Daejeon High School Girl Reports to Police "My Face Is in a Deepfake Video"

Reported separately to Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education and Daejeon Police Station

Recently, following university campuses, illegal deepfake synthetic crime victims have been increasing among teenage students, and on the 27th, it was confirmed that a female high school student in Daejeon made the first damage report.

According to Yonhap News on the 27th, citing the Daejeon Metropolitan Police Agency and the Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education, at around 1:30 p.m. that day, a female high school student A in the Daejeon area confirmed that her face was synthesized and distributed in a deepfake video and reported it to the Metropolitan Office of Education and a police station in Daejeon, respectively.

Deepfake is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based synthetic image. Cases of creating and distributing deepfake videos that synthesize acquaintances' faces into pornographic materials have been occurring nationwide.

Partial notice for prevention of deepfake sex crime victims by Gwangju Nambu Police Station
[Photo by Yonhap News].

The Daejeon police plan to transfer student A's report to the Cyber Crime Investigation Division of the Daejeon Metropolitan Police Agency to conduct a full-scale investigation. Earlier, on the 26th, the Metropolitan Office of Education proactively issued a ‘Special Advisory on Digital Sex Crimes including Deepfake’ and is identifying and collecting damage cases from school supervisors and staff in charge at each school.

They also sent an urgent official letter to frontline schools, guiding them to immediately report to the Metropolitan Office of Education and the police if any damage cases are confirmed. Subsequently, the Daejeon Office of Education received 2 to 3 inquiry calls by 6 p.m. the previous day from three high school students asking whether certain cases corresponded to deepfake. One of these students was identified as a victim.

Recently, operators of group chat rooms who misused photos of students and graduates from a university in the metropolitan area were arrested by the police. They operated under the name ‘Gyeopjiinbang’ (Gyeopjibang), where participants shared information about specific women they mutually knew and engaged in sexual harassment by producing and distributing deepfake videos.

Numerous Telegram chat rooms segmented by region and school nationwide, targeting not only universities but also minors, have been created, with thousands of participants in each chat room. Chat rooms in the Daejeon area, where over 1,000 messages were shared, were also repeatedly confirmed. Until recently, these chat rooms shared real names of female high schools and female university students residing in specific areas.

On social media, lists of regions and schools where deepfake videos were created are also being shared. Several middle and high schools in Daejeon and Cheonan, Chungnam, as well as local universities, are included in the lists.

In response, the Metropolitan Office of Education plans to operate a special education week until the 6th of next month, providing training on digital sex crime victim response guidelines and improving gender sensitivity education, while also requesting police investigations for additional damage reports.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced on the 27th that, as sexual synthetic materials using deepfake have recently spread, they encourage active use of victim counseling and support services. The Digital Sexual Violence Victim Support Center (DiSeong Center), established within the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute under the Ministry, provides comprehensive one-stop services including counseling related to false sexual videos, deletion support, monitoring of distribution, and linkage to investigation, legal, and medical (psychological counseling and treatment) support.