Digital Sex Crimes: 30% Increase in Perpetrators With Close Relationships... Rise in Deepfake Offenses

Last year, the number of digital sex crime perpetrators who had a close relationship with the victim increased by 30% compared to the previous year. It was also revealed that the types of digital sex crimes are diversifying from traditional illegal filming to technology-based crimes.

Deepfake Sexual Crime Protest. Yonhap News

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The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea Women’s Human Rights Institute announced on April 16, in the "2025 Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Report," that the Central Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center (Central Digital Sex Crime Center) provided support to 10,637 victims of digital sex crimes last year.

The Central Digital Sex Crime Center offered a total of approximately 352,000 services-including counseling, support for content deletion, and connection to investigative, legal, and medical services-to 10,637 victims, marking a 3.2% increase compared to the previous year.

The number of cases involving support for the deletion of illegal content stood at 318,020, up 5.9% from the previous year, accounting for the largest proportion. The number of new victims decreased by 10.3%, while the number of victims receiving ongoing support increased by 26.3%. This reflects the recurring nature of digital sex crimes, where content is repeatedly circulated, indicating that long-term, continuous support is needed.

Of the total 10,637 victims, 8,019 (75.4%) were women and 2,618 (24.6%) were men. By age group, teenagers and those in their twenties accounted for 77.6% (8,258 people), showing that victims are concentrated in age groups that frequently use digital platforms.

In response, the government is building a new "AI-based proactive response system for online sexual exploitation of children and adolescents" to strengthen preemptive intervention before crimes occur.

Analyzing the relationship between perpetrators and victims, cases involving close relationships reached 1,301, a 29.8% increase from the previous year. Cases where the perpetrator could not be specifically identified rose by 21.1% to 3,088. This is interpreted as a result of multiple factors, including the spread of AI-based synthesis and editing technologies. Meanwhile, cases involving perpetrators who had no prior acquaintance with the victim decreased by 22% compared to the previous year.

Looking at the types of harm, "distribution anxiety" was the most prevalent at 27.7%, followed by illegal filming (21.9%), distribution (17.7%), distribution threats (12.2%), and synthesis/editing (9.2%). Each victim experienced an average of about 1.7 cases of overlapping harm.

While cases of illegal filming decreased by 7.8% from the previous year, cases of synthesis/editing increased by 16.8%, and cases of cyberbullying increased by 26.6%. This suggests that digital sex crimes are diversifying from traditional filming-centered crimes to technology-based crimes. In the case of synthesis/editing, teenagers and those in their twenties accounted for 91.2% of victims, representing an overwhelmingly high proportion compared to other age groups.

Among those in their fifties and older, threats of distribution were more prevalent than actual distribution of content. This appears to reflect a trend in which perpetrators approach victims for purposes such as monetary demands, rather than the actual distribution of illegal content.

For synthesis/editing harm, women (1,581 cases) were affected about 45 times more than men (35 cases). For distribution harm, women (2,590 cases) were affected about five times more than men (523 cases). This suggests that illegal synthetic and edited materials such as deepfakes are primarily produced, consumed, and distributed with women’s faces and bodies as the main targets.

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Examining the breakdown by platform for deletion support, illegal harmful sites accounted for the largest share at 51.6%, followed by search engines (25.3%), social media (13.5%), cloud platforms (4.0%), communities (3.6%), and streaming services (1.0%).

An analysis of the server locations of 26,658 sites collected during the content deletion support process showed that the United States accounted for the highest share at 70.8%, followed by Australia (5.7%) and the Netherlands (5.6%).

In 2024, the Central Digital Sex Crime Center signed a business agreement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States. Recently, the center established a rapid collaboration system for content deletion by connecting its deletion support system with NCMEC’s reporting system (CyberTipline) via API integration.

Additionally, the center began new deletion cooperation with the UK Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which can respond to servers located in countries outside the United States, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Russia.

This year, the center also signed a business agreement with the Broadcasting and Communications Commission to realize a safer digital society. The parties agreed to cooperate to eradicate digital sex crimes and establish a victim-centered one-stop support system.

Going forward, a joint "Digital Sex Crime Victim Integrated Support Group" involving related agencies will be launched in May to strengthen sanctions against non-compliant and repeatedly offending websites and to swiftly block distribution. In addition, five types of participatory and interactive digital sex crime prevention education content tailored to the perspectives of children and adolescents will be produced and distributed.

Bora Shin, President of the Korea Women’s Human Rights Institute, stated, "We will continue to do our utmost to support victims through ongoing technological development, advancement, and expanded domestic and international cooperation."

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