“Just because the victim is a man and the suspect is a woman this time, the country is investigating the case differently,” wrote one petitioner, according to the JoongAng daily.
“Remember the cases of women who were victims of hidden camera crimes and went to the police for help?” wrote another. “They would be told, ‘Well you had it coming to you, because you didn’t dress modestly’ or ‘We can’t catch the culprit. It’s too hard’.”
For years, South Korean women have been victims of what was described by the Korea Expose website as a “spy-cam porn epidemic”. They have been secretly filmed in public bathrooms, changing rooms, or a camera has been pointed up their skirt on an escalator, and the footage is then posted online.
In 2016, the police closed down Soranet, one of the most notorious websites for hidden camera footage of female body parts, and which had over one million users. It reportedly took the authorities ten years to do so.
According to police data, almost 5,200 sexual harassment cases involving spy-cam footage were reported in 2016. Over 80 percent of the victims were women. The same year, more than 7,300 requests were made to remove revenge porn, which had often been illegally uploaded.
