Watchdog blocks doctored video of Yoon as elections loom

Politics

Published: 25 Feb. 2024, 17:22 Updated: 25 Feb. 2024, 17:31

Watchdog blocks doctored video of Yoon as elections loom

An official of the Korea Communications Standards Commission goes over material regarding a manipulated video of President Yoon Suk Yeol at a review meeting in western Seoul on Friday morning. [NEWS1]

Korea's media watchdog decided Friday to block a doctored video of President Yoon Suk Yeol admitting involvement in corruption.

The video went viral with the April general elections approaching.

Though some suspected the video of being a "deepfake," its creators misleadingly spliced together clips from Yoon's speech in 2022.

The state-run Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) on Friday unanimously decided to block using and streaming of the clip on social media.

Although the title of the video makes clear its artificial origin, the media watchdog warned the clip could cause "visible social chaos."

The police asked the KCSC to block and delete the circulating video, according to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Thursday.

The police believe the video producer could face defamation charges.

"The video [cross-posted] on various platforms appear to have originated from an identical link [and source]," the police said.

The police will expand the scope of its investigation to see whether the video violates election laws.

On Friday, the presidential office expressed concerns over the video's spread.

"Though some media outlets called the video political satire or justified its use because it was labeled 'artificially crafted,' this runs counter to media ethics to combat disinformation," presidential spokesperson Kim Soo-kyung said in a briefing.

"The deceptively edited video is being reproduced on the internet without notifying viewers that it's a fabrication, and this spread should be halted," Kim added.

The fake video has appeared on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook since the end of last year.

Screen capture images of the deceptively edited video titled,″Artificially crafted confession speech of President Yoon.″ The subtitles say 'I, Yoon Suk Yeol, enforced and executed laws that inflicted pain on people.″ [SCREEN CAPTURE/TIKTOK]

The approximately 46-second-long clip starts with Yoon saying, "I, Yoon Suk Yeol, enforced and executed laws that inflicted pain on people."

"The incapable and crooked Yoon administration indulged in privilege, unfair practices and corruption all the time," Yoon continued in the video.

"Tied to ideologies far from common sense, I ruined Korea and put people in grief and anguish," he says.

The video ends with Yoon saying, "In my dictionary, people's livelihoods do not exist while political retaliation does."

Yoon's mouth and voice perfectly correspond with the speech throughout the video, fooling many viewers into believing it's real.

Though the video was not a deepfake, people nonetheless expressed concern about technology's ability to manipulate visual and audio material to such a convincing extent.

AI-generated Yoon Suk Yeol presented by the People Power Party in 2021 [PEOPLE POWER PARTY TV]

AI-generated clones of Yoon have already made several politically consequential appearances.

The conservative People Power Party (PPP) debuted an AI-generated Yoon at the launch of the election campaign committee in December 2021, three months ahead of the presidential election.

The party also utilized a virtual Yoon to promote and explain his election pledges in cyberspace.

Ahead of the June 1 local elections in 2022, a fake video of Yoon endorsing Park Young-il, a mayoral candidate of Namhae County representing the PPP, circulated through social media.

Daegu Election Commission's officials review online content to find election law violations on the internet on Feb. 8 in Daegu. [YONHAP]

As the April general election looms, the KCSC and legal enforcers have kept a keen eye on political deepfake ads.

The National Assembly passed revisions to the Public Official Election Act last December that banned the use of AI-generated deepfake audiovisual material for 90 days before the voting date of the April general elections.

Violators face up to seven years in prison or a fine between 10 million won ($7,518) and 50 million won.

The National Election Commission suspected that some 129 posts violated the bill by using deepfake technology to mislead voters between Jan. 29 and Feb. 16.

Political deepfakes are a pervasive problem worldwide.

In the United States, a fake robocall of U.S. President Joe Biden swayed recipients not to vote in the upcoming Democratic Party's primary election in New Hampshire.

In Slovakia, an AI-generated audio recording with a pro-western candidate's voice was released days before the parliamentary election last September. In the recording, the candidate talked about buying votes from the country's Roma minority, according to Bloomberg.

BY LEE SOO-JUNG, KIM SUN-MI [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]