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South Korea’s Yoon accused of using ‘fake news’ crackdown to gag dissent ahead of polls

  • The government has slammed a fictionalised video that depicts President Yoon admitting to incompetence, saying it amounts to fake news
  • Officials have in recent months warned of the dangers of AI-generated deepfake videos, but critics say the crackdown is a guise to target free speech ahead of elections

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South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. Photo: Yonhap/AFP
South Korea’s crackdown on a satirical and fictionalised compilation video that depicted President Yoon Suk-yeol admitting to incompetence has sparked accusations from critics that the government is stifling free speech ahead of a key election.

The video, shared on social media in recent months, was initially and erroneously reported by local media to be an AI-generated “deepfake”, and later found to have been pieced together with clips from Yoon’s 2022 presidential election campaign speech.

“I, Yoon Suk-yeol, have been enforcing laws that harass our nation,” the 46-second fabricated video featured him saying. “I ruined our country and made its people suffer by clinging onto an ideology that deviates from common sense.”

Titled “President Yoon’s Fictionalised Sincere Confession Speech”, the clip went viral after being posted on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok by an anonymous creator.

In the process of being spread online, the full title identifying the video as a fictionalised work was often dropped, causing both lawmakers and the news media to speculate that it might be a deepfake video.

After it emerged the video was a fictionalised compilation, some media outlets began describing it as satire, to the ruling party’s displeasure.

“We express serious concerns over the fact that certain outlets are labelling the false and fabricated video as a satirical video, and reporting it is acceptable because it has been marked as fake,” presidential spokeswoman Kim Soo-kyung said during a press briefing.

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