More than 1,500 busted during online sex crime crackdown
A six-month crackdown on online sexual violence led to 1,506 apprehensions, including deepfake suspects, illegal site operators and Telegram channel managers.
Posters on deepfake crime prevention are displayed outside the digital sex crime victim support center at the Women's Human Rights Institute of Korea in central Seoul on Nov. 6, 2024.YONHAP
Police apprehended more than 1,500 people during a six-month crackdown on online sexual violence since November.
Among them were operators of websites that distributed sexually exploitative videos and footage filmed without consent, the National Office of Investigation said Tuesday.
The crackdown, which began in November, resulted in 1,446 cases and the apprehension of 1,506 people, 87 of whom were detained. Much of the effort targeted offenders operating from abroad, with investigators working alongside foreign authorities to reach suspects who had fled overseas.
In one case, two operators were detained for running eight illegal websites that posted some 120,000 videos, including child porn and footage filmed without consent. They had earned 1 billion won ($660,000) by advertising gambling sites, police said.
Three people were detained for running private channels on Telegram that distributed sexually exploitative material and personal information about individuals on request. The channels had operated for seven months until April.
A suspect who created deepfake videos using photographs of students and carried out phishing scams by impersonating law enforcement agencies was apprehended in Malaysia and detained.
Police also apprehended two people who had fled abroad while running subscription-based illegal sites that distributed sexually exploitative material, and detained one of them.
In a separate operation that ran for a month from March, police joined forces with seven Asian countries, including Singapore, to target child sexual abuse material, through which they apprehended 225 people and detained 19.
Education office and police officials, along with students and parents, participate in a joint campaign to prevent school violence and deepfake sex crimes in Daegu on Oct. 8. 2024.NEWS1
Teenagers made up 42.9 percent of those apprehended, at 723 people. Together with 481 people in their 20s, who accounted for 31.2 percent, the two age groups accounted for about 80 percent of the total. Police attributed the concentration among younger people to their easy access to digital media.
Undercover operations accounted for 181 apprehensions, 17 of which resulted in detention. The number of such operations rose 246 percent from the same period a year earlier, to 337. A revised law on the punishment of sexual crimes that took effect in June 2025 widened the scope of undercover work from crimes against children and teenagers to those involving adult victims.
"Techniques for evading tracking are growing more sophisticated as information and communications technology advances, but we will make certain that the operators of illegal sites are brought to justice through proactive international cooperation," said Park Woo-hyeon, who oversees cyber investigations at the National Office of Investigation.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
