Another “Nth Room”? Deepfake Porn Telegram Chat Rooms Based On Schools Uncovered In South Korea
Many of the chat rooms are based on schools, with many victims being girls in middle and high schools.
Hundreds of girls and women in South Korea are having their photos being edited into deepfake porn videos and shared in secret Telegram chat rooms with thousands of male users.
On Aug. 21, Korean news outlet HanKyoReh reported it had uncovered numerous Telegram groups where men were creating and sharing illegal deepfake pornography of women they knew.
Several chat rooms were categorized based on schools, and one channel had more than 220,000 members.
In the chat rooms, men would share the names, birth dates and other personal information of their women classmates or other women they know.
Other members would then find photos of the woman on social media and manipulate them using AI technology to generate pornographic deepfake images and videos of the woman without their consent.
On Aug. 25, one social media user published a list of victims’ names on X, many of whom are girls in middle and high schools.
The post quickly went viral, gaining over 500,000 retweets in just a day.
Many people have since taken to social media to expose more groups, including “Humiliation rooms”, where men share photos of them sexually assaulting women, sometimes drugged or asleep.
South Korean women’s rights activists have been trying to bring attention to the issue on X, saying that South Korean authorities are “indifferent” to crimes against women.
Many are also calling it the second coming of the infamous Nth room incident from 2018 to 2020.
This was a series of pay-per-view chat rooms on Telegram, where women and underaged girls were forced into taking sexual exploitation videos of themselves.
Images and videos were sold to more than 260,000 accounts, with the sex ring charging fees up to US$1,200 in cryptocurrency.
The two leaders of the Nth room were both sentenced in 2020 to 42 and 34 years in prison for blackmail, running a sexual exploitation ring and cybersex trafficking.
You Might Also Be Interested In
Sofia Hou
Meg Chen
