American rage-bait content creator Johnny Somali has been sentenced to six months in prison in Seoul for a deluge of crimes, including unsolicited use of deepfakes and causing public disorder.

The verdict arrived on April 15th for a range of crimes committed, including making viral videos of dancing in front of and taunting a statue of a "comfort woman," spreading deepfakes of himself kissing a local influencer, and generally causing a public nuisance.

In November 2024, Somali went viral for disgracefully performing lap dances and mimicking sexual acts on a statue of a “comfort woman,” which gave the streamer an irredeemable reputation in South Korea.

The statue is there to commemorate the woes of South Korean women who suffered sexual crimes committed by Japanese soldiers around the time of the Second World War.

And in court on Tuesday, a Korean judge charged Johnny Somali with a six-month sentence, along with 20 days of pre-trial detention and a five-year ban from working with minors or the disabled.

There are other offenses on the table as well, which some may have missed due to the litany of crimes that Somali has committed. However, there are various factors at play in the relatively light sentence he received.

Legal professor and digital rights advocate Kyung Sin Park told Cybernews:

“Although there is no doubt that his hate speech against the victims of military sexual slavery drew the most attention in Korea, most local media outlets are missing out on the fact that the sexual deepfakes law (article 14-2 of Sexual Crimes Special Punishment Act) carries the heftiest punishment.”

So, even though the most scandalous incident seems to be Somali’s outrageous disrespect to the South Korean monument, there is more to unpack when considering the court's sentencing.

A spree of misconduct

This legal case is far from being an isolated incident. Also in November 2024, Somali committed a flurry of toxic crimes, aimed at rage-baiting the South Korean public.

At the top of the pile was a deepfaked livestream of him kissing popular Korean influencer BongBong_IRL and claiming that she was his girlfriend.

Here's a clip of Johnny Somali falsely accusing Bongbong_IRL of being his girlfriend and showing the deepfake videos. pic.twitter.com/iL9XMGzCx3

undefined k7 (@k7bb7) November 1, 2024

As a result of this, BongBong suffered on multiple counts, namely in receiving a barrage of harassment online, due to the deepfakes, as well as having to take down her own YouTube content.

And, despite the victim dropping the charges, it is the responsibility of the South Korean state to prosecute deepfake perpetrators (came into effect September 2024), especially of an explicit nature, for which Somali’s qualify.

To add to the growing list of misconduct, were incidents of deliberately spilling ramen water in a convenience store and shouting sexist comments at a female employee.

Somali has also previously sung the North Korean national anthem in public.

Legal nuance for shameful behavior

According to Professor Park, as the legislature examined the case, they would most likely have considered “profit motivation as an aggravating factor,” despite the absence of severe harm to the victims.

Park points out that the punishment for such an offense usually carries a “maximum 7 years for nonconsensually created or edited sexual deepfakes… and a minimum of 3 years if it is done for profit.”

The professor also mentioned that there may have been “extenuating circumstances” in that Somali didn’t try to run away (even though he had a travel ban), and that the complexity of the judge's verdict would need to be examined further.

The judge at the April 15th hearing articulated the reasoning by announcing:

“The defendant’s disregard for the public order is severe, as he repeatedly committed crimes against an unspecified number of victims to generate profit through YouTube broadcasts and even broadcast the details of the offenses, raising concerns that similar crimes may be incited.”

Such a scandal is nothing new to Somali, as he has also committed numerous incidents of abusive and unsettling behavior, particularly in the countries of Japan and Israel in 2023 and 2024, for which he largely grew his notoriety.

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