Democratic lawmaker introduces bill to make media literacy education a state responsibility

Park Ju-min, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker representing Seoul's Eunpyeong-gap district, announced Thursday that he had introduced a bill to establish a national framework for media literacy education, aimed at ensuring all citizens can critically understand and responsibly use media.

Park said that as smartphones and social media have made media consumption part of daily life, distinguishing fact from manipulation has grown increasingly difficult. AI-generated video, audio and images have reached a point where they are nearly indistinguishable from reality, he added, fueling a rapid rise in new forms of harm such as deepfake sex crimes.

Data from the Korean National Police Agency show the number of juvenile suspects in deepfake sex crime cases surged from 52 in 2022 to 548 in 2024. A focused crackdown confirmed that 92 percent of suspects in deepfake sex crime cases were in their teens or twenties. Yet a Ministry of Education survey found that middle and high school students ranked "pranks" as the top cause of such crimes, pointing to a significant gap in risk awareness.

The bill lays out an implementation framework and legal basis for comprehensive national support of media literacy education.

Key provisions include establishing a media literacy education committee under the prime minister to draw up five-year master plans and coordinate policy across ministries; incorporating media literacy into school curricula and teacher training and certification programs; guaranteeing education across all stages of life; institutionalizing instruction on identifying AI-generated content; providing tailored support for digitally vulnerable groups, out-of-school youth and youth from multicultural families; and conducting a national survey of media literacy levels every two years with an annual report to the National Assembly.

"What we need now is not just the ability to read, but the ability to discern," Park said. "The capacity to evaluate media is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and the state must take responsibility for cultivating it."