Trigger warning: this article contains mentions of sexual abuse and misogyny.
Asia remains a largely conservative region, with an emphasis on traditional family values. These traditional values often prove outdated and problematic when it comes to gender roles, especially when contrasted with gender equality movements in the U.S., such as the women’s rights movement and other cultural shifts like the #MeToo movement.
However, feminist movements in East Asia are gaining momentum. In 2019, South Korean feminists spearheaded the “4B movement.” The movement, named after words starting with the syllable “bi-” in Korean, urges women to reject heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating and heterosexual sex.
An X account, @KM__arch, reposts and translates news and commentary from Korean to English, raising awareness among the international public about how men truly think of women. From pedophilic comments to domestic violence, the frequency of these incidents should be enough to arouse concern among anybody reading.
The account was created in August 2024, shortly after the deepfake crisis in South Korea was publicized. The deepfake crisis, alongside the “Nth Room” case — a cybersex trafficking case — are among the biggest issues Korean feminists are focused on today as the advancement of technology in South Korea seems to have the inverse effect on women’s rights and freedoms.
Deepfake crimes in South Korea have risen amidst the recent developments in artificial intelligence technology. Deepfakes refer to the cultivation of artificial media in which another person’s face, voice or general likeness is swapped with someone else’s. Much of this content includes pornography and nude images, involving not only female celebrities but also civilian women.
Although the South Korean parliament recently passed a law banning the possession and creation of deepfake pornography, many women’s lives have already been harmed by such technologies. In the span of five days, the South Korean Communications Standards Commission received 118 reports of these videos. Many of the perpetrators are teenage boys targeting their female friends, classmates and even relatives.
Much of the South Korean public has access to developing technologies. As of 2016, 60.8% of Korean children under nine owned smartphones, and, by 2017, 100% have access to the internet. The technologically advanced nature of South Korean society has it so that many can do whatever they want in an unrestricted manner.
According to the BBC, the bulk of these photos and videos are being distributed through Telegram, a messaging app that remains relatively unregulated regarding the content that can be shared. Because of this, teenage boys and men have been able to create chat rooms that contribute to the distribution of these falsified videos of women, many of them minors.
This isn’t the only large-scale case of sexual harassment and misogyny South Korea has faced in recent years. Back in 2019, chat rooms on Telegram emerged with the leader posing as a modeling recruiter in order to coerce minors into sending explicit videos and photos of themselves. These images were then distributed to other chat rooms, where users could pay to access certain material.
In 2019, as many as 43.5% of digital sex crime cases were abandoned, compared to 19% of robberies. Despite this, progress had been made under former President Moon Jae-in; parliament passed the Comprehensive Measures for the Prevention of Digital Sexual Crimes to remove exploitative content from the internet. During his presidency, every regional police agency had specialized teams investigating digital sex crimes.
In recent years, the crackdown on digital sex crimes in South Korea has increased, but punishments are still nowhere near as hefty as they should be.
Cho Ju-bin, the ringleader behind the “Nth Room” case, was sentenced to 42 years of prison while simultaneously running a blog calling for his appeal and denouncing the judiciary system. Although the blog was blocked, the fact that he had the ability to run a blog behind bars, even for a little while, is all too much.
For someone who has destroyed the lives of many while popularizing a very powerful and exploitative technology among Korean misogynists, Cho should be very lucky to be getting out in his 60s. With the South Korean life expectancy being 83.8 years, he will likely have roughly 20 years to run around free, with access to even newer, more developed technologies.
It’s not just him; the teenage boys and men in their 20s who are creating and distributing this content are also at fault and deserve to face punishment or imprisonment.
Every crime can have a purpose. Murder, for example, can be in self-defense or out of necessity. But the inherent nature of these digital sex crimes is that they are committed not out of necessity but from a selfish, greedy and evil desire to see women at their most vulnerable.
As a country that prides itself on rapid technological advancement, South Korea should also strive to take pride in its cultural progress. The government must crack down on these cybercriminals before more lives are destroyed.
Rebecca Do is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. She can be reached at dort@uci.edu.
Edited by Zahira Vasquez and Jaheem Conley