Women demand equal justice for hidden camera crimes
A 25-year-old art class model who spread nude photos of her male colleague is surrounded by reporters as she moves from Seobu District Court to Mapo Police Station for questioning, Saturday. / Yonhap
By Lee Suh-yoon
Authorities have immediately sought to bring charges against a female model after she leaked a nude photo of her male model colleague.
But the public is taking issue with this latest incident – why are hidden camera crimes against women not being investigated with the same rigor and intensity?
This gender bias in the handling of hidden camera crimes by law enforcement officers has not gone unnoticed.
A public petition calling for equally swift justice to hidden camera crimes targeting women gained over 330,000 signatures in less than a week.
“Women also reported their cases to the police and tried to delete online posts of hidden camera recordings of them,” one petitioner said on the Cheong Wa Dae website.
“But the response we got was: 'You should have dressed more modestly,' or 'It's too hard to catch the perpetrator.'”
The government must directly respond to any petition that exceeds 200,000 signatures on its website within 30 days.
After the photo of the male nude model was spread online on May 1, the police tracked down and investigated 20 suspects. They apprehended the perpetrator in just 10 days.
The police also took active steps to protect the man from potential psychological harm through derogatory online comments, or “secondary victimization.”
Photos of the mask-clad perpetrator were displayed all over the media on May 12 – a treatment usually reserved for those who commit violent crimes like murder.
The force and speed of this investigation stand in stark contrast to when women are victims of such crimes.
Women are the victims in over 80 percent of 6,000 hidden camera crimes reported every year, according to data from the National Police Agency (NPA).
Just days after the male model incident, three hours of hidden video footage of female students changing clothes in their dorm rooms was leaked online.
Authorities and the public, however, have shown a relatively lukewarm response to this.
On the day of posting, the most-searched terms on Naver, the nation's biggest portal, were not keywords related to the perpetrator, but the addresses of voyeur sites where this video could be viewed.
About 86 percent of all hidden camera criminals charged in 2016 were released on probation or after paying a fine, according to court data.
“If a woman had become a victim to a hidden camera crime while resting with her genital area exposed in a shared lounge, all blame would go to her for not resting in a more modest manner,” one Facebook user posted last week.
“I've never seen local cops work so hard to catch a perpetrator of a hidden camera crime. They only turn into super-cops when the victim is male.”
Shin Ji-ye, the Green Party's candidate running for Seoul mayor, also called for gender equality in investigations into hidden camera crimes.
“The police have been slow and passive in responding to cases involving female victims, saying it is too difficult to catch the perpetrator. This has been the reality so far, preventing the victims from reporting their cases properly,” Shin said in a recent press conference.
“The Green Party asks at this point why the police do not respond with the same speed and manpower to hidden camera crimes involving female victims.”
The Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center also said it was necessary to address the difference in the government's response to hidden camera crimes.
“Talking about the difference between male and female victimization cases is not an attempt to attack or trivialize male victims,” it said in a press statement. “We are determined to close this gap.”