ISTANBUL

South Korean police have detained more than 3,000 individuals in connection with online sex crimes in the past year, with nearly half of them being teens, officials said Sunday.

Between November 2024 and October 2025, the National Police Agency (NPA) identified 3,411 cases of online sexual abuse, leading to the detention of 3,557 people. Of those, 221 were formally arrested.

In terms of crime categories, deepfake-related offenses made up 35.2% of the total, followed by videos of children and adolescents at 34.3%, and illegal recordings at 19.4%, according to Yonhap News.

Nearly half of the suspects, 1,761, were teens, while 1,228 were in their 20s, and 468 and 169 were in their 30s and 40s, respectively.

More than 90% of those arrested for deepfake crimes were teens or young adults, likely due to their greater familiarity with digital tools, said the NPA.

The number of arrests for online sex crimes increased 47.8% compared to the previous year, according to the NPA.