The Deepfake Crisis in South Korea: Growing Threat and Societal Impact

Recently, the quick growth of deepfake explicit content has shaken up South Korea’s public. The recent incident has revealed the numerous cases in the South Korean deepfake crisis and highlights the urgent need for useful AI-based detection systems globally. The exploitation of artificial intelligence technology in this case illustrates the demand for polished deepfake detection systems. Besides, this issue also highlights recent security schemes’ vulnerabilities and shows the significance of global cooperation to fight against artificial-generated threats. 

As this situation is evolving, policymakers and tech builders should actively and uniquely resolve these problems. Moreover, this incident in South Korea highlights that every country should have a major focus on providing all possible protection ways to fight against the misuse of AI to manipulate content and blackmail the victims. Investments in the latest deepfake detection systems and producing a strong compliance structure can be significant steps to reduce such risks and ensure the right use of AI. 

Disclosing the South Korea’s Deepfake Dilemma

South Korea has been experiencing deepfake pornography issues for years but now it is becoming a prominent concern in the upcoming years. The issue revolves around the utilization of artificially generated content to produce adult or explicit stuff without the victim’s consent. Most of the victims are women and minors who are affected due to deepfake content. As per the 2023 reports, 250 celebrity deepfake victims are British superstars which represents how extensive and dangerous this issue has become. Unfortunately, these deepfakes are easy to create and take less than a minute, becoming a disturbing cause for both–the public and the government. 

The South Korean government took the initiative by inquiring and setting tough regulations. Higher authorities are also addressing the platforms, such as Telegram, that have been famous due to the explicit deepfake content distribution. However, President Yoon Suk Yeol has also highlighted the restrained significance of such crimes and revamping victims’ support. They are also planning to increase the rules and set up a 24-hour hotline to help online explicit crime victims. 

Why Deepfake Poses a Growing Threat to South Korea

The South Korean public is in shock by exploring that high numbers of young men and teenage boys have stolen numerous female images to create social media deepfakes by using AI-generated applications. However, 2020 had been a very tough year for South Korean higher authorities as they were pursuing the blackmail ring for young women’s protection from adult videos. Viewers were ready to pay to access these videos and that deepfake content found everywhere on the internet. There is no specific data on South Korean suicide rates due to deepfake technology, however, the previous history tells that deepfake pornography and cyberbullying are the major reasons for suicide. Furthermore, similar digital harassment has another deeper link with extreme mental distress and trauma outcomes, including suicide. 

Misogyny Disaster — Root Cause of Korea’s Deepfake

The South Korean deepfake crisis has been a controversial topic worldwide since 2020. However, the fabricated content has widely been spread via social media chat rooms, for instance, Telegram. Up to 220,000 members were part of such groups that were involved in deepfake content creation and often targeted the victim’s face by laying over onto someone’s body in an explicit manner. This content made it challenging for every average person to differentiate between real and fake content by using sophisticated systems. 

South Korean government working on reducing the rising issues, authorities have highlighted that regional adventures regarding new technologies usually ignore essential societal issues. Besides, for women, deepfakes are the new method that rooted sexism indicates itself. Often men take this fabricated culture as fun to spread explicit women’s image. Lee Yu-jin, a student and one of the deepfake victims said that “Korean society does not treat women as equal,” and raised the question of why the Korean higher authorities couldn’t reduce this mental abuse. 

Influence of Deepfake on South Korean Society

Deepfakes–videos changed to indicate that a person’s actions that he didn’t perform seem a serious type of abuse in South Korea. This troubling trend has risen more because a huge number of women are becoming deepfake identity theft victims even in 2024 in Korea without their permission. The fake content has left dark scars on their lives and they experience the consequences of such crimes during their entire life or it becomes part of their lives. 

Even the South Korean deepfake threats have reshaped society because it is constantly exploiting the victims and blurring the line between reality and fiction. With the rapid growth of the wrong use of deepfake technology, the Korean public experiences extreme pressure to execute robust laws to fight against such online manipulation. 

Here are some of the important points that show how people are affected due to fabricated content in Korea: 

• Victims of deepfake content usually face deep emotional stress, humiliation, and extreme psychological results. 
• However, the mental influence of deepfake mishandled can be the cause of trigger anxiety, depression, or feelings of impotence. Such conditions usually occur when victims try to remove or manage the exploited content distribution over the internet. 
• Deepfakes fade the line between reality and fiction because of skepticism. In such cases, people start questioning the video’s authenticity, leading to wrong information or confusion.
• Many public figures or common individuals have experienced the deepfake that has destroyed their reputation badly. 
• The deepfake content spreads rapidly and is hard to control causing the celebrity’s professional setback. 
• Deepfake victim abuse experience threats regarding their physical security, especially if their exploited content instigates harassment, stalking, or violence from other people 
• Once any individual experiences the deepfake in their life becomes the cause of fear and that individual decides to delete their social media accounts. 

Strengthening Legitimate AI for Deepfake Detection

Building up the legal artificial intelligence for deepfake detection is important which is helpful to fight against the rapidly growing threats of exploited media. However, below the following table shows how the latest artificial intelligence technologies and cooperation are increasing the detection ability and protecting the deepfake distributions. 

FACIA’s Detection Solutions for Deepfake Attacks

Deepfakes are artificially produced videos or audio that represent someone who is not real. However, this system can easily be manipulated for recognition, theft, fraud, and distribution of wrong information. You can suppose cybercriminals utilizing the fabricated voice note that can be yours or scammers are using your bank’s confidential information. It doesn’t matter if you frequently use your account, for instance, photos, images, or voice recordings, but still it can be accumulated from social media. It is difficult to decide what to share on social media or what not to protect yourself from deepfake attacks. 

Therefore, FACIA facilitates the best deepfake detection solutions to secure the individual’s identity from false information and also defends people from AI-generated visuals or audio. Considering the best industry-leading system provides high precision to spot and detect deepfakes from different platforms including social media. Also, this technology has the latest artificial intelligent images and video detection system that represents its best protector against online exploitation globally.