Support for Digital Sexual Crime Victims: 75% Are in Their Teens and Twenties... Increased Compared to Last Year

20s Account for 50%, Increased Year-on-Year
Total Damage Support Up 12.6%
Personal Information Leakage Damage Also Up 45.3%

It was confirmed that about 75% of the victims who received support such as counseling, deletion, and investigation for digital sex crimes last year were in their teens and twenties. By gender, women accounted for 74% of all victims.

According to the '2023 Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Report' published on the 2nd by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute, among the 8,983 victims who received counseling, deletion, investigation, legal, and medical support related to victim videos from the Digital Sex Crime Support Center last year, teenagers and people in their twenties accounted for 74.9% (6,726 people) of the total.

Among them, people in their twenties (4,517) accounted for 50.3%, and teenagers (2,209) accounted for 24.6%. This represents an increase of 55.2% and 211.5%, respectively, compared to the previous year. The Korea Women's Human Rights Institute explained, "It appears that many victims occur among younger age groups who commonly use online platforms."

In other age groups as well, the number of victim support cases increased compared to the previous year: teenagers (1,423 cases → 2,209 cases), people in their thirties (534 cases → 1,068 cases), forties (196 cases → 366 cases), and fifties and above (122 cases → 224 cases).

By gender, women accounted for 74.2% (6,663 people) of all victims, and men accounted for 25.8% (2,320 people).

Press release related to the '2023 Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Report'. [Source=Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, Korea Women's Development Institute]

The total number of victim support cases was 8,983, an increase of 12.6% compared to the previous year (7,979). Regarding this background, the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute stated, "The increase in service support cases is analyzed to be due to proactive deletion support through preemptive inspections of child and adolescent sexual exploitation materials, strengthened cooperation with investigative agencies (National Police Agency, Prosecutor's Office), and activation of connections through the expansion of region-specific counseling centers."

The number of deletion support cases for child and adolescent sexual exploitation materials was 35,725, a 2.5% increase from the previous year. Also, the number of victim support cases for unidentified victims linked by investigative agencies increased by 24.6% compared to the previous year.

Analyzing by victim-offender relationship, temporary relationships such as chat partners and one-time meetings were the most common with 3,391 people (37.8%), followed by unknown 2,059 people (22.9%), strangers 1,868 people (20.8%), intimate relationships 870 people (9.7%), social relationships 766 people (8.5%), and family relationships 29 people (0.3%).

By type of harm, anxiety about distribution was the highest with 4,566 cases (31.3%), followed by illegal filming 2,927 cases (20.1%), distribution 2,717 cases (18.7%), and distribution threats 2,664 cases (18.3%). It was also found that victims experienced an average of 1.6 overlapping harms per person.

Press release related to the '2023 Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Report'. [Source=Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, Korea Women's Development Institute]

Last year, the number of deletion support cases for victim videos leaked along with personal information was 57,082, accounting for 23.3% of the total 245,416 deletion support cases. Victimization involving personal information leakage increased by 45.3% compared to the previous year. The types of information leaked in order were name (41.2%), age (39.7%), and affiliation (14.3%).

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family stated, "If victim videos are distributed along with personal information that can identify the victim, we plan to review improvements to related laws and systems to strengthen deletion support for such information to prevent secondary damage and will consult with related ministries."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.