In 2020, as the South Korean authorities were pursuing a blackmail ring that forced young women to make sexually explicit videos for paying viewers, they found something else floating through the dark recesses of social media: pornographic images with other people’s faces crudely attached.2020年，当韩国政府追查一个强迫年轻女性为付费观众拍摄露骨色情视频的勒索团伙时，他们在社交媒体的黑暗角落里发现了其他东西：经过粗略加工的色情图片，上面贴着其他人的面孔。They didn’t know what to do with these early attempts at deepfake pornography. In the end, the National Assembly enacted a vaguely worded law against those making and distributing it. But that did not prevent a crime wave, using AI technology, that has now taken the country’s misogynistic online culture to new depths.他们不知道如何处理这些深度伪造色情内容的早期尝试。最后，韩国国会颁布了一项措辞模糊的法律，禁止制作、传播这类内容。但这未能阻止一个使用人工智能技术的犯罪浪潮的出现，该浪潮现已将韩国网络厌女文化推到了登峰造极的程度。In the past two weeks, South Koreans have been shocked to find that a rising number of young men and teenage boys had taken hundreds of social media images of classmates, teachers and military colleagues — almost all young women and girls, including minors — and used them to create sexually exploitative images and video clips with deepfake apps.在过去的两周里，韩国人震惊地发现，越来越多的年轻男性和十几岁的男孩在社交媒体上获取同学、老师和军队同僚的大量照片，而且几乎都是年轻女性和女孩，包括未成年女孩的照片，然后借助深度伪造应用程序，用这些照片来制作性剥削图片和视频片段。They have spread the material through chat rooms on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, some with as many as 220,000 members. The deepfakes usually combine a victim’s face with a body in a sexually explicit pose, taken from pornography. The technology is so sophisticated that it is often hard for ordinary people to tell they are fake, investigators say. As the country scrambles to address the threat, experts have noted that in South Korea, enthusiasm for new technologies can sometimes outpace concerns about their ethical implications.他们通过加密短信服务平台Telegram的聊天室来传播这些内容，有些聊天室的成员多达22万。这些深度伪造的内容通常将受害者的面孔贴在摆出露骨性姿态身体的图片上，后者来自淫秽作品。调查人员说，伪造照片的技术如此之先进，以至于普通人常常很难分辨出它们是假的。随着韩国迅速采取措施努力应对这一威胁，专家们已指出，韩国人对新技术的热情有时会超过对其道德影响的担忧。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.但对许多女性来说，这些深度伪造只是她们国家根深蒂固的厌女文化在网上的最新表现，这种文化现在培养出了认为在网上分享羞辱女性的色情图片很有趣的年轻男性。“Korean society doesn’t treat women as fellow human beings,” said Lee Yu-jin, a student whose university is among the hundreds of middle schools, high schools and colleges where students have been victimized. She asked why the government had not done more “before it became a digital culture to steal photos of friends and use them for sexual humiliation.”“韩国社会不把女性当做同胞，”大学生李宥真（音）说，她在读的大学是数百所学生成为受害者的中学、高中和大学之一。她质问政府为什么没有在“窃用朋友的照片，用其来进行性羞辱已成为一种数字文化”之前采取更多行动。Online sexual violence is a growing problem globally, but South Korea is at the leading edge. Whether, and how, it can tackle the deepfake problem successfully will be watched by policymakers, school officials and law enforcement elsewhere.虽然网络上的性暴力是一个日益严重的全球问题，但这个问题在韩国尤为突出。韩国能否以及如何成功地解决深度伪造问题，将受到其他国家的政策制定者、学校官员和执法部门的关注。
政府官员柳熙林（音）上个月在首尔召开的有关深度伪造的紧急会议上。韩国总统已对有关深度伪造的新闻报道作出回应，下令政府“将其根除”。Yonhap, via EPA, via Shutterstock
The country has an underbelly of sexual criminality that has occasionally surfaced. A South Korean was convicted of running one of the world’s largest sites for images of child sexual abuse. A K-pop entertainer was found guilty of facilitating prostitution through a nightclub. For years, the police have battled spycam porn. And the mastermind of the blackmail ring investigated in 2020 was sentenced to 40 years in prison for luring young women, including teenagers, to make the videos that he sold online through Telegram chat rooms.韩国社会的性犯罪阴暗面偶尔会浮出水面。一名已被定罪的韩国人曾经营着世界上最大的儿童性虐待图片网站之一。一名韩国流行艺人因在夜总会协助卖淫而被定罪。多年来，韩国警方一直在打击偷拍色情片的犯罪活动。2020年对那个勒索网的调查已导致其主犯被判处40年有期徒刑，该人曾引诱年轻女性（包括十几岁的女孩）拍摄视频，然后通过Telegram的聊天室在线销售。The rise of easy-to-use deepfake technology has added an insidious dimension to such forms of sexual violence: The victims are often unaware that they are victims until they receive an anonymous message, or a call from the police.