On a seemingly normal Saturday, a university student we’ll call Ji-woo received a scary message on her phone from an unknown number. “Your photos and personal information have been leaked. Let’s talk.” Panicked, Ji-woo clicked on the message to see what it was about. The anonymous sender had sent her a photo of herself from several years ago, a normal school photo that looked frighteningly familiar. Moments later, another photo arrived. This time, the image had been digitally altered to show her in a sexually explicit situation. The photo was fake, but the damage to Ji-woo’s mental peace was very real.
Stupid with fear, Ji-woo decided not to respond to the sender, but the manipulated photos kept coming. Each had her face superimposed on another person’s body, manipulated with alarming realism using advanced deepfake technology. “I felt humiliated and incredibly alone,” Ji-woo later told a reporter. However, her experience is becoming worryingly common in South Korea, where deepfake pornography is turning into a nationwide crisis.
The rise of deepfake technology
Deepfakes – digitally manipulated videos or images that replace faces onto another body using artificial intelligence – are not new. Initially, this technology was seen as a novel and entertaining application of AI, but it has quickly evolved into a malicious tool used to create non-consensual pornographic content. In South Korea, the issue has reached unprecedented levels, especially among high school and university students.
Journalist Ko Narin was the first to highlight the severity of this crisis. A few weeks ago, Ko’s investigative report revealed that deepfake pornographic rings were operating at two major universities in South Korea. However, the problem was much deeper than she initially thought. Ko began searching across various social media platforms and discovered several Telegram groups where users were turning images of women they knew — friends, classmates, even strangers — into explicit deepfakes in seconds.
“Every minute, new photos of girls were being uploaded and requests were being made to turn them into deepfakes,” Ko said. The journalist’s findings not only exposed a horrific violation of privacy, but also a systematic network of exploitation.
A disturbing subculture
Ko found a very disturbing subculture on Telegram, where groups were not limited to university students. Some chat rooms specifically targeted high school and even middle school. In these rooms, often labeled “abuse rooms” or “friends of friends rooms,” a disturbing economy of victimization thrived. If enough explicit content was created using photos of a specific student, it could be given its own dedicated chatroom.
These groups have strict rules for entry, such as requiring members to post multiple photos of a person, and personal information such as name, age and place of residence. One chatroom Ko observed required members to share at least four photos of someone before joining. “The most horrifying thing I found was that one group was targeting minor students from a school, and it had more than 2,000 members,” Ko said.
A national emergency
Ko’s revelations have sparked outrage across South Korea. Women’s rights activists, who have long been vocal against digital sex crimes, immediately sprang into action. They began scouring Telegram channels for evidence and offering support to victims. In just a few days, more than 500 schools and universities were identified as targets, and that number is expected to rise. Shockingly, many of the victims are believed to be under the age of 16, South Korea’s age of consent.
Another victim, Heejin, spoke of her growing anxiety after realizing the scope of the crisis. “I kept thinking, did this happen because I uploaded my photos to social media? Should I have been more careful?” she confessed. Such feelings of guilt and paranoia are becoming widespread among young women in South Korea. Many have since deleted their photos from social media or deactivated their accounts altogether, fearing they could be targeted next.
University student Ah-eun, whose peers have also been victimized, expressed frustration at being forced to change her online behavior. “It’s so unfair that we have to censor ourselves when we haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.
Legal challenges and Telegram’s role
Central to the scandal is the messaging app Telegram, known for its encryption and anonymity. Unlike public websites, which authorities can easily monitor and request the removal of harmful content, Telegram operates in private, encrypted channels. This makes it a haven for people involved in illegal activities, including the distribution of deepfake pornography. Despite claims that it is “harmful material,” the site remains a haven for users.