First France, now South Korea — Telegram’s legal woes only grow. Here’s why

Following the recent arrest of its founder in France, Telegram is now facing potential legal trouble in South Korea.

The country’s chief police investigator announced a preliminary exploring the potential role of the instant messaging platform in inciting sexual crimes, according to a report by the local Yonhap news agency.

This comes amid South Korea’s efforts to tackle the spread of deep-fake pornography targeting young women, including teenagers, in the country.

The investigation is another major legal challenge for Telegram after its founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France on August 24 for alleged offenses related to the messaging app.

Durov, the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire, was arrested by French authorities following a preliminary investigation into Telegram that began on July 8.

Similar to the South Korean investigation, so were the French authorities investigating the platform’s role in the distribution of child pornography, as well as in facilitating organized crime, drug trafficking and fraud.

Durov was reportedly accused of failing to mitigate such criminal activities on the platform. The telegram said to a statement published on social media platform X that it abides by EU laws and that Durov had “nothing to hide”.

According to Yonhap’s report on Monday, Woo Jong-soo, head of the National Bureau of Investigation, drew connections between their case and France and said there were plans to cooperate with their French counterparts and other international organizations.

The investigation could be complicated by the fact that Telegram does not readily provide investigative data, such as account information, to any government investigative agencies, including those in the US, Woo was quoted as saying.

Telegram’s refusal to share information with investigators when required by law has also been noted in the French research.

While Durov’s arrest has been seen as an unprecedented move, the platform has recently faced legal scrutiny Brazil and Germany as well as concerns about illegal and harmful content.

While Telegram has maintained that its content moderation practices are “within industry standards and constantly improving”, certain features of the platform have made it the focus of scrutiny worldwide.

By only requiring users to provide a phone number for registration and offering the ability to hold end-to-end encrypted conversations through a “secret chats” feature, the app offers a high degree of anonymity.

These anonymous features have long attracted illegal actors such as fraudsters and even extremist groups to the platform. Now, in South Korea, they are attracting deepfake porn distributors.

Deepfakes are video, audio or images of a real person that have been digitally altered and manipulated. They have become increasingly prominent amid the emergence of genetic AI technology.

South Korean police are investigating eight automated programs that create deep fake pornography for Telegram groups, along with chat rooms responsible for circulating such content, according to a Yonhap report.

The searches come amid mounting pressure on authorities to respond to a growing number exhibitions detailing how Telegram groups, some as large as 220,000 membershave been used to share sexually exploitative images of students from local universities, high schools, and even high schools.

This is not the first time that Telegram has been at the center of such a scandal in South Korea.

In 2020, South Korean authorities arrested one of its leaders an online network that used Telegram for extortion and force women and children to share sexual images of themselves. No legal action was taken against Telegram at the time.

In response to Durov’s arrest, Chris Beer, consumer and technology analyst at GWI, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” that it was unclear how far authorities would be willing to go to regulate and crack down on Telegram if and other messaging and social media apps could also come under scrutiny.

Beer added that there is still a tension between consumers’ desire to have their free speech protected and also government oversight to protect them from harmful content.