

“The number of male children consuming pornographic images for pleasure has increased because authorities have ignored the voices of women” calling for stronger punishment for digital sex crimes, the watchdog group ReSET said in comments sent to the AP.

South Korea has no official records regarding deepfake porn online. But Reset said a recent random search of online chat found more than 4,000 sexually explicit images, videos and other material.

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A review of district court decisions showed less than one-third of the 87 people charged by prosecutors with forgery since 2021 were sent to prison. About 60% avoided prison by receiving suspended terms, fines or not guilty verdicts, according to Kim’s office. Judges tended to reduce sentences when those convicted repented of their crimes or began breaking the law.

The deepfake problem has gained urgency given South Korea’s deep tensions over gender roles, workplace discrimination, mandatory military service for men and social burdens on men and women.

Kim Chae-won, a 25-year-old office worker, said some of her male friends were wary of her after she asked them what they thought about sexual violence against women.

“I feel afraid to live as a woman in South Korea,” said Kim Haeun, a 17-year-old high school student who recently deleted all of her photos from Instagram. He said he feels bad when he talks to male friends and tries to distance himself from boys he doesn’t know well.

“Many sexual crimes are against women. And when it happens, I think we are often helpless,” he said.

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