Even a record heatwave will not keep Claire Lee from joining tens of thousands of South Korean women at a mass protest today against secretly filmed spy-cam pornography as anger over the issue swells, prompting national soul-searching.
Since May, the monthly demonstration in Seoul has shattered records to become the biggest-ever women’s protest in South Korea, where the global #MeToo movement has unleashed an unprecedented wave of female-led activism.
The target of their fury: So-called molka, or spy-cam videos, which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, toilets and changing rooms, and which are so prevalent they make headlines on a daily basis.
“Entering a public bathroom is such an unnerving experience these days,” Lee said, adding that she always looked around the walls to see if there were any “suspicious holes.”
“You never know if there’s a spy-cam lens hidden inside ... filming you while you pee,” the 21-year-old student told reporters, adding that she sometimes stabbed the holes with a pen to shatter any secret lenses, or stuffed tissue paper inside them.
The statistics are startling, with the number of spy-cam crimes reported to police surging from about 1,100 in 2010 to more than 6,500 last year.
The offenders have included school teachers, professors, doctors, church pastors, government officials, police officers and even a court judge. In some cases, the victims’ own boyfriends or relatives were responsible for the crimes, in a troubling reflection of South Korea’s deep-rooted patriarchal norms.
Fed up of living in fear, women are fighting back.
More than 55,000 attended last month’s protest in Seoul, according to its organizers, although police put the attendance at about 20,000.
“The pent-up anger among women has finally reached a boiling point,” said one of the protest organizers, who only identified herself as Ellin.
Asia’s fourth-largest economy takes pride in its tech prowess, from ultra-fast Internet to cutting-edge smartphones.
However, these advances have also given rise to an army of tech-savvy Peeping Toms, with videos widely shared in Internet chat rooms and on file-sharing sites, or used as ads for Web sites promoting prostitution.
Although all manufacturers of smartphones sold in South Korea are required to ensure their devices make a loud shutter noise when taking photographs — a move designed to curb covert filming — many offenders use special apps that mute the sound, or turn to high-tech spy cameras hidden inside eyeglasses, lighters, watches, car keys and even neckties.
Justice is rarely served — most offenders are fined or given suspended jail terms, which many women’s rights groups decry as a mere slap on the wrist, except in the rare cases where the perpetrator is female and the victim male, campaigners have said.
The arrest in May of a woman who secretly filmed a male model posing nude at a Seoul art college was a catalyst for the unprecedented protests this summer.
“The police have rarely responded when countless female victims asked for the immediate arrest of the offender,” said Seo Seung-hui, head of the nonprofit Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center.
In the woman’s case, she was paraded in front of TV cameras while police raided her home to search for evidence.
Authorities even launched a probe targeting those who shamed the male model online in an uncharacteristically swift response.
“The women saw how quickly ... the police responded to this rare case in which the victim was a man... Such unfair treatment fueled the recent wave of anger,” Seo said.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they