It's horribly icky and criminal, but is it misogyny?

 

So, Korean boys and young men are taking the photos of their classmates or acquittances and superimposing them onto pornographic videos or photos for personal titillation, group sharing, and even distribution for money. Such pornographic deepfakes are old; however, the recent advancement of AI has made creating such deepfakes much more accessible and seamless. Gone are the days when deepfakes were obviously fakes. These days, a few minutes on a free app can produce deep fakes that look indistinguishable from the real thing except for the fact that it’s not. Add to this the anonymity of encrypted group chat programs like Telegram that makes discovery by law enforcement very unlikely.

The only way that a woman is made aware that she has been victimized is when someone, for whatever reasons, show her the deepfakes that feature the victim. I can’t imagine the ickiness that the victim would feel upon knowing that her likeness, without her knowledge or consent, has been abused in such a fashion, fantasized over by trusted acquaintances and total strangers alike. It’s definitely enough to lose faith in all men, if not humanity.

Korea actually has laws on the books that makes creating deepfakes illegal. In Article 14-2 (Distribution of False Video Products) of the Act on Special Cases concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes, it states: “(1) A person who edits, synthesizes, or processes photograph, video, or audio (hereinafter referred to as “photograph, etc.” in this Article) targeting the face, body or voice of a person for the purpose of dissemination, etc., in a form that may cause sexual desire or shame against the will of the person who is subject to video, etc. (hereinafter referred to as “editing, etc.” in this Article), shall be punished by imprisonment with labor for not more than five years or a fine of not more than 50 million won.”

Compared to the U.S. in which a patchwork of state and local laws forbids deepfakes for specific purposes such as abusing of minors, defamation, election interference, etc., Korea is actually better off from a legal framework perspective despite gaps in the law. As New York Times pointed out in its article titled, In South Korea, Misogyny Has a New Weapon: Deepfake Sex Videos, “Under the law enacted in 2020, people convicted of making sexually explicit or abusive deepfakes with an intent to distribute them can be sent to prison for up to five years. Those who seek to profit financially from distributing such content can face up to seven years. But there is no law against buying, storing or watching deepfakes.”

The New York Times article’s title echoes the interview that it includes with Lee Yu-jin, a female university student who states that, “Korean society doesn’t treat women as fellow human beings.” The article doubles down on this conclusion that pornographic deepfakes are a symptom of societal misogyny: “But to many women, these deepfakes are just the latest online expression of a deep-rooted misogyny in their country — a culture that has now produced young men who consider it fun to share sexually humiliating images of women online.”

Is it all attributable to misogyny though? I agree that creating and distributing deepfakes should be a crime. But is it happening because Korean men hate women, which is what misogyny means? Granted, my age has long freed me from the clutches of testosterone, but I remember having crushes on pretty classmates and fantasizing about them (and feeling guilty about it) in private. I am sure that I am not the only boy who has done this. I have also found opportunities to peek at dirty magazines (this was before internet) whenever older boys would surreptitiously but proudly share them with their younger hangers-on.

The difference today is that these young men have access to advanced technologies that allows them to bring literally their fantasies to life and share them with others to elevate their in-group status. Their brain and maturity have stayed the same, but what they can do with that immaturity and underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is outlandish and dangerous. In a way, I feel sorry for access that today’s young men have to the capacity to cause harm. Instead of misogyny, however, can we also consider that the deepfake phenomenon is also driven by natural curiosity about sex? In fact, the same New York Times article actually quotes Kim Ji-hyun, a Seoul city official whose team has counseled 200 teenagers implicated in digital sexual exploitation since 2019, who is quoted as saying, “many young people were first drawn to deepfakes out of curiosity.”

Of course, this doesn’t mitigate the shock and shame that female victims would feel upon finding out – pornographic deepfake should and is a crime. However, I would like to see a more thoughtful and nuanced discussion about the motivations that drive such behavior, rather than a wholesale and indiscriminate condemnation against young men. Not everything is the Nth Room or Spycam. Generalizing extreme cases of criminal sexual abuse and blackmail to another phenomenon based on superficial similarities doesn’t help resolve the situation. Rather, it actually exacerbates what it already assumes: misogyny.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.