South Korean police arrested a man wanted for distributing sexually explicit content after he appeared on a livestream on his social media platform.
The unidentified man, said to be in his 50s, was arrested on 15 April for violating the Information and Communication Network Act, police said.
According to the local daily Joongang Ilbo, police received information at about 3.34pm local time on Wednesday last week that “a wanted man has appeared on an online livestream”.
Officers went to the location where he was livestreaming and apprehended him as he was leaving the building.
The content of the livestream was not immediately known.
Police said the wanted man attempted to run but he was caught by the officers on the scene.
South Korea is witnessing a rampant increase in digital deepfake sex crimes. In August 2024, Human Rights Watch noted that “hundreds of women and girls are targeted through deepfake sexual images” shared online.
“One group sharing these images reportedly has 220,000 members,” the rights group found. “The number of reported deepfake cases alone has soared from 156 in 2021 to 297 as of July this year.
In 2024, the deepfake sexual content became a crisis in the country when, according to local reports, almost 500 schools and universities were targeted in a coordinated wave of abuse. The perpetrators were often classmates of the victims.
“Deepfake videos targeting unspecified individuals have been rapidly spreading through social media,” then president Yoon Suk Yeol said.
“Many victims are minors, and most perpetrators have also been identified as teenagers.”
He called on authorities to “thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them”.
In recent years, going on livestreams has led to the arrest of people in several countries. In India, several influencers have been booked by police for livestreaming dangerous motorcycle stunts in public spaces.
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