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A growing number of students and teachers are asking to have their faces removed from school yearbooks. Photos that once served as keepsakes of school days have become a source of concern, as they can be used as raw material for deepfake crimes in which artificial intelligence grafts a person's face onto pornographic images.
Teens Account for Half of Deepfake Victims, Prompting Yearbook Opt-Outs
Schools are growing more wary of deepfake crimes in part because the harm is concentrated among teenagers.
According to the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute, the Advocacy Center for Online Sexual Abuse Victims supported 1,807 victims of deepfake sex crimes over the year from Aug. 26, 2024, to Aug. 25 last year. Of those, 839, or 46.4% of the total, were aged 19 or younger.
Teenagers also make up a large share of offenders. Among those caught for deepfake crimes from November 2024 through October last year, 895 were teenagers, accounting for 61.8% of all age groups.
As a result, schools have been taking a series of steps to keep yearbook photos from spreading online or being misused to create deepfakes. Some let students choose whether their photos are published, while others collect written pledges before the yearbook is produced promising not to use the images without permission.
A middle school in Jeonbuk State told students last year that anyone who did not want an individual photo published in the yearbook could raise the matter separately with their homeroom teacher. Students were also asked to sign pledges not to create or distribute deepfake videos or images.
A high school in Busan sent a notice to families last December saying yearbook photos and videos must not be illegally manipulated or casually shared on social media. An elementary school in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, drew up a "pledge to prevent yearbook deepfakes" the same month, promising not to use photos without consent or to alter or manipulate them with AI.
Sexual Images Made From Five Teachers' Faces, Circulated With Their Names and Schools
Those concerns have already translated into actual crimes. On the 16th, Judge Lee Chang-kyung of the Incheon District Court's Criminal Division 1 sentenced a teenager identified as A to a term of one year and six months to two years in prison and ordered the teenager taken into custody. A had been indicted on charges including editing false video material under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes.
A was sent to trial on charges of using AI in August 2024, while still a middle school student, to graft teachers' faces onto nude photographs and then distribute them on social media.
Including cases added to the indictment during the trial, investigators found that A had produced deepfake photos and videos of 11 people, including five teachers, on 35 occasions. A was also found to have made dozens of composite photos of six people, including a female middle school student who attended the same taekwondo academy, and to have provided some of them to the operator of a Telegram chatroom devoted to so-called "acquaintance humiliation."
The personal details of the teachers who were targeted were also exposed. According to the court, the composite material A distributed carried not only the teachers' faces but also their real names, ages, schools and the subjects they taught, and some included mobile phone numbers and Instagram accounts.
The court said the conduct "reduced teachers who educate students to tools for satisfying distorted desires and degraded them sexually, making the offense serious and highly deserving of public condemnation," noting that the teachers affected have been in psychological treatment for extended periods or are suffering considerable trauma.
Targeted Teachers Also Asked to Pose; Union Says Schools Should Not Even Ask Why
Even so, some schools have been asking staff to sit for individual and group photographs for yearbooks, according to a teachers' union.
The Incheon Teachers' Union issued a statement on the 22nd urging the Incheon Metropolitan Office of Education to send an official notice to schools allowing staff to decide for themselves whether to be photographed and whether their photos appear in yearbooks.
The union said some schools press staff to take part with remarks such as "let's leave behind some memories" or "don't spoil the mood." Because of that atmosphere, the union said, some teachers have complained that they had no choice but to join group photo sessions even though they did not want to.
In particular, two teachers targeted in the deepfake case involving A, who was recently sentenced to prison, were also asked by their schools to sit for yearbook photos, the union said. Even if the schools may not have known what the teachers had been through, the union argued, blanket requests that fail to consider a victim's mental distress should be avoided.
The union called for procedures that would let staff refuse to be photographed or to appear in the yearbook without having to disclose that they were victims of deepfake crimes or explain why they are declining. It also said staff should not face any disadvantage for not taking part.
Sung Min-jin, secretary-general of the Incheon Teachers' Union, said: "If the system requires someone to explain that they were victimized, or give a comparable reason, in order to decline being photographed, that can only inflict another wound on teachers who were targeted. Preserving memories must not become something that forces someone to disclose that they were harmed."
