Sexual violence rampant in school chatrooms

Police escort singer Jung Joon-young out of the Seoul Central District Court, southern Seoul, Thursday, after a court review on whether to issue an arrest warrant for him. The warrant was issued later in the day on charges that Jung illegally shared sexually explicit videos of women taken without their consent online. / Yonhap

By Bahk Eun-ji

Despite the public uproar and criticism toward the snowballing scandal where some celebrities shared illegally taken sex videos and encouraged sex crimes, misogyny and insensitivity to sexual violence is still rampant among male-only student groups on university campuses and male educators.

Male students at Gyeongin National University of Education's physical education department were found recently to have shared sexually abusive comments about their female peers ― by comparing their photographs ― in a group chat room.

In captured screen shots of the chatroom, made public by a whistleblower, they talked about one female student, and voted on whether they would do their mandatory military service for a second time if they could have sex with her on their leave.

The chat members were also frequently verbally abusive. When a student wrote badly about his girlfriend after having an argument with her, others mocked her with the old Korean saying, "Women should be beaten at least once every three days."

"We demand a serious apology not only from members of the chatroom but also from other male students who remained idle," the whistleblower said on the school's Facebook page.

After the criticism became serious, the male students issued an apology on the page.

"We failed to respect women as individual human beings, not as sexual objects," they said.

Meanwhile, a similar case took place at Seoul National University of Education.

Male students at the school's elementary school education department held gatherings at the beginning of every semester and judged female students on their appearance, making sexually abusive comments about them with regard to their photographs, and grading their appearance.

Learning about this through confessions by some male students, the female students put up posters denouncing the men and demanding an apology.

Earlier this month, male students at the school's Korean language education department were also accused of similar abuse after they were found to have created photo albums of female freshmen, detailing their private information such as age, club activities and physical appearance, over the years as a "tradition."

Although the students at the two schools apologized, calls are growing for disciplinary action against them, specifically because they could be future teachers, while some are already working as educators. Women's groups claim they would give the wrong perception about sex to students.

In terms of insensitivity to sexual violence, professors were no different.

A professor of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies is under fire for his remarks over singer Jung Joon-young who was arrested Thursday for illicitly filming himself having sex with at least 10 women without their consent and sharing the videos in a group chat room.

The professor said while the singer was a sex offender, he was also a victim at the same time. He said that when public figures such as Jung suffer from stress, they relieve this by engaging in sexual impropriety. His remarks were revealed in an anonymous post on the school's Facebook page.

The professor said he hadn't intended to take sides with the "criminal," and was willing to apologize to anyone who was offended by his remarks.

In addition, a professor at Chung-Ang University allegedly said Jung would have been fine if he had not uploaded what he had done to the chat room. A professor at Sogang University and a lecturer at Dongguk University apparently said they regretted they were unable to obtain the video clips of Jung, according to their students.

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