Ruling Party and Government Consider 'Undercover Investigations' for Digital Sexual Violence Crimes, Expansion to Adults Under Review

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The People Power Party and the government announced on the 13th that they will push for amendments to the law to expand the scope of undercover investigations to include adults for strengthening punishment and prevention of digital sexual violence crimes, and to enable emergency measures for deleting and blocking illegal videos.

According to the police, this has been pointed out as a limitation since the time of the law amendment related to undercover investigations. Undercover investigations are possible for digital sexual violence crimes targeting minors, but are not possible for crimes involving adults. To expand the scope of undercover investigations to adults, the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes must be amended.

Jeong Jeom-sik, Chairman of the Policy Committee of the People Power Party, is speaking at the 1st discussion session of the Special Committee on Fiscal and Tax Reform titled "1st Comprehensive Real Estate Tax Rational Reform Direction" held at the National Assembly on the 12th. This is the first time the ruling party and the government have gathered for follow-up discussions since the Presidential Office announced tax reform plans including the comprehensive real estate tax at the end of last month. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

In addition, during consultations held the previous day, the ruling party and government discussed establishing a legal basis for requesting preservation of electronic evidence in digital sex crimes, introducing emergency measures such as deletion and blocking of illegal videos, and establishing grounds for punishment for possession, purchase, and storage of fake videos. All of these require amendments to laws such as the Criminal Procedure Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection.

They also agreed to actively support strengthening technology for 'deepfake detection software.' The establishment of a hotline between each prosecution office and police agencies nationwide to respond promptly to victim reports was also positively discussed.

This consultation arose from the awareness of the urgent need to prepare effective crime response measures, as the number of digital sexual crime reports increased by 23% in 2023 compared to 2019, with the methods becoming more sophisticated. Officials from the ruling party, the Ministry of Justice, and the National Police Agency attended together.

A People Power Party official stated, "We will do our best to thoroughly prepare policies and legislation necessary for the people so that both the normalization of the National Assembly and the normalization of people’s livelihoods can be achieved simultaneously."

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