易于使用的深度伪造技术的兴起为这种形式的性暴力增添了隐蔽而危险的维度：受害者往往不知道自己是受害者，直到收到匿名者发来的短信或警方打来的电话。‘Slave,’ ‘Toilet,’ ‘Rag’“奴隶”、“厕所”、“抹布”For one 30-year-old deepfake victim, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy, the attack began in 2021 with an anonymous message on Telegram that said: “Hi!”对一名30岁的深度伪造受害者（为了保护她的隐私，这里不用她的姓名）来说，这种攻击始于2021年，她先是在Telegram上收到匿名者发来的一条短信：“嗨！”Over the next few hours, a stream of obscenities and deepfake images and video clips followed, featuring her face, taken from family trip photos she had posted on social media. Written on the body were words like “slave,” “toilet” and “rag.”在接下来的几个小时里，她收到了源源不断的淫秽短信，还有深度伪造的图片和视频片段，其中的头像取自她在社交媒体上发的家庭旅行照片。图片和视频中的身体上写着“奴隶”、“厕所”和“抹布”等字眼。In April, she learned from the police that two of her former classmates at Seoul National University were among those who had been detained. Male graduates of the prestigious university, along with accomplices, had targeted scores of women, including a dozen former Seoul National students, with deepfake pornography. One of the men detained was sentenced to five years in prison last month.今年4月，她从警方得知，她在首尔国立大学读书时的两名前同学在被拘留者之列。从这所名牌大学毕业的男生伙同他人用深度伪造技术制作色情内容，攻击了数十名女性，其中包括十几名从首尔国立大学毕业的女生。上个月，被拘留的一名男子被判处五年有期徒刑。“I cannot think of any reason they treated me like that, except that I was a woman,” she said. “The fact that there were people like them around me made me lose my faith in fellow human beings.”“除了我是女性外，我想不出他们这样对待我的原因，”她说。“身边有像他们这样的人，这个事实让我对人类失去了信心。”She says she has struggled with trauma since the attack. Her heart races whenever she receives a message notification on her smartphone, or an anonymous call.她说，自从那次攻击发生以来，她一直在与心理创伤作斗争。每当她在智能手机上收到短信通知或匿名电话时，她的心跳就会加速。South Korea, whose pop culture is exported worldwide, has become the country most vulnerable to deepfake pornography. More than half of deepfakes globally target South Koreans, and the majority of those deepfakes victimize singers and actresses from the country, according to “2023 State of Deepfakes,” a study published by the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Security Hero. Leading K-pop agencies have declared war on deepfakes, saying they were collecting evidence and threatening lawsuits against their creators and distributors.向世界各地出口流行文化的韩国已成为最容易受深度伪造的色情内容伤害的国家。据美国网络安全公司Security Hero发布的《2023年深度伪造现状》研究报告，全球一半以上的深度伪造将韩国人作为攻击目标，其中大多数受害者是韩国歌手和女演员。主要的韩国流行音乐经纪公司已向深度伪造内容宣战，称他们正在收集证据，并威胁对深度伪造内容的创作者和传播者提起诉讼。Still, the problem is intensifying. The South Korean police reported 297 cases of deepfake sex crime between January and July, compared with 156 for all of 2021, when such data was first collected.尽管如此，问题仍在加剧。韩国警方已在今年1月至7月通报了297起涉及深度伪造的性犯罪案，而在首次收集此类数据的2021年，全年只通报了156起这种案件。It was not until last month, when local news media exposed the extensive traffic in deepfakes on Telegram, that President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his government to “root them out.” Critics of Mr. Yoon noted that during his 2022 campaign for the presidency, he had denied that there was structural gender-based discrimination in South Korea and had promised to abolish its ministry of gender equality.直到上个月，韩国新闻媒体曝光了Telegram上流传着大量深度伪造内容后，尹锡悦总统才下令政府“根除它们”。尹锡悦的批评者指出，他在2022年竞选总统期间曾否认韩国存在结构性的性别歧视，还承诺要废除性别平等部。News coverage of the rise in deepfakes this year led to panic among young women, many of whom deleted selfies and other personal images from their social media accounts, fearing they would be used for deepfakes. Chung Jin-kwon, who was a middle-school principal before assuming a role at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education last month, said his former school had discussed whether to omit student photos from yearbooks.有关深度伪造内容今年激增的新闻报道已在年轻女性中引起恐慌，她们中的许多人已将自拍照和其他的个人图片从社交媒体账号删除，担心这些图片会被人用去制作深度伪造内容。上个月出任首尔市教育厅厅长的郑晋权（音）曾是一所中学的校长。他说，他以前的学校已讨论了是否不再把学生照片放入学校年刊的问题。“Some teachers had already declined to have their photos there, replacing them with caricatures,” Mr. Chung said.