Seoul: South Korean authorities said on Monday that police have arrested more than 3,000 people suspected of online sex crimes over the past year, nearly half of them teenagers. South Korea’s National Police Agency (NPA) detected a total of 3,411 online sex crimes between November 2014 and October 2015, arresting a total of 3,557 suspects, of whom 221 were formally arrested.

According to Thai News Agency, by type of case, 35.2 percent were crimes using deepfake technology, 34.3 percent were child or teen pornography, and 19.4 percent were illegally recorded materials. By age, nearly half of the suspects, or 1,761, were teenagers; 1,228 were in their 20s, 468 were in their 30s, and 169 were in their 40s. The NPA stated that more than 90 percent of suspects in crimes using deepfake technology were teenagers or people in their 20s, as they are more familiar with using digital tools.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NAC) reported that the number of people arrested for online sex crimes in South Korea between November and October rose 47.8 percent from the same period the previous year, due to a sharp increase in deepfakes cases in the second half of the year and increased penalties for crimes using deepfakes.