4% of teens asked to send sexual images: survey

As concerns over digital sex crimes rise in South Korea, 3.9 percent of middle and high school students nationwide have been asked to send or share sexual images, according to a state survey.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced on Thursday the results of the 2023 survey on children and young people's awareness and experience of sexual exploitation. The survey is conducted every three years in accordance with Article 53 of the Youth Sexual Protection Act.

The survey was conducted among 4,757 middle and high school students nationwide. 14.4% of respondents reported being involuntarily exposed to sexual images of minors using the Internet. The most common source of exposure came from social media, which accounted for 68.3% of such exposure routes.

Four in 100 people have been asked to send or share sexual images of themselves. This was more likely to be from someone they only knew online than from an offline acquaintance. The study also found that girls were more likely to have this experience, with 5.8% of women surveyed having had such an experience, while 2.2% of boys had been asked to send or share sexual images.

Overall, 2.7 percent of sexual images were taken by someone without their consent, and more people were forced or coerced by someone they knew without their consent (1.7 percent) than by a stranger in a public place (1.1 percent).

The sexual image was shared or distributed in 1.1 percent of cases.

In contrast, 0.6% of respondents were threatened or coerced into sharing sexual images. The most common type of threat or coercion was “offline encounter,” which accounted for 24.7%, followed by requests for additional sexual images (23.9%), interference in daily life (17.3%), requests for sexual images or videos from acquaintances (14.4%), and requests for sexual relations (12.3%).