“有些老师已经拒绝将自己的照片放入学校年刊，而是用画像代替，”郑先生说。Young people in South Korea, one of the world’s most wired countries, become tech-savvy from an early age. But critics say its school system is so focused on preparing them for the all-important college entrance exams that they aren’t taught to handle new technology in an ethical way.韩国是世界上互联网最为普及的国家之一，韩国年轻人从小就精通技术。但批评人士称，韩国的教育制度过于关注为学生参加至关重要的大学入学考试做准备，没有教他们如何用道德的方式使用新技术。“We produce exam-problem-solving machines,” Mr. Chung said. “They don’t learn values.”“我们的学校生产的是会解考题的机器，”郑先生说。“他们不学习价值观。”A Push for Tougher Laws推动制定更严格的法律Kim Ji-hyun, a Seoul city official whose team has counseled 200 teenagers implicated in digital sexual exploitation since 2019, said that some boys had used deepfakes to take revenge on ex-girlfriends — and that in some cases, girls had used them to ostracize classmates. But many young people were first drawn to deepfakes out of curiosity, Ms. Kim said.首尔市官员金智玄（音）的团队自2019年以来已为200名受数字性剥削牵连的青少年做心理辅导。她说，一些男孩曾使用深度伪造来报复前女友，还有些情况是，女孩使用这种技术来排挤同学。但金女士说，许多年轻人最初受深度伪造技术吸引是出于好奇。
Chat room operators attracted them with incentives, including Starbucks coupons, and asked them to provide photos and personal data of women they knew. Some of the Telegram channels, called “rape and humiliation rooms,” targeted individuals or women from certain schools, said Park Seong-hye, a team leader at the government-funded Women’s Human Rights Institute of Korea, who has investigated digital sex crimes and provided help to victims.运作聊天室的人用星巴克优惠券等奖励来吸引他们，让他们提供认识的女性的照片和个人数据。韩国政府资助的妇女人权研究所的团队负责人朴成惠（音）说，一些被称为“强奸和羞辱室”的Telegram频道专门针对来自某些学校的个人或女性，朴成惠曾调查过数字性犯罪案，为受害者提供过帮助。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.根据2020年颁布的法律，出于传播目的而制作露骨色情或虐待性深度伪造视频的人最高可被判处五年有期徒刑。那些试图通过传播这些内容来获取经济利益的人最高可被判处七年有期徒刑。但没有法律禁止购买、存储或观看深度伪造的内容。Investigators must have court approval to go undercover to access deepfake chat rooms, and they can only do so to investigate reports that minors have been sexually abused. The process can also be slow.调查人员需要获得法院批准才能用秘密身份进入深度伪造聊天室，而且，他们只是在收到未成年人遭到性虐待的举报后才能进行这类调查。这个过程也可能很慢。“You find a chat room on a holiday, but by the time you get court approval, it’s gone,” said Hahm Young-ok, a senior investigator of online crimes at the National Police Agency.“你在假期发现了一个聊天室，但等你得到法院批准后，它已经消失了，”国家警察局网络犯罪高级调查员咸永玉（音）说。The government has promised to push for tougher laws against buying or viewing sexually exploitative deepfakes. This month, the police investigating the latest spate of deepfakes said they had detained seven male suspects, six of them teenagers.政府已承诺推动制定更严格的法律，禁止购买或观看性剥削性的深度伪造视频。本月，调查最新一轮深度伪造事件的警方称，他们已拘留了七名男性嫌疑人，其中六人是青少年。Pornography is censored on South Korea’s internet, but people can get around the controls by using virtual private networks, and the ban is hard to enforce on social media channels. The police have indicated that they might investigate whether Telegram had abetted deepfake sex crimes. Last month, Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France and charged with a range of offenses, including enabling the distribution of child sexual abuse material.色情内容在韩国互联网上受到审查，但用户能通过VPN绕过审查，而且很难在社交媒体渠道执行禁止色情内容的法律。警方已表示，他们可能会调查Telegram是否怂恿了深度伪造的性犯罪行为。上个月，Telegram创始人帕维尔·杜罗夫在法国被捕，并被指控犯有一系列罪行，包括传播儿童性虐待材料。Telegram said in a statement that it “has been actively removing content reported from Korea that breached its terms of service and will continue to do so.”Telegram在一份声明中表示，“一直在积极删除韩国报告的违反平台服务条款的内容，并将继续这样做。”Meanwhile, the government is being pressured to force online platforms to do more to filter out content like deepfake pornography.与此同时，韩国政府正面临着迫使网络平台采取更多措施过滤内容的压力，比如深度伪造的色情。“It’s time to choose between protecting the platforms and protecting our children and adolescents,” said Lee Soo-jung, a professor of forensic psychology at Kyonggi University. “What we see happening now in 2024 was foretold back in 2020, but we have done nothing in between.”
