Seven in 10 Koreans experience 'cyber stalking'

By Jung Min-ho

Almost every day, a 26-year-old fitness model, surnamed Kim, gets messages from strangers that have detailed knowledge of him. Most are just fans, but some ask him for information beyond what average online followers want.

“Some offered me money for a date and sex. And I get such online messages almost every day both from men and women,” he said. “Of course, some people are more consistent than others, asking for such things for years.”

As pictures of him, along with his email and phone number can easily be found online, Kim also finds people pretending to be him.

“One stalker even posted pictures of someone’s genitals and my face on gay porn sites, saying that “I’m actually gay.” Since the stalker knows me well from social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, many people still believe that false information,” he said.

“There are not many things I can do about it,” he added.

Kim is not a rare victim of “cyber stalking,” as a recent study shows, it is a widespread problem.

According to a survey released Sunday by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI), 69.9 percent of 2,043 people aged between 15 and 50 said they have experienced cyber stalking.

Cyber stalking here means any activity that harasses people online. This involves various forms of harassment including insistent contacting, demanding offline meetings, verbal abuse and issuing threats.

The survey showed that 70.1 percent of female respondents experienced such acts, as did 67.1 percent of men.

The respondents were cyber stalked in a variety of ways. 62.2 percent said that someone regularly observed their SNS pages, 38 percent were repeatedly asked for a date, 29.4 percent said they had their information extracted through their friends’ online pages and 15.4 percent were threatened.

Most cyber stalking occurred on SNS (34.5 percent), followed by online messengers such as Kakao Talk and Line (29.7 percent), online communities (14.3 percent) and blogs (9.3 percent).

Some 37 percent of the victims said they did nothing to solve cyber stalking issues, while 22.5 percent said they just stopped using the online services where they were stalked.

Only 6.6 percent complained or asked for an apology from stalkers, while 1 percent reported it to police.

“Especially women respond passively,” the report said. “Without proper preventive measures, we expect the number of cyber stalking victims to increase quickly for the next few years.”

In fact, cyber stalking is barely recognized as a crime, and there is no punishment for such action in Korea.

The KWDI said the government needs to come up with legal protections against cyber stalking, given that psychological damage from it can be very serious.