South Korea's state-run media regulator has received 17,378 deepfake sex crime videos for review between January and August 2026, already surpassing the 15,808 cases logged across all of 2025, according to data submitted to Rep. Lee Yeon-hee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. The figure represents a 9.9 percent year-on-year increase and signals a sharp re-acceleration of a crisis that South Korean authorities had hoped was stabilising.

Scale of the Crisis

The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), the state regulator responsible for reviewing and removing illegal online content, has seen deepfake-related sexual content complaints climb steeply over recent years. Cases rose from 1,913 in 2021 to 3,574 in 2022, then 7,187 in 2023, before spiking to 23,109 in 2024. After a partial decline to 15,808 in 2025, the current trajectory suggests 2026 could approach or exceed the 2024 peak.

What Lawmakers Are Saying

Rep. Lee Yeon-hee urged the government to scrutinise both the current situation and existing response mechanisms. “With the number of reviews of deepfake sexual content already exceeding last year’s annual total, it is essential to closely examine the current situation and response mechanisms,” Lee said, calling for effective measures to prevent the spread of the content and protect victims. The lawmaker’s remarks come as South Korea prepares for fresh legislative deliberations on platform accountability.

Police Data: Suspects and Demographics

The National Police Agency (NPA) detected 3,411 online sexual abuse cases between November 2024 and October 2026, resulting in the detention of 3,557 people, of whom 221 were formally arrested. By crime type, deepfake-related offences accounted for 35.2 percent of all cases, followed by sexual content involving children or adolescents at 34.3 percent, and illegally filmed materials at 19.4 percent.

The demographic breakdown is striking: nearly half of all suspects — 1,761 — were teenagers, followed by those in their 20s at 1,228, people in their 30s at 468, and those in their 40s at 169. The NPA noted that over 90 percent of deepfake crime suspects were aged 29 or under, attributing this to young people’s greater fluency with digital tools used to generate synthetic media.

Why This Matters Beyond South Korea

South Korea’s deepfake sex crime crisis has drawn international attention as a harbinger of what AI-generated content abuse could look like at scale. The rapid proliferation is driven in part by freely available AI tools that lower the technical barrier for creating non-consensual synthetic media. Critics argue that platform removal obligations and criminal penalties have not kept pace with the speed at which content spreads. This is the second consecutive year in which South Korea has recorded a surge significant enough to prompt parliamentary scrutiny, suggesting that legislative fixes enacted in 2024 have yet to produce a measurable deterrent effect.

What Happens Next

Rep. Lee’s remarks signal that the KCSC’s mandate and enforcement tools are likely to come under parliamentary review in the coming months. Victim support organisations have separately called for faster takedown timelines and a dedicated compensation fund. With the year only two-thirds complete, final 2026 figures could test both the regulator’s capacity and the government’s political will to act.