This captured image of a "deepfake map" shows hundreds of schools in Korea allegedly affected by deepfake crime. Captured from Internet

As reports of deepfake sex crimes spread in Korea, a "deepfake map," which displays the current status of allegedly affected schools has gone viral here.

The map shows the locations of middle and high schools and universities in Korea that are believed to have been affected by deepfake crimes with the list of such schools in the upper right corner.

The website hosting the map also linked visitors to the website of the Seoul Metropolitan Government Security Support Center, which provides anonymous counseling to victims of digital sex crimes.

As of Thursday, over 3 million online users visited the site and more than 500 schools were registered on the map. The site has been temporarily inaccessible since Friday.

The deepfake map creator is known to be a male student who is a high school freshman.

In an interview with local media, he said he was inspired by a map that tracked infected people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent incident at his school led him to create the map, which took him only two hours.

"I heard there are about five students who have been victimized at my school. When I learned I knew one of the victims, I realized this was a real problem, so I decided to make the map."

As the website went viral, the number of users increased rapidly, as well as what appeared to be distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Although he has been updating the map from hundreds of emails and social media reports, he said he has been unable to confirm their veracity. However, his goal is to raise awareness of deepfake crimes through the map, he said.

Six out of 10 victims of deepfake crimes here investigated by police over the past three years were minors, according to data released Friday.

Police data submitted to Rep. Yang Bu-nam of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) showed that 59.8 percent of the 527 victims of deepfake crimes reported to the police between 2021 and 2023 were teenagers.

This is a significantly larger proportion than other age groups, such as those in their 20s at 32.1 percent, 30s at 5.3 percent and 40s at 1.1 percent.

The number of minors affected by fake videos increased 3.4 times from 53 in 2021 to 81 in 2022 and 181 in 2023.

The share of teenagers among all victims fell from 64.6 percent in 2021 to 52.9 percent in 2022 and then rose back to 62.0 percent last year.

The proportion of teenagers among all suspects charged with fake video crimes increased from 65.4 percent in 2021 and 61.2 percent in 2022 to 75.8 percent in 2023. This year's January-July period is also high at 73.6 percent.

But while deepfake crimes spread among teenagers, there have been no government measures, and they have been relying only on post-punishment through investigative agencies rather than prevention through education.

The problem is that it is difficult to investigate such offenses.

According to the National Police Agency, the arrest rate for deepfake crimes over the past three years stood at 47.4 percent in 2021, 46.9 percent in 2022 and 51.7 percent in 2023. Between January and July, the figure stood at 49.5 percent.

Notably, the police are pushing to upgrade deepfake detection software and launch undercover investigations to boost arrests.

Deepfake detection software developed in March determines the authenticity of deepfake content within 10 minutes with an 80 percent detection rate.