South Korea failing woefully to tackle widespread digital sex crimes
South Korean authorities are failing to properly tackle the country's widespread digital sex crimes against women, which have a devastating impact on victims, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report said on Wednesday (Jun 16). South Korea may be the world's 12th most significant economy and a leading technological power, but remains a male-dominated society with an unhealthy record on women's rights.
Digital sex crimes, or the sharing of intimate pictures or video without permission, are a massive problem in the united states, where "molka" or spycam videos secretly filmed in public areas are normal, as is "revenge porn" - private sex videos filmed or shared non-consensually by disgruntled exes. South Korean officials "in the criminal legal system - almost all of whom are men - often seem to not understand, or not accept, these are extremely serious crimes", said HRW's Heather Barr, the report author.
In 2019, almost 45 % of sexual digital crime cases were dropped by the country's prosecution, compared with 19 per cent of robbery cases and 27.7 per cent of homicides, the report said. Even when there have been convictions, it found almost 80 per cent of perpetrators received just "a suspended sentence, an excellent, or a combo of both" last year.
"Digital sex crimes have grown to be so common, therefore feared ... they are affecting the standard of life of most women and girls," Barr said. Barr said "widely accepted harmful views" about women and girls were the root cause of the phenomenon.
The government has "not sent a clear and forceful message that men and women are equal," she said.
