Considering how Koreans tend to keep embarrassing things like this quiet, I am not surprised how sexual abuse like this was allowed to go on for so long:
Former tennis player Kim Eun-hee speaks during an interview in Seoul on May 29. Kim waived anonymity to reveal how many athletes in South Korea have silently suffered sexual abuse by their coaches.
When Kim Eun-hee was 10 years old, a primary school child with dreams of tennis stardom, her coach raped her for the first time. Then he did it again. And again. And again.
The South Korean was too young to even know what sex was. But she knew she dreaded the repeated orders to come to his room at their training camp, and the pain and humiliation.
“It took me years to realize that it was rape,” Kim said. “He kept raping me for two years. … He told me it was a secret to be kept between him and me.”
Now 27, Kim has spoken to international media about her experiences for the first time, and revealed how female athletes in South Korea have silently suffered sexual abuse by their coaches. (……..)
In a highly competitive society where winning is everything, many young athletes forgo schooling or live away from families to train with their peers and coaches full time, living in a dorm-like environment for years.
The training camp system — akin to models used by communist sporting machines such as China — is credited with helping the South punch well above its weight on the global sporting stage.
But it has proven to be the setting for abuse in several sports — especially of underage athletes whose existence is controlled by their trainers.
“The coach was the king of my world, dictating everything about my daily life from how to exercise to when to sleep and what to eat,” said Kim, adding that he beat her repeatedly as part of “training.”
The coach was eventually dismissed after some parents complained of his “suspicious behavior,” but he was simply moved to another school with no criminal inquiry. Many victims are forced into silence in a world where going public often means the end of any aspirations to stardom.
“This is a community where those who speak out are ostracized and bullied as ‘traitors’ who brought shame to the sport,” said Chung Yong-chul, a sports psychology professor at Sogang University in Seoul.
A 2014 survey commissioned by the Korean Sports & Olympic Committee showed that around 1 in 7 female athletes had experienced sexual abuse in the previous year, but 70 percent of them did not seek help of any kind. [Japan Times]
