14 said that even though Kim claimed to have said "no" to Ahn's advances, "It is difficult to presume that Ahn could have perceived Kim's expression of refusal." The Seoul Western District Court's verdict on Aug. Ahn immediately apologized to Kim and resigned from his position but later argued that he thought the relationship was "consensual." Kim made the revelation - about the most high-profile figure yet in South Korea's #MeToo movement - during a local cable channel's prime-time news show in March. The former governor of South Chungcheong Province, Ahn Hee-jung, was acquitted of four counts of rape and multiple counts of sexual harassment brought against him by his former secretary, Kim Ji-eun. In August, the verdict in a star politician's sexual abuse case reminded South Koreans how difficult it is for women to speak about their experience of sexual violence and demand justice. Even as South Korea's human rights standards advanced in the past 20 years, the country "has lacked specialized and concrete developments, efforts and movements for women's rights," says Lee of Kyonggi University. Gender bias is not merely a suspicion in a country that ranked 118th among 144 nations in the World Economic Forum's 2017 Gender Gap Report. Organizers and participants argue that law enforcement handled this case with more urgency and rigor because the victim was male and the perpetrator was female. The investigation of this case, and the subsequent trial, sparked and helped boost the series of four rallies. When a woman was caught in May for sharing a picture she secretly shot of a nude male model, the court sentenced a "highly unusual" 10-month jail term, Yoon-Kim says. Court records reveal that, of those tried for the offense from 2012 to 2017, only 8.7 percent received a jail sentence.Ĭritics argue that the punishment is both weak and unfair. According to a study by the Korean Women Lawyers Association, only 31.5 percent of those accused of committing molka crimes in 2016 were prosecuted. But many perpetrators - nearly 98 percent of them are male, police data show - get away with the crime. South Korean law punishes taking and distributing pictures of someone's body that "may cause any sexual stimulus or shame" against the person's will as a special case of sexual crime, with punishment of up to five years in prison or fines as high as $8,900 (10 million Korean won). The government responded by requiring regular sweeps at public bathrooms, establishing support systems for victims, and pledging to handle cases more promptly and strictly. The women staged the protest to urge South Korean government to come up with measures to tackle sexual abuse involving hidden cameras.Ĭalls for solutions were constant and desperate even before the rallies, as South Korean women woke up to the seriousness of the problem over the past few years. South Korean women protest against sexism and hidden-camera pornography. Anyone can contact the seller, who is often the one who shot the film, and get gigabytes of voyeuristic videos for pennies. Thumbnails of such videos, tagged with an estimated age of the filmed women or the filming location, are posted with a messenger ID. With the right search words in Korean, it is not difficult to find pictures and videos of women in bathrooms and changing rooms on file-sharing platforms and social networks such as Tumblr and Twitter. Once filmed, molka videos are quickly shared online. In September, during a search, she stumbled on a video of herself from that December day. Thinking of her kits as a "stopgap," Chung also started building an archive of illicitly recorded videos and pictures she found online to demonstrate how serious the problem is. More than 600 people bought the kit, which costs about $12 (14,000 Korean won) and includes a tube of silicone sealant to fill up holes, an ice pick to break tiny camera lenses and stickers to patch up holes. She started a crowdfunding project for the kit, and the response was greater than she had expected. Chung Soo-young's emergency kit includes a small icepick, a large sheet of stickers and square stickers with a warning message against illegal filming that details the punishment stated by the law.
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