Early this month, several women’s rights groups filed charges against Yoon Chang-jung ― the former presidential spokesman dismissed because of an allegation that he sexually assaulted a Korean-American woman in May ― but to no avail. Prosecutors here could not conduct an investigation, as there were no complaints from the victim herself, who lives in Washington, D.C.
That will change beginning today.
Under changed laws and regulations, law enforcement officers can open probes into sex offenders regardless of complaints or consent from victims because sex offenses are no longer punishable only after complaints are filed by an injured party.
The legal revision, the first one in 60 years since the nation modernized its criminal laws in 1953, is welcome, albeit belated. Aside from a number of Muslim nations, Korea, along with Japan, were among a small number of countries that adopted the “offense-subject-to-complaint” principle regarding sexual offenses.
The judicial tepidity, allegedly intended to protect the privacy of victims, has ended up only deepening their suffering because the offenders often bullied or shamed victims into silence or out-of-court settlements. It is a small surprise then that Korea sees more than 50 sex offenses a day. Only one-tenth of these are reported and just one-tenth of these reported cases lead to prosecution.
We agree with most of about 150 new or changed provisions related to combating rampant sex crimes. For instance, they expanded the scope of possible victims from “women and girls” to “individuals” by including men, reflecting the overall enhancement of women’s social status; abolished the statute of limitation clause for offenders targeting minors; expanded sex offenses to include peeping and clandestine filming of private parts; and strengthened the disclosure of ex-convicts’ information.
Opponents of the toughened punishments cite as possible side effects, excessive workloads of law enforcement officers and abuse of the new laws. This is over-care at best or attempts to distort the revised rules and downplay the seriousness of sex offenses at worst, reflecting how male-dominated this society still is and how deep and wide sexual discrimination is rooted within it.
It was less than a year ago that a young prosecutor, a symbol of social justice and a vanguard of law enforcement, created a social stir by demanding that a female defendant provide a “sexual bribe.” More surprisingly, some of his colleagues circulated the woman’s photo on their intra-net, demonstrating that the view of women held by Korean men, even the educated elite, is one that objectifies members of the opposite sex.
Such a bias reached a peak in a recent survey on police officers in a provincial city, which found that 54 percent of respondents said that women who wear revealing clothing are responsible for sexual assaults.
The commodification of women, the booming sex industry here, one of the most prosperous in the world, and, on the other hand, the country’s adherence to the adultery law are all signs of distorted, hypocritical views of sex among Korean men.
All this explains why women’s groups cannot be certain that stiffer penalties will significantly reduce sex offenses without corresponding changes in sexual culture or consciousness. As always, legal reform is not the end but only a beginning.