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An accomplice in a deepfake pornography case at Seoul National University (SNU) received a five-year prison sentence on Wednesday in his first trial.

The case in question involved the making and distribution of pornographic deepfakes using the photographs of dozens of female victims, including university classmates.

This sentence was the first for an individual implicated in the deepfake pornography case at SNU. The legal judgment against the perpetrators came as the result of dogged efforts by victims, who had visited four different police stations since July 2021 to request an investigation.

Representing the 14th criminal panel of the Seoul Central District Court, Judge Kim Yu-rang sentenced a 28-year-old surnamed Park to five years in prison on Wednesday in a trial on charges including violation of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes through filming with a camera or other device and distribution of falsified footage.

Park and other perpetrators are accused of circulating illegal deepfake pornography — manipulated explicit images or videos created using sophisticated machine-learning technology. They are suspected of using photographs of the faces of female victims to create 419 sexually degrading deepfake materials and distributing a total of 1,735 materials over a four-year period beginning in 2020.

Despite Park’s prison sentence, the victims are still tormented by the incident, which one described as being “like the world I knew came crashing down.” Most of the deepfake victims had to endure the torment of seeing images and videos in which their faces were used in scenes representing inhuman situations.

Inside a Telegram chat room where the deepfakes were circulated, the perpetrators made sexually degrading remarks about the victims and spread false information about their personal details and private lives. In some cases, that information was then used to approach victims for sexually exploitative purposes, to harass them, or to notify them of their victimization.  

The seriousness of the deepfake pornography issue remains underestimated in Korean society.

As news of the widespread sexual crimes spread online, internet users responded by saying they had “no idea why it would be so traumatic” or that “the effects are trivial if it’s just a matter of a few people making and circulating images among themselves.”

Kim Soo-ah, a professor of communication at SNU, explained, “The system for regulating digital sex crimes is centered on the victims’ perception of feelings of sexual shame [rooted in traditional notions of chastity], and it appears as though deepfakes are seen as a lower-level crime than something like illegal photograph because it’s ‘not their actual body.’”

“In a male-centered society that sexually objectifies women, victims experience torment simply through the existence of [images and] rumors, regardless of whether the sexual images are false,” she said.