A police officer was arrested without physical detention on Sept. 20 on charges of sexually harassing an 18-year-old female on a train on subway Line 1, police said.
According to the Hyehwa Police Station in Seoul, the 57-year-old officer, who sat beside the teenager, who was wearing shorts, put his hand on her knee about five times saying: “Do you know why sexual offenses have happened so frequently in recent months? This is because women seduce men.”
The girl swiftly left for another carriage and then got off the train. But she cried out as he continued to follow her, a Hyehwa police spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the number of sexual offenses against women on subway trains and in or nearby stations in Seoul has nearly tripled in the past four years, the National Police Agency reported Friday.
However, the number of guards on subways has decreased, according to a report submitted to Rep. Kang Ki-yoon of the ruling Saenuri Party.
The report said the number of sexual assaults on women that occurred on subways in the capital totaled 4,149 between 2008 and June this year.
There were 466 cases in 2008. They increased to 681 in 2009, 1,208 in 2010 and 1,313 in 2011. In the first half of this year, 481 cases were reported.
By occupation, company employees most often attacked at 2,001, followed by jobless people with 793 and students at 380.
Sexual offenses were most frequent on Line 2 (2,075), followed by Line 1 (856), Line 4 (521) and Line 7 (184).
There is a need to increase patrols of plainclothes guards on the subway, the report said. Currently, the subway investigation unit totals 103 staff, too small to patrol the hundreds of stations. The comparable figure stood at 109 in 2008, 114 in 2009, 119 in 2010 and 104 in 2011.