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. Soranet, which was shut down last year, was a popular site for uploading videos and photos taken using hidden and upskirt cameras.Įditor’s note: This story has been updated to note the size of the accommodations involved and that in South Korea small hotels are typically referred to as motels.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. In January, the co-owner of a South Korean revenge porn site was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $1.26 million. “The most common things that the clients are saying – and they are quite heartbreaking – are ‘I want to die’ or ‘I cannot leave my house.’ Especially the victims of spy cam or illegally taken videos say that when they encounter people on the street, they feel like they would be recognized,” she said. Lee Ji-soo, a computer specialist who helps women scrub the web of images taken without their consent, told CNN last year her company had seen a surge in demand since the protests drew attention to the issue. In response, Seoul launched a special squad of women inspectors who have been conducting regular inspections of the city’s 20,000 or so public toilets to search for spy cameras, though some critics have denounced the move as a superficial response to a societal issue.
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