Which is on the rise? Sex crimes or media sensationalism?

James Pearson

By James Pearson and Raphael Rashid

According to an article in the conservative JoongAng Daily last weekend, “Drunk women have to fear for their lives” when out and about indulging themselves in the Seoul night scene.

The article reported a string of fairly horrific crimes, all of which had uncomfortable similarities with the now infamous Suwon murder (that saw the rape, murder and dismembering of a young woman), the perpetrator of which has just narrowly escaped the death penalty after a court in Seoul delivered a life sentence instead.

Raphael Rashid

“On Oct. 2, just after 11 p.m., a woman was led into a room by a man and she did not leave that room alive. Last seen leaving (a bar) inebriated, the woman was taken to the room without arousing much suspicion. In the same week on the 6th, another intoxicated woman was raped and murdered. She was spotted resting on the doorstep of a convicted rapist.”

The JoongAng Daily wrote that this incident, and others like it, occur frequently and are often reported as having taken place in the small hours of the morning, when drunk girls leaving bars and clubs alone are approached by lurking would-be murderers. The reporters interviewed a drunk woman who was looking for her friend. She was apparently approached by several men during the interview, “some of whom even tried to dance with her.”

“I came together with a few other girls but I lost track of them and now I am scared. Foreigners keep trying to talk to me... I am scared,” said the girl, scared of foreigners, who apparently took refuge in a “well-lit area and waited for her parents to pick her up.”

Such a scene is a fairly frequent occurrence anywhere in the world, as well as in Korea. Few British city centers on weekend nights, for example, are free from the mandatory lost drunk girl without shoes, men fighting each other without apparent cause, or scuffles between the police and drunk punters. The fear of sexual violence, committed by anyone, is of course entirely justified. However, some netizens have started to argue that these concerns are often inflated by the Korean media:

“So many of these stories break into the news cycle these days… I wouldn’t say sexual violence is not on the rise compared to before… but so many media and news outlets focus on this type of story and contribute to the threatening idea of a dangerous society. It’s not as bad as people make it out to be, it’s just the news media is overexposing this type of news…”

Indeed, although it is undoubtedly the case that stories about sexual violence make the headlines in Korean papers on an almost-daily basis, is it therefore true that the country is somehow infested with sexual predators?

Probably not. A quick look at statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime paints a slightly different picture. According to the data, the number of police-recorded violent sexual offences in Korea during 2010 stood at 33.7 for every 100,000 people. In the same year, France reported 37.2 crimes, Norway 48, Germany 59.6, Canada 73.7, Switzerland 87.2, the U.K. 96.9, and a staggering 168.5 in Sweden ― somewhere ordinarily considered to be fairly safe. The report did not reveal results for the United States.

Note, these are only police-reported crimes; non-reported crimes certainly exist in Korea, and indeed in every other country. Results for the same year recorded 0.3 cases in both Egypt and Yemen, and 5.9 in India.

Naturally, sexual violence in any society is unforgivable, but the unfortunate reality is that Korea is not immune from these crimes, nor is any other country. Heinous crimes such as the one committed by the Suwon murderer, Oh Won-chun, stunned the nation for its level of unforgiving brutality; Koreans were left with little doubt that the death sentence would have been better than his life of relative “freedom” in prison.

Following the rape of a 7-year-old schoolgirl in Naju over the summer, the government announced plans to increase the police manpower that currently supervises sex criminals, as well as an increase in those dealing with an emergency hotline to combat sex crimes. But do such measures actually reduce the number of crimes? Or just give sex offenders more of an incentive not to be caught?

Perhaps some Korean editorials and the media would best spend their time focusing on the judges, the police and the sentencing system in Korea instead. In the Oh case, the police, who many believe are equally guilty for their incompetence when dealing with the young woman’s call begging for help, were not even involved in last week’s verdict. Shouldn’t headlines question bigger issues at hand? Why not attack the government instead? How is society safer now than it was before? How could it become safer? What are the specific plans of action of the three main presidential candidates? Is a change in law long overdue? Does the death penalty actually achieve anything beyond a biblical eye-for-an-eye simplistic redemption where one crime against humanity is merely exchanged for another? As the election draws closer, let’s hope these are the sort of headlines intelligent media starts to report on.

James Pearson and Raphael Rashid are editors of koreaBANG (www.koreabang.com), a daily-updated blog that translates trending topics on the Korean internet into English. They can also be followed on twitter @koreaBANG or on facebook.com/koreaBANG.