The new administration is working hard to change some of Korea’s more absurd practices. It seems that they have now decided to get tough on sexual predators who target children. This is a crime that is often ignored in Korea. Every Korean knows about the funny “Burberry man”, who likes to stand outside schools and whack off for the kids. The girls are conditioned to believe that they are harmless, and that they will get good grades if they see one. They don’t ever seem to consider the fact that this behaviour can (and often does) escalate.
In a male dominated society, women and children are often powerless when it comes to punishing the men involved in sexual crime. To be a single mother in this society, or to come from a broken home, is considered shameful. Even when people are willing to go against the grain and actually report people for child abuse, the police are often unwilling to act. Part of this stems from a system (changed in January 2008), where men owned the women and children in their clan. A daughter was her fathers property until she married, and then ownership transferred to her new husband. Thankfully, this has changed in the eyes of the law, thought it will take some more time before the (male dominated) culture adopts the new legislation.
Here are a few recent crimes, all reported in my introductory post for this blog, I mentioned a few crimes that went unanswered, or where punishment given was negligible:
In the past few weeks a rapist was set free because his victim was wearing jeans and jeans are difficult to remove.Never mind the 20 weeks of hospital treatment required!, a perverted principal went back to school after photographing a young girls thighs on the subway (and slapping her for objecting), . . . or the Police who would not arrest a man who was raping his stepdaughter because it was not their job!
One of the worst cases that highlights the ineptitude of the criminal justice system in this country was also covered: “the attempted abduction of a child that was ignored by Police (he was drunk, so that’s ok!) Thankfully, the President went apeshit after seeing the video and this recently released pedophile was arrested again.”
When the President did this, I was ecstatic. The Korean netizens, (a useless bunch of hyper-reactionary twats, for the most part) did an excellent job of getting this information out there. The President heard about it and took a walk to the Police station responsible and grilled the officers in charge. He fired a few of the chief fuckwits, and had the rest of them go out and do their jobs. They found out that the guy was a recently released pedophile, and that he had tried something similar since his release.
The Korean public were rightly disgusted. This news came right after the capture of a pervert who had raped and killed two young girls last year. The public want something done. Korea has usually been considered a safe place, and these high profile cases have highlighted some of the seedier things that happen in the country, most of which go unnoticed.
The president vowed to change things, and so there are now tougher penalties being handed out (again, the Korean Herald does not allow direct linking, so I have a PDF file).
Whilst I applaud these measures, I feel that there is still not enough being done. There is a problem with the Police in this country, in that they simply seem unwilling to do their job!
There is one other solution proposed by a man many are dismissing as insane. Professor B recently gave a lecture on prevention of sexual violence where he proclaimed that sex criminals should be killed, and he advised children to carry a knife and stab the eyes of any would-be attacker. He even advises that they can practice with a doll! Despite the outcry, this seems like pretty good advice. I’m not so sure about his idea that, “if it seems like you’re going to die then start screaming that you have a lot of boyfriends and take off your clothes.”
If I had a child I’d be giving him or her pepper spray for those rare occasions when going out unaccompanied, and training him or her in its use. You can get pen-shaped pepper-spray units for 10,000 won, which isn’t much, really. (We got one for myself, in case some psychotic drunken jerk attacks me, and one for my fiancee too.)
I think the nastiness of the netizens has been overblown, and that a lot more is going on than is reported in the news. There are many idiot netizens online — some of them possibly congresspeople, indeed, as in the case I recently posted about — but there’s a lot of sensible discussion out there that’s being completely written off in the media. For example, when widespread criticism of Korean Protestantism arose during the Idiotic Afghanistan Hostage Crisis, it was dismissed as hateful extremism. One Korean social critic at the time argued that when a few netizens are jerks, everyone’s tarred with that brush, and when the mass majority of netizens voice criticism, the newspapers poopoo it as the voices of a few extremists. That certainly seemed to be the case in terms of the upwelling of freely voiced criticism of religious bigots and fanatics here last year.
I love the pepper spray idea. I will probably do the same once my daughter is old enough to handle it responsibly.
With regard to the netizen comment – I do applaud them for their efforts in getting results here, though I think they are often a major obstacle to progress in South Korea. Unfortunately, my Korean language skills are negligible, so I often have to rely on my wife for translation.
If what you are saying is true (and I believe you, knowing what I do about the media in this county – I know how Koreans really felt about the idiot hostages), the something needs to be done to hold the media responsible for the skewed reporting. Koreans do like to follow the group, and a consensus quickly becomes a “one-size-fits-all” opinion. If the media outlets were more responsible in their reporting then this country would not be so backwards in their treatment anything not Korean.