"10 Minutes Is Enough": Shocking Reality of Mobile ID Forgery

[Anchor]

The "Mobile Resident Registration Card Verification Service," which allows identity verification via smartphone apps, is widely used these days. However, minors were recently caught attempting to use AI to forge these IDs to enter bars. Our investigation found that it takes less than 10 minutes to create a forgery.

Reporter Dong Eunyeong has the story.

[Reporter]

Three men sitting in a bar suddenly jump up and try to flee, but the owner blocks them with his body.

On the evening of June 20, teenagers at a restaurant in Geumcheon-gu, Seoul, were caught attempting to drink alcohol after presenting forged mobile IDs.

[Jeong Sang-heon / Affected Business Owner: I told them I would check their resident registration cards. They opened an app I had never seen before and showed it to me. It looked identical. The screen looked exactly the same, but...]

Police arrived following the owner's report, but two of the individuals had already fled, and the one remaining had already deleted the app used to forge the ID.

The police confirmed that they were minors, but with no remaining evidence, they were all released with a warning.

Our reporting team used the same AI program that the teenagers showed the business owner to create a forged mobile ID ourselves.

After entering a few simple commands, a fake ID was completed in no time, allowing us to customize the photo, name, and date of birth.

This is a mobile ID created in just 10 minutes using an AI program.

When compared to a real ID, it is difficult to find any significant difference.

Unlike in the past, when people would present someone else's physical ID or use Photoshop to edit photos, forgery methods have become much more sophisticated.

[Ahn Ji-sung / Lawyer: In the past, you had to commission a professional, but now it is at a level where a student can do it alone. If you just enter the right prompts, the crime becomes easy.]

For mobile IDs, authenticity can be verified by scanning a QR code, but many business owners are too busy or are unaware of this method.

[Jo Han-na / General Manager of Yeonmu Alley-type Shopping District in Suwon: When older business owners are shown a mobile ID, they just think, "Oh, it's real," and accept it... If these verification apps were more widely distributed, I think the people in the shopping district would actively use them.]

Forging an ID in 10 minutes using AI is a criminal offense, punishable under laws such as the Act on the Forgery of Official Documents and the Resident Registration Act.

Reported by Dong Eunyeong | Video by Joo Yong-jin and Kim Seung-tae | Video Editing by Lee So-young
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.