Police Arrest 963 for Deepfake Sexual Crimes... 93% Are in Their Teens and Twenties

The National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters announced on the 17th that, as a result of a focused crackdown on deepfake crimes conducted from August 28 last year to March 31 this year, 963 individuals were apprehended, of whom 59 were detained.

By age group, 669 were teenagers (including 72 juvenile offenders exempt from criminal prosecution), 228 were in their 20s, 51 in their 30s, 11 in their 40s, and 4 were aged 50 or older, with those in their teens and twenties accounting for 93.1% of the total arrests.

The police targeted criminal acts involving the production, distribution, possession, and viewing of false sexual videos involving children, adolescents, and adults, conducting large-scale joint crackdowns through collaboration between cyber sexual violence investigation teams at provincial police agencies nationwide and the women and youth crime investigation units.

In particular, through continuous cooperation efforts with Telegram, which was a primary platform for posting and distributing false sexual videos, a cooperative relationship was established in October last year, and in January this year, the mastermind behind the so-called vigilante group case was apprehended, yielding significant results.

The police also actively promoted victim protection activities by requesting the deletion and blocking of 10,535 victim videos and linking victim support through related organizations such as the Korea Communications Standards Commission and the Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center.

Since many suspects were teenagers, school police officers visited schools at the start of the new semester to provide education on preventing deepfake crimes, and digital sexual crime prevention educational materials were distributed on social networking services (SNS).

A police official stated, "Since deepfake is a serious crime where anyone can become a victim, we will continue to strengthen focused crackdowns to protect the safety of the public," adding, "Not only the act of producing false sexual videos but also simply possessing, purchasing, or viewing them is subject to punishment."