The head of a South Korean political party that has championed gender equality was sacked yesterday for sexually harassing one of his own lawmakers, a prominent rights campaigner.
Kim Jong-cheol was chairman of the Justice Party, the third-largest in the South Korean parliament, and was stripped of his position after admitting harassing Jang Hye-yeong, the party said in a statement.
He is the latest male politician to be brought down by an abuse case in the socially conservative and traditionally patriarchal country.
Photo: AFP
Jang, 33, was elected last year and is among South Korea’s youngest lawmakers.
She is known for her human rights campaigning and drew up an anti-discrimination bill last year that would ban favoritism based on sex, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability or religion, but has yet to be put to a vote.
The incident happened following a dinner last month and the party started an investigation after Jang reported it three days later.
“This is blatant sexual harassment without a doubt,” Justice Party Deputy Leader Bae Bok-ju told reporters. “Kim, the perpetrator, has also acknowledged all allegations.”
South Korea remains male-dominated and victims of sexual abuse often face stigma, discouraging them from coming forward, but it has experienced a widespread #MeToo movement in the past few years, sparked by a prosecutor who publicly accused a superior of groping her at a funeral.
In a statement Jang said that the incident gave her “an enormous sense of shock and suffering,” involving “someone I deeply trusted as a political ally and with whom I campaigned together against sex crimes.”
“I decided to make this public and hold him accountable because I believed doing so would restore my dignity and pave a path for me to return to normal life,” she said.
Kim admitted he “made physical contacts that the victim neither wanted nor consented to and committed clear sexual harassment.”
“This was an act that could not be excused and caused great harm to her,” he said in a statement, offering her his “deepest apology.”
The case came after then-Seoul mayor Park Won-soon took his own life last year after he was accused of sexual harassment, while former provincial governor Ahn Hee-jung was jailed for three-and-a-half years for sexual intercourse by abuse of authority after his female assistant accused him of repeatedly raping her.
Both Park and Ahn were members of South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party.
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