Authorities, journalists, and social media users have recently identified numerous chat groups where members create and share sexually explicit "deepfake" images, including some of underage girls.

 Deepfakes, generated using artificial intelligence, often combine a real person's face with a fake body. In response to these discoveries, South Korea's media regulator is holding an emergency meeting.

Over the past week, the proliferation of these chat groups, linked to individual schools and universities across the country, was discovered on the social media app Telegram.

Users, primarily teenage students, would upload photos of people they knew—both classmates and teachers—and other users would then transform them into sexually explicit deepfake images.

These revelations follow the arrest of Telegram's Russian-born founder, Pavel Durov, on Saturday, amid allegations of child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud on the encrypted messaging app.

On Tuesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed authorities to "thoroughly investigate and address these digital sex crimes to eradicate them."

"Recently, deepfake videos targeting an unspecified number of people have been circulating rapidly on social media," President Yoon stated at a cabinet meeting.

"The victims are often minors, and the perpetrators are mostly teenagers." To foster a "healthy media culture," President Yoon emphasised the need for better education for young men.

"Although it is often dismissed as 'just a prank,' it is a criminal act that exploits technology to hide behind the shield of anonymity," he said.