[RightsCon 2025] Emotional Activism: Re-humanizing Digital Spaces and Narratives for Collective Care Action

On Feb. 26th, 2025, Kyoungmi (Kimmy) Oh participated in the workshop, “Emotional Activism: Re-humanizing Digital Spaces and Narratives for Collective Care Action” at the RightsCon. Here are the workshop theme and Kimmy’s speech. 

Thematics: “Finding the Human in Human Rights”

Problem: “Dehumanization by  oppressive forces and dehumanization in narratives, responses, and interventions of progressive forces”

Contexts for the discussion on the topic:

• Dehumanization through AI (Trivialization and minimization  of human production and products; generative AI facilitated misinformation & violence)
• Dehumanization in Social Narratives (academization, absence of the human and human condition in public discourse)
• Dehumanization in Social Behaviors (Minimization of stake in change-making, automation and siloing of actions, individual vs. collective action)
• Dehumanization through the Removal of Bodily Autonomy
• Dehumanization of Social Movements (NGOization, formalization, project bias)

Re-humanizing experiences/responses:

• Thinking through technological harms to champion care as a first line of defense, and building new frameworks and approaches to care-making (Nishant)
• Responding to dehumanizing narratives with a re-humanizing narrative approach of creative resistance, radical empathy and disruptive kindness in art and collective activism in the Philippines (Andrei)
• Building a narrative-informed, human-centered social behavior change community of practice among human rights defenders (Mich/Dar)
• Creating care conditions for women and young girls to access abortion medication in conservative South Korea, in collaboration with Women on Web (Kimmy)

Here’s Kimmy’s speech.

Let’s start with the Deepfake incident in South Korea. Women’s nude bodies have moved beyond Playboy magazines and become an open source that can create a virtual currency, making up a portion of deepfake datasets. A report titled State of Deepfakes was published last year by a cybersecurity company called Security Hero. It reported that 53% of women captured in deepfake pornography are Korean singers and actors, the most frequently targeted group. In Korea, in October 2024, an incident occurred in which a deepfake illegal sexual exploitation material was mass-produced and distributed by males who created the telegram channel, the so-called “acquaintance humiliating room”. Men of various ages, from teenagers to 30s, requested nude images of women, regardless of whether they were their mothers, sisters teachers, or friends, and the channel administrator created the images using deepfakes and sold them for a small amount of money. Those who created and sold the images intended to purchase drugs or make money for entertainment, and those who purchased the images intended to confirm their sense of superiority by insulting women or to avoid being excluded from peers for whom such malicious acts were part of the culture. The nude images of women were the result of pornography or illegal filming. The faces were secretly filmed or taken from social media.

Let’s move to the abortion issue. In South Korea abortion has been decriminalized since 2019. However, people who seek safe abortion conditions that fit their situation are still having a hard time. Women still have difficulty finding reliable official information and medical institutions where they can receive safe abortions. Discriminatory language and behavior rooted in the stigma surrounding abortion, as well as the high cost of abortion procedures, were also pointed out as problems. In addition, abortion pills such as Mifepristone and Misoprostol, which are listed on the WHO’s list of essential medicines, are still not approved for distribution by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, so even medical institutions are using off-labeled Misoprostol or alternative drugs and relying heavily on the procedure.

So Korean women who cannot obtain abortion pills domestically have been relying on abortion-inducing drugs distributed by Women On Web. However, when the Korea Communications Standards Commission, the censorship governmental body of South Korea, blocked the site because it was distributing abortion pills that are not distributed in Korea, women lost the way to safely have an abortion. 

The Internet has changed almost every aspect of our lives. 

However, there are things that do not change even in the space of the Internet. A representative example would be the status of women and their sexuality. Although it is still not perfect, compared to the past, women’s social status in reality has improved. However, we dare not say that the Internet accurately reflects reality. On the Internet, Korean women are targets of sexual exploitation, unable to make choices about their own lives. 

Women are even unable to share part of their lives going against patriarchy. 

In August 2024,  a woman in her 36th week of pregnancy shared the experience of having an abortion online. This spread quickly and caused huge controversy. Then the police and the Ministry of Health and Welfare threatened to investigate the woman, doctor, nurses, and other people involved in the procedure for murder. Korean law does not consider a fetus a person, so murder cannot be applied. But they tried to make this a murder case and fanned the flames. The Ministry of Health and Welfare is a government agency directly involved in the designation and introduction of essential drugs for abortion pills but has neglected the introduction of abortion medication since abortion was decriminalized. However, when this incident occurred, they were quicker than any other government agency to step forward and were the most active in punishing women and medical professionals for murder. 

Open Net has been responding to the case of the Korean government censorship agency blocking the Women On Web site since 2021. Women On Web has been distributing abortion pills to women from various countries who want to have an abortion. The Korea Communications Standards Commission, a Korean censorship agency, blocked the site because WomenOnWeb distributed drugs that were not available in Korea. Open Net considers the Korea Communications Standards Commission’s blocking of the Women On Web site to be an infringement on women’s sexual and reproductive rights and an infringement on the freedom of expression of the international non-profit organization Women On Web, and has been campaigning to lift the site blocking order. We have filed an administrative lawsuit together. We have also conducted a signature drive and campaign to lift the site blocking. We have all lost the administrative lawsuit and are currently preparing a constitutional appeal.

To address TFGBV like the Telegram incident, I would like to propose the idea of platform diversity. When the deepfake incident broke out on Telegram, school principals and teachers kindly advised the teenage victims to delete all their facial photos from social media. We all know that it doesn’t work. To enhance the digital rights of socially marginalized groups, securing platform diversity is just as important as emphasizing platform accountability. 

In an internet ecosystem primarily driven by profit-making platforms, users have naturally been positioned as consumers. Under these conditions, boycotting emerges as the most powerful means for users to actively assert their rights. For platform operators, whose growth and survival rely heavily on economies of scale, a collective and organized withdrawal by users poses a significant threat.

A notable case in South Korea occurred in 2022 when Meta attempted to mandate personal data collection for all users to provide personalized services. However, after a strong boycott declaration from users, the company was forced to retract its policy.

To me, this is still just an idea, but I plan to develop it in the future. If I have a chance to share it with you, like today, I will update it. Thank you for listening.

Korean version text