The news that Kwon had sued regarding her sexual abuse would "rock Korean society for months. It was shocking that a young woman would go public with an accusation that was more likely to damage her own reputation than that of the accused." Traditionally, sexual and physical abuse was considered an "unspeakable experience," but Kwon's public testimony helped reframe the issue of sexual abuse in South Korea by "recasting her experience from the 'shame of the victim' to the 'crime of the perpetrator." The acts of sexual abuse as described by Kwon led to the creation of the KWAU which would influence Korean politics in the 1990s.
There are several messages that this judgment sends to victims of domestic violence, all of them devastating: One, domestic violence is a shameful topic that should be kept in the home; two, even if you are beaten, shut up and suffer in silence; three, it's not dignified to reveal that you are a victim of domestic violence; four, you are partly to blame in any case.
In 2011, 22,034 rapes were reported, according to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office. Of those, 18,591 cases resulted in arrests with a total of 18,880 offenders being convicted. However, only 12 percent of those found guilty, or 2,289, were sentenced to jail time. It is impossible to know the true number of victims in Korea, let alone the number of foreign victims, as many who are attacked ― Korean or foreign ― do not report the crime. Based on a 2010 survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, it is believed that the sexual crime reporting rate in Korea is about 10 percent.
"The justice recognized the sentence of the first trial was made in light of the fact that the victim was deeply traumatized and sexually ashamed by the incident," the judge in the second trial said. "The second trial, however, changed the sentence by suspending it for four years on the basis that the victim had agreed with the criminal not to punish him."
Nearly every one of the female students in their twenties and thirties that I’ve met in the classroom, no matter their frame, has experienced violence at some point for being a woman. It ranges from abusive behavior on buses and subways to attempted rapes in alleyways, from drunken fisticuffs to vengeance from spurned boyfriends. If they survived the day unscathed, it was simply because luck was on their side.
It’s possible that each of these South Korean women has regularly suffered pressure, intimidation, humiliation or physical assault on the job or in power relationships at home. The murder may have been a trigger, just as a fatal police shooting of a young black man in St. Louis triggered a resistance campaign against racism. If I were a man, I think I would be a little shocked to hear what women are saying. Of course, I probably wouldn’t be shocked if I were an intelligent man.
In the face of mounting criticism, the Ministry of Education on Friday released a second statement defending its handling of a senior official’s arrest for molesting his interpreter in South Korea last month, and appeared to compare the sexual assault case to deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha’s alleged affair with a hairdresser.
The third installment, titled “Can I go on?” focuses on the issue of male professors sexually harassing female students. In it, a professor tells his student, “You‘re new here. I suppose there are a lot of things you don’t know. I can teach you a thing or two. If you weren‘t my student, I might try something. . . .”In real life, the professor it was based on also asked the student if she wanted to “go to a motel for some instruction.”“A lot of the wording for the sexual harassing remarks by professors is exactly as it happened. We heard the stories from students and said to each other, ’They really do hear this kind of stuff every day,‘” Yeom recalled.
In Jeong's case, the victim attempted suicide after the incident. She later told a worker at a regional welfare facility, who then called the police station to verify it on May 9. Jeong then resigned the next day.
Police were called to a bar in Seoul's Itaewon district on May 24 following a complaint by a female staff member about the conduct of two New Zealand businessmen. Police investigated but no charges were laid against the men, who have since left Korea. However, a New Zealand diplomat who was with them is still under investigation.
Alleged abuse charges were pressed on eight caregivers at a rehabilitation center for the disabled in Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday. According to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the accused are being charged for hitting and inflicting injuries as well as sexually harassing disabled students at the facility.
