"I'm Here for an Inspection": Hidden Body Filming and Deepfakes Target Teachers and Students

A man in Busan who illegally accessed school staff accounts for five years to steal personal photos and videos, which he used to create and store sexually explicit deepfake materials, has been sentenced to prison.

The Busan District Court sentenced a man in his 30s, identified as A, who was indicted and detained on nine charges including violations of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, and the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes, to three years in prison yesterday (August 21).

In addition, the court ordered him to complete 40 hours of a sexual violence treatment program and imposed a 10-year employment restriction on institutions related to children, adolescents, and people with disabilities.

Working as an employee for an IT equipment maintenance company, A was accused of stealing approximately 220,000 personal photos and videos from the PCs of 194 school staff members in the Busan area from July 2021 to September of last year.

When staff members who requested PC maintenance stepped away, A accessed cloud accounts such as Google Photos and NAVER MYBOX that were logged in, stealing photo and video files by saving them to a USB drive. He was sent to trial on charges of subsequently using these files to create 20 deepfake videos.

Furthermore, it was revealed that A illegally filmed parts of the staff members' bodies 45 times within schools, and also downloaded and stored child and adolescent sexual exploitation materials as well as illegally filmed content from adult websites.

The videos stored by A, including deepfakes, totaled around 500, with the overall capacity of the problematic materials reaching 405 gigabytes.

The court stated, "The nature of the crime is very grave as the defendant committed offenses against an unspecified number of women, as well as teachers and students at the schools where he worked," adding, "The victims are likely to have suffered extreme psychological stress."

However, the court explained its sentencing reasons by noting that he admitted to all charges and is a first-time offender with no prior criminal record.

Reported by Kim Taewon | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.