The anger was palpable. For the second time in just a few years, South Korean women took to the streets of Seoul to demand an end to sexual abuse. When the country spearheaded Asia’s #MeToo movement, the culprit was molka – spy cams used to record women without their knowledge. Now their fury was directed at an epidemic of deepfake pornography.

For Juhee Jin, 26, a Seoul resident who advocates for women’s rights, the emergence of this new menace, in which women and girls are again the targets, was depressingly predictable. “This should have been addressed a long time ago,” says Jin, a translator. “I hope that authorities take precautions and provide proper education so that people can prevent these crimes from happening.”

The National police agency said this week that it was investigating 513 cases of deepfake pornography – in which the faces of real women and girls are digitally superimposed on to a body without their knowledge or consent. That represents a 70% jump in cases in just 40 days, the Yonhap news agency said, underlining the country’s struggle to rein in the use of digital technology to sexually abuse women and girls.

Recent reports about the rapid rise in deepfake porn have prompted a new round of soul-searching in a country whose positive contribution to global pop culture is being sullied by its status as the world’s digital sex crime capital.

The exact number of victims is difficult to verify, but if the current trend continues South Korea is expected to reach a record high by the end of the year. The number of reported cases of deepfake porn has risen steadily in recent years, from 156 in 2021 to 180 in 2023.

The victims are predominantly young women and girls, including students, teachers, and soldiers. Last year almost two-thirds were in their teens. Local media reports say the perpetrators are also often minors. Teenagers accounted for 79% of those detained in the first nine months of this year, according to Yonhap.

The scale of the problem has stunned many South Koreans. One Telegram chatroom known for creating and distributing deepfake pornography reportedly had 220,000 members, another more than 400,000 users. Some rooms encouraged members to humiliate or degrade women through deepfakes.

Several years after South Korea made international headlines with its molka problem, the government is again under pressure to stamp out this wave of online sex crimes. A large protest is scheduled to be held in Seoul on 21 September.

The global deepfake capital

South Korea holds the unenviable title of the country most targeted by deepfake pornography. Its female singers and actors constitute 53% of the individuals featured in deepfakes worldwide, according to a 2023 report by Security Hero, a US startup focused on identity theft protection.

Police have launched an investigation into Telegram, and the country’s media regulator plans to hold talks with the messaging app’s representatives to discuss a joint response to the problem. The education ministry has launched a taskforce to investigate incidents at schools, teach children how to protect their images and support victims.

John McGuire, a professor of philosophy at Hanyang University, said digital ethics education was not a realistic solution to AI-related problems. “South Korea has just emerged as a test case for this challenge,” he says. “We are going to need every tool at our disposal to address the present and future problems associated with AI technology.”

Telegram, whose founder was arrested last month as part of a French investigation into child sexual abuse, apologised “if there had been an element of misunderstanding”. It said it had taken down dozens of videos, some at the request of the country’s media watchdog. South Korea’s government said it would push for tougher laws to make buying or viewing sexually exploitative deepfakes a crime.

Campaigners, however, say the measures are unlikely to quell the appetite for digitally altered sexually explicit material. South Koreans enjoy some of the world’s fastest average internet speeds and smartphone usage rates, but that combined with the popularity of Telegram, advances in AI and lax laws has supercharged the problem.

The country’s prime minister, Han Duck-soo, attributed the crisis on Thursday to the “abnormal development” of social media and advances in AI, rather than government failings.

South Korean authorities, however, have been aware of the dangers of digital manipulation since 2019, when the so-called “nth room” case revealed that women, including underage girls, had been coerced into sending sexually explicit videos that were circulated online.

Police asked Telegram to assist their investigation, but were reportedly ignored. The ringleader was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison, but no action was taken against Telegram amid concerns over censorship.

“Online gender-based violence is an increasing problem globally but is especially widespread in South Korea,” said Heather Barr, an associate director at Human Rights Watch.

“Judges, prosecutors, police, and lawmakers in South Korea, the vast majority of them men, do not take these crimes seriously enough. Women seeking police help are often dismissed, re-traumatised, and even ridiculed. There is very little sexuality education in South Korea’s schools to help young people understand how wrong this conduct is.”

‘The world I knew completely collapsed’

While politicians and authorities scramble to find solutions, there is palpable anger online, prompting petitions on the national assembly website calling for stricter laws.

The crisis has affected online behaviour, with reports suggesting many children are removing photos from social media or deactivating their accounts.

One adult victim said it had been a “huge trauma” to bring her assailant to justice after she received a barrage of Telegram messages in 2021 containing deepfake images showing her being sexually assaulted.

Her attacker was a fellow student at the prestigious Seoul National University with whom she had seldom interacted but had thought of as gentle. “It was hard to accept,” the woman, who requested anonymity, told Agence France-Presse.

“The world I thought I knew completely collapsed,” she said in a letter she plans to submit to a court later this month. “No one should be treated as an object or used as a means to compensate for the inferiority complexes of individuals like the defendant, simply because they are women.”

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has urged police to eradicate deepfake crimes. He told a recent cabinet meeting: “Some people may dismiss it as just a prank, but it is clearly a criminal act that exploits technology behind the shield of anonymity.”

More than 80 women’s rights groups have criticised the official response to deepfakes, framing the crisis as evidence of deeply rooted gender discrimination in one of Asia’s biggest economic and cultural powerhouses.

“The fundamental cause is structural gender discrimination, and the solution is gender equality,” they said in a statement.

“What needs to be expelled from online spaces is not women’s self-expression, but deeply rooted male culture. Neither Telegram nor the so-called ‘acquaintance humiliation’ behaviour is new. Deepfake technology has merely been superimposed, as if it were something new, on misogyny that photographs, synthesises, edits and processes women’s bodies without consent and does not regard women as fellow citizens.”

K-pop labels whose stars are among the victims have been drawn into the debate. JYP Entertainment has described deepfake pornography as “a blatant violation of the law”.

The large number of teenagers among the perpetrators and victims mean the repercussions of deepfakes are being felt in South Korean schools. According to the Korean Federation of Teachers union, even students and teachers who have not been directly affected “are experiencing extreme fear and anxiety about potentially being used for sex crimes or distributed online without their knowledge”.

Agencies contributed to this report