South Korea has deployed an AI system to detect and help remove online child sexual abuse material, increasing the daily detection rate nearly tenfold, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said on Tuesday.
The National Centre for Digital Sexual Crime Response introduced the AI-powered system in April to tackle evolving digital sex crimes, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing the ministry.
Between April and September, the system detected 96,210 cases of child sexual abuse material and sent removal requests to online platforms.
Daily detections averaged 202.1 per monitoring worker, compared with 20.8 last year.
The round-the-clock system monitors social media and random chat applications, flagging suspected illegal content for human review before removal requests are submitted.
The ministry plans to expand monitoring to 139 online platforms next year, up from 74 this year, while improving detection accuracy through additional training.
The centre, established in 2018, supported 10,637 victims last year, including 3,052 under the age of 20.
South Korean police earlier detained 3,557 suspects in online sexual abuse cases between November 2024 and October 2025, with teenagers accounting for nearly half. Deepfake-related offences represented 35.2 percent of the cases.
