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Women mourn the death of a woman killed by her stalker, outside the women’s toilet in Seoul’s Sindang Station, on September 19. Photo: AFP
Opinion
Lunar
by Jennifer Lee
Lunar
by Jennifer Lee

Stalked and killed: why can’t South Korea do more to protect women?

  • Last week, a young woman was killed before the court could rule on her alleged stalker, the latest in a string of women stalked and killed in South Korea
  • With a new anti-stalking law criticised for loopholes and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on the chopping block, South Korea is failing its women

On September 14, a Seoul Metro employee patrolling at Sindang Station died after being stabbed in the women’s loo. The suspect arrested was a colleague – and her alleged stalker. Her murder has led to an outpouring of not just grief across South Korea, but also anger at what some see as a failure to protect the 28-year-old woman, despite her many distress signals and appeals for help.

In 2018, the two became colleagues at Seoul Metro, which operates most of the subway lines passing through the capital. According to the police, 31-year-old Jeon Joo-hwan was accused of stalking her from late 2019. She sued him last October; the same month he was forced to quit his job.

The court rejected her application for a pre-trial detention warrant, citing a lack of evidence that he would try to flee or destroy evidence.

Jeon was accused of stalking her throughout the police investigation, and she filed another complaint in January. But the day before he was due to hear the court’s verdict on the charges of stalking and illegally filming her, she was dead.

This isn’t the first time that a victim of stalking has ended up dead in South Korea. Last June, Kim Byung-chan, 36, was sentenced to 35 years in jail for stabbing his former girlfriend to death in her flat – after she had reported him to the police for stalking her after their breakup. Last January, the high court upheld a life sentence for triple murderer and stalker Kim Tae-hyon, 26, for killing a woman he had met online, along with her mother and younger sister in their flat.
This isn’t even the first time that a woman was murdered in a subway loo. Many have drawn parallels between the Sindang Station case and 2016 Gangnam Station murder. Kim Seong-min, 34, stabbed to death a 23-year-old woman in the public loo near Exit 10; he was put away for 30 years. He had confessed to the police that he did not know her at all – he had killed her out of vengeance against women in general for looking down on him.
Handwritten notes are displayed near the entrance to a women’s toilet in Seoul’s Sindang Station where a 28-year-old woman had died at the hands of her stalker. South Koreans were outraged that the police, the judiciary and her employer Seoul Metro had failed to protect her. Photo: AFP

After the Sindang Station murder, many people visited the scene of the crime and covered a wall with Post-it notes, mourning her death and venting their frustrations with the police, the judiciary and Seoul Metro – much like how a wall of Post-its sprang up at Gangnam Station in 2016.

Many women who went to Sindang Station referred to the 2016 killing; an unnamed woman told local press: “Nothing has changed since the Gangnam Station murder.” It’s hard to disagree.

K-stalker in viral video sees trespassing charge changed to attempted rape

Amid public anger, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has vowed to revise the anti-stalking law which came into effect just last October, to plug the loopholes. This law has long been criticised for being ineffective, not least because convicted stalkers cannot be punished unless the victim gives her express consent, opening the door to threats and fear of retaliation.

The response of some lawmakers has also come under fire. After the arrest of Jeon for the Sindang Station murder, Seoul City councillor Lee Sang-hoon sparked controversy by suggesting that the attacker had resorted to violence because his romantic advances had been rejected, describing him sympathetically as a “31-year-old Seoul citizen who must have worked hard to get into Seoul Metro”.

People stage a rally supporting feminism in Seoul on February 12. For years, the story of South Korean women has been defined by perseverance as they made gradual but steady progress in the workplace and fought against a deeply entrenched culture of misogyny and harassment. Photo: AP

If anything, this seems to be a case of what philosopher Kate Manne called “himpathy” – inappropriate sympathy given to male perpetrators of misogyny and sexual violence over their female victims.

With many linking the recent murder to misogyny in South Korea, it is interesting to note that the Yoon administration has been pushing for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. The promise to do so was a key part of Yoon’s presidential campaign, during which he contended that the ministry had “outlived its historical purpose”.

Given the string of stalker murders and the many gender and social issues South Korea still faces, it is the height of naivety to think that the gender ministry has lost its relevance – or that the issues that necessitated the ministry’s establishment in the first place have in any way been solved.

Jennifer Lee is a production editor at the Post and a member of Lunar, an initiative that highlights key issues related to women and gender equality in Asia

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