Loophole allows 'bodily fluid attacks' to dodge sex crime laws in Korea

In 2019, a court convicted a man of sexual assault after he followed a woman off a bus and sprayed semen on her jacket. But last year, police recommended only property damage charges for a supervisor who left body hair and smeared foreign substances on a female subordinate's desk, computer and uniform.

The Korean legal system routinely downgrades non-contact "bodily fluid attacks" to property damage because the law requires direct physical contact for sex crimes. However, efforts to close the loophole have gained momentum following a recent Supreme Court ruling declaring that lacing coffee with semen constitutes sexual assault.

Legal experts agree the law must classify bodily fluid attacks as sex crimes. Heo Min-sook, a legislative research officer at the National Assembly Research Service, said Wednesday that treating the attacks as property damage reduces sexual objectification to simple vandalism and denies victims legal protections.

"The act of smearing bodily fluids is aimed at the person who will use the object, not at damaging the object itself," Seung Jae-hyun, a senior research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice, said. "Even if the fluid did not touch the victim's body, the act of sexual violence has begun and must be punished as an attempted sex crime."

Police have historically applied property damage charges to crimes involving objects rather than people. Rep. Baek Hye-ryun of the Democratic Party of Korea said police downgraded 15 out of 41 semen attack cases to property damage between 2019 and July 2021. In 2021, a court fined a Seoul municipal worker just 3 million won ($2,034) for property damage after he put semen into a female colleague's tumbler six times, and a man who put semen in a woman's sneaker at a university in 2019 faced the same downgraded charge.

Baek proposed a bill in June 2024 to penalize individuals who place objects that cause sexual humiliation or disgust in everyday spaces. The legislation remains stalled in a standing committee after a similar bill failed in the previous National Assembly.

The momentum shifted following a landmark Supreme Court ruling in July. The top court overturned an appellate acquittal in a case where a man secretly laced a victim's coffee with semen, ruling that secretly making the victim consume the fluid constitutes a use of physical force against the victim's body.

The ruling has prompted police to take a more proactive approach. Police in Seogwipo on the southern island of Jeju initially booked a high school student solely for trespassing and property damage after he put bodily fluids in a teacher's cup in April and urinated on a classroom chair in June. Police are now reviewing sexual assault and stalking charges based on the Supreme Court precedent.

Legal experts warn that lawmakers must clearly define the scope of any new legislation. Ahn Ji-hee, a lawyer at the Women's Human Rights Committee of Minbyun, known in English as Lawyers for a Democratic Society, said the law must clarify whether the target of the offense is the fluid itself or the contaminated object. Lee Eun-eui, a sex crime lawyer, said punishable fluids must be strictly defined as genital secretions.

Some legal professionals urge caution to prevent judicial overreach.

"Relying solely on property damage charges has its limits, making legislative discussion necessary," Kwak Jun-ho, a lawyer at the law firm Cheong, said. "However, even an act like spitting can be simple battery or a sexually motivated crime. Because the level of punishment varies, clear standards are needed to distinguish the purpose and context of the act."

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.