Korea - The voyeurism is rampant like an epidemic

According to Sputnik, South Korea is at an impasse in the battle to protect women from lustful, if not perverted, eyes.

In the past few years, voyeurism (peeping at other people's bodies) in Korea has raged like an epidemic. Women in this country go to public places such as shopping malls, public toilets ... always afraid of being secretly filmed in sensitive places.

"Embarrassed" to the point of looking for death

At the end of 2019, Korean police investigated a strange suicide. That October, a female hospital worker was found dead at her home in the southwestern part of the country. According to relatives, she made the "extreme decision" to voluntarily die. Relatives said that the last time the girl was tormented by nightmares that made her unable to cope with the psychological trauma.

According to the family and police, the cause of the victim's suicide was an incident at work. A pathologist from this hospital drilled a hole in the wall of the women's locker room and installed a hidden camera. The victims of digital voyeurism are four female employees who work at this medical facility: they are caught on camera when they are naked or only in their underwear. Police discovered that the perverted doctor secretly slipped the camera under women's skirts, even when he was shopping with his family.

According to the deceased girl's father, she could not bear to be seen in private moments. Fearing that being secretly filmed would affect her career, she asked her parents not to tell this to anyone. However, despite the support of her family, she was unable to overcome this.

The pathologist who secretly filmed a female colleague was sentenced to 10 months in prison for what he did. This isn't the only infamous case of hidden camera footage being posted publicly on porn sites by cybercriminals. The number of victims is increasing every year, but the problem remains unresolved. On the contrary, more and more new and serious cases appear.

There are hidden cameras everywhere

Sex crimes are becoming more and more complex for Korean law enforcement officers. In 2018, about 6,800 victims went to the police, of which 84% were women. For comparison: in 2012, the number of complaints of this type that the police received was 2400. This does not mean that incidents are in fact less. Perhaps the victim simply didn't know they were being filmed, or was embarrassed to talk about it.

Scandals happen frequently. In March 2019, two South Korean men were arrested for posting "intimate videos" of 1,500 guests staying at motels across the country. Criminals have set up cameras in thirty hotels in dozens of cities, and posted sneaky videos online to make money.

The paid site posts more than 800 videos. The attackers used a foreign server to mask the user's IP address. This is the first time that the names of criminals hiding behind foreign websites have been identified. However, they managed to make a profit of 7 million won (more than 140 million VND).

The hidden camera is almost impossible to detect - the device lens is about 1mm in diameter. Criminals can hide cameras just about anywhere: in hair dryer racks, routers, sockets, even behind shower gel labels. And it's not just lewd teenagers who have such pleasures. Among the violators were professors, religious leaders of different ages, professions and educational levels, even celebrities.

In 2018, the whole country was shaken by the scandal surrounding K-pop star Jung Joon Young. A Korean court sentenced him to 6 years in prison for having sex with a woman, secretly filming the process and posting it online without her consent. The male singer admitted to secretly filming intimate clips with 10 other partners and sending the videos to chat for friends to see.

In South Korea, such crimes can result in sentences of up to 5 years in prison or a fine of 30 million won (nearly 610 million VND). However, human rights activists say that of all the defendants made in 2018, only a third went to court and only one in 10 ended up in prison. At the police station, many victims were told that the video could not be removed from the Internet anyway, so punishing the attacker would make no sense.

The police's lack of seriousness angered Korean women. In 2018, in Seoul, about 70,000 women marched with the slogan "My life is not your porn". By the way, porn is banned in Korea, but this doesn't help the fight against illegal content.

Another problem that Korean women point to is the double-standard attitude towards hidden cameras. For comparison, two cases can be cited. In 2018, a woman was sentenced to 10 months in prison and forced to undergo psychotherapy for "surreptitious filming". The 25-year-old model competes with a male colleague for a place to rest during recess. According to her, without thinking about the consequences, she took a picture of the man as he posed and posted it on the website of radical feminists without his consent. In a similar case, the victim was a woman - a man who took pictures during intercourse and posted them on the Internet without her consent. This case ended with the judgment of fined the man 2 million won.

Victory belongs to the wicked

However, law enforcement officers in South Korea do not sit back and watch. Since 2004, the country has banned the sale of phones that can mute the camera shutter sound when shooting. Actually, this doesn't stop smartphone users from downloading apps that allow them to take silent pictures.

Silence Camera app creator Hong Sung Ying explains that this extension is for people who need to take pictures in a gallery or other places where they can't make noise. The app is also more convenient when used to photograph animals reacting to noise. It is one of the most popular apps on the Korean App Store with around 800,000 downloads. Plus, the app is completely free.

Since 2017, in the Korean capital, there have been anti-surveillance squads. Of course, it is very difficult to deal with cameras mounted on escalators, on the boots and clothes of violators. However, hidden cameras in public places such as toilets, swimming pools, changing rooms... are disabled by the police.

Activists spot the cameras with detectors, handing out leaflets and advertisements about the dangers of spying. But even members of such special teams admit that their work is of little use.

In addition, the sick jealous people also rely on the support of spy cameras. Some people keep a needle-sized recorder at home to keep an eye on their other half. In this case, a private investigator can help those who suspect they are being watched by a loved one.

One of those detectives is Sang Hae Young. His company operates around the clock, and every month he receives about 500 calls from potential victims of being secretly filmed. His agents are equipped like real commandos, they have expensive equipment to detect hidden cameras.

According to Sang Hae Young, the state cannot provide police stations with such equipment because they are too expensive. Therefore, only individual customers can afford such monitoring. In addition, unlike private detectives, police do not have the ability to detect hidden cameras, they do not even know where to look, what to look for and how to find.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the fight against spying is that those who want to peek into women's locker rooms or under their skirts can easily buy cameras not only online, but even at market stalls. "They are sold openly and cheaply - only about 50 USD (over 1.5 million VND)."

The main problem is that there is always enough supply where demand is stable. In Korea, there is no shortage of consumers for such content.

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