Weekly Report Status Check... Victim Support Plan
Follow-up Measures to Be Announced After Discussions with Relevant Agencies
Education authorities have received nearly 200 reports of student and teacher 'deepfake' victimization. The Ministry of Education plans to establish an emergency task force to respond and prepare follow-up measures through consultations with related agencies.
On the afternoon of the 28th, Oh Seok-hwan, Vice Minister of Education, held a press conference on deepfake at the Government Complex Sejong and stated, "As of 5 p.m. on the 27th, a total of 196 damage reports have been received from January this year to the 17 metropolitan and provincial offices of education, including 186 students and 10 teachers, and investigations have been requested for 179 of these cases." The number of affected students by school level is ▲8 elementary school students ▲100 middle school students ▲78 high school students.
Earlier, on the 26th, the Ministry of Education surveyed the status of deepfake damage through official letters to each metropolitan and provincial office of education, which is lower than the number of teenage deepfake victims (288) identified this year by the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute. At a briefing that day, Bae Dong-in, Director of Policy Planning at the Ministry of Education, explained, "We are currently grasping the overall (damage) status through the metropolitan and provincial offices of education, and we also believe this is not the whole picture," adding, "We will update the data weekly and disclose it according to the situation."
Ministry of Education Launches 'Deepfake TF'... Follow-up Measures to be Announced
Accordingly, considering the seriousness of the issue, the Ministry of Education will form an emergency deepfake response task force (TF) led by the Vice Minister, operating a situation team composed of six teams by sector. The TF will investigate and report on deepfake-related matters once a week and respond by sector to handle student and teacher victim cases, provide psychological support, conduct school prevention education and awareness improvement, and strengthen digital ethics and accountability. The 'Education Sector Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence Reporting Center' operated by the ministry will also be reorganized to actively respond to new types of school violence such as deepfake.
The ministry also plans to strengthen education to ensure that deepfake is not regarded as mere curiosity or a prank among youth. Vice Minister Oh said, "The most important issue now is to accurately recognize that incidents like deepfake are not something to be done out of curiosity," and added, "We will make concrete efforts to further strengthen related preventive education."
When circumstances of perpetration and victimization related to deepfake sexually explicit materials are revealed, 'immediate separation' measures will be taken. A Ministry of Education official elaborated, "Even before the investigation of the case, if there is a perpetrating student, they are immediately separated to ensure the safety of the victim student through written apologies, school service, special education, psychological treatment, suspension, class transfer, etc., and appropriate measures are also taken against the perpetrating student."
Considering the intentionality of the synthetic material production and the extent of damage, the level of punishment for the perpetrating student is expected to be severe. The official said, "The level of punishment for school violence is determined by the School Violence Deliberation Committee under the School Violence Prevention Act, and the committee considers factors such as continuity, intentionality, the extent of damage, and whether the damage has been restored," adding, "Due to the nature of deepfake, it is highly likely to be very intentional and cause significant damage, so the level of punishment will naturally be high."
Going forward, the Ministry of Education plans to start with a meeting of vice superintendents of metropolitan and provincial offices of education on the 30th, followed by consultations with related ministries and operation of an expert advisory group in September to derive practical measures, and then establish and announce follow-up measures through the Social Relations Ministers' Meeting in October. The advisory group will consist of university human rights center officials, legal, psychological counseling, preventive education, investigation, artificial intelligence (AI) digital technology experts, and field teachers.
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