By Kim Hyun-bin
A Seoul court sentenced an art class model to a 10-month jail term, Monday, for secretly taking nude photos of a male colleague and posting them online.
The Seoul Western District Court slapped the prison term and 40 hours of therapy on sexual violence for the female model, surnamed Ahn, 25, in the case which prompted women's rights groups to protest the police's “gender-biased” investigation.
“The accused needs to be punished as she has irrevocably damaged the victim's personal dignity and the repercussions of the posting were serious, with his face being exposed on a radical feminist website,” the court said in the ruling.
“The victim is having serious post-traumatic stress disorder with depression, and he is unlikely to continue his career as a nude model. The accused deleted the photos the day after the posting, but they had already spread to other websites and their complete removal from the internet seems impossible.”
Ahn submitted several letters of apology to the victim and asked to be forgiven.
“We believe she sincerely regrets and has reflected on her actions,” the court said. “However, her regrets can't fully cover her wrongdoings and we have no choice but to punish her. Furthermore, the punishment can't be less severe because the accused is a woman.”
Ahn was arrested and indicted for taking nude photos without the victim's consent during a drawing class at Hongik University on May 1 and uploading them to WOMAD, an extreme feminist website. She said she did so after arguing with the victim over sharing the rest area provided for nude models at the university. The suspect and the victim met on the day of the incident, according to police.
But the ruling caused a backlash from women's groups, saying Ahn's punishment was much more severe than male offenders in similar cases. Some women's groups shared an earlier news article that a Busan court suspended a sentence for a man in his 20s who took nude photos of his girlfriend and posted them on Ilbe, a far-right troll website, because his offense was “not serious enough to make a sentence.”
Earlier, Ahn's case promoted nationwide protests by women as police carried out an unusually fast investigation compared to most other cases involving hidden cameras in which the victims were women.