An official at the state-funded Advocacy Center for Online Sexual Abuse Victims said Friday that the center, tasked with removing illegal pornography online, will soon officially hire two more employees, but highlighted the need to increase its workforce at a faster pace to tackle surging digital sex crimes.

The hiring decision comes as the center affiliated with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family struggles with a chronic staffing shortage and follows the National Assembly's passage of a bill aimed to enhance the legal authority of the center, late last month.

"Two were additionally hired this time, but (staffing at the center) remains insufficient. Every year we also get two or three part-time employees, but this lacks in efficiency considering the time and cost of training we have to put in," said Park Seong-hye, team manager of the center's deletion support team.

According to Park, two additional full-time employees will officially join the center early next year, bringing the number of full-time staff working at the center to 26. The center has been annually hiring an average of two full-time staff members in recent years by changing the contracts of part-time employees to full-time.

One of these new employees will be responsible for handling cross-border cooperation to remove videos distributed on platforms with overseas servers, while the other will manage the center’s video removal system. Employees at the center are also tasked with the deletion of deepfake pornography videos, among other illegal content tied to digital sex crimes.

Echoing Park's sentiment, critics argue the latest expansion is insufficient given the center’s heavy workload and the anticipated increase in digital sex crimes involving artificial intelligence.

An official at the Gender and Equality Ministry, who requested anonymity, said that "there is a need for the center to be funneled with a stable workforce more frequently."

Demand for the center's services has surged in recent years, with digital sex crimes becoming increasingly more rampant across the country.

Since its establishment in 2018, the center has processed the removal of 915,160 illegal content cases, including 240,416 in 2023 alone -- nearly eight times the 28,879 cases it handled in its first year. On average, each staff member had to manage over 10,000 cases last year, raising concerns about the center’s ability to protect victims effectively.

In approximately 70 percent of cases, illegal videos can be removed within a few minutes, but platforms with higher security measures, such as Telegram or membership-only websites, require additional time. Main opposition Democratic Party of Korea Rep. Kim Nam-hee highlighted the complexity of removing such content from highly secured platforms, further emphasizing the challenges facing the center.

The number of deepfake-related cases has also surged, with 502 incidents reported so far this year, a 68.4 percent increase from last year. As new laws enforcing the center’s authority are implemented, experts expect the number of removal cases to continue rising.

The center has long faced difficulties in removing illegal videos hosted on foreign servers due to a lack of legal provisions ensuring its full authority to act.