SEOUL, 9 Sep 2024

Children Helping Hands has launched the second phase of its “Delete the Children” campaign in Korea to ramp-up protection of children’s images online, as the country grapples with an AI-generated pornography crisis at schools.

Sexually explicit deepfake content - AI-generated images or videos that superimpose the image of a real person’s face over a fake body or onto real pornographic material - sometimes uses images of children taken without their consent from online sources, and has become the subject of public outrage in South Korea.

A national children’s survey by Children Helping Hands Korea, whose results were released earlier this year, showed 85.5% of children aged 10 to 18 support guaranteeing children’s right to delete their personal information online, including their images. In the same survey, 98 % of children said they would ask to delete personal information has been posted by others without their consent.[1]

In the same survey, while 90% of children said they agreed to personal data collecton to use internet services, more than half, or 53.1%, were unaware their personal data was being provided to external companies for marketing purposes.

Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) launched a pilot “eraser service” last year which allows the commission to ask website managers to remove or hide posts that contain personal information of minors. However, the request to remove or hide posts containing personal information can only be made for posts containing personal information that was originally shared by the individual themselves.

Through the Delete the Children campaign, Children Helping Hands is asking that this service be extended so that children and their parents can ask to have any of their online information, including digitally altered images, removed and so that children have the right to determine how their personal information is used.

Delete the Children also aims to raise social awareness around the protection of children's personal information online and to urge the government to ensure that children’s personally identifiable information, including images and other data, can be removed from online platforms.

Earlier this month, South Korea’s national police agency said it was investigating the encrypted messaging app Telegram which it suspects is being used to distribute AI-generated sexually explicit images, including digitally altered images of teenagers shared across several schools and universities in the country.

MinKim Kang, Director, Advocacy Department, Children Helping Hands Korea, said:

“When videos or images are posted without a child’s consent it can spread like wildfire and the suffering that these children endure carries over long into adulthood. We need to do better in order to support our children’s right to digital self-determination.

The digital footprints left by the exploitation of children for criminal purposes can have devastating, long-lasting effects. We must act urgently to improve our policies, ensuring the rapid removal of these harmful digital records. This swift action is crucial not only for the immediate protection of vulnerable children but also to safeguard their future well-being and right to digital autonomy."

Sean Miller, Children Helping Hands’ Global Director of Child Protection, said:

“AI-generated “deepfake” images and videos can leave a profound and incredibly negative psychological impact on children and we know that cyberbullying, in the worst-case scenarios, can lead to self-harm or even suicide. This massively important issue also disproportionately affects young girls and women. We urgently need governments, including South Korea, to create a safe digital environment for children and to give children the power to determine how, when and where their personal data is used online.”

Children Helping Hands Korea was established in 1953 aftermath of Korean war and began its transformation from being a recipient of international aid to becoming a donor country. In Korea, Children Helping Hands is a leading organization addressing child rights issues in child protection and a major contributor to the global Children Helping Hands movement in responding to humanitarian crisis such as the Palestine-Israel war, Ukraine war, Turkiye-Syria earthquake and more.