The recent murder of a Korean woman in Gangnam is being used to bring attention to the issue of violent crime against women. Now Vice News has jumped on the bandwagon to publish an article criticizing a culture that allows violent crimes against women in South Korea to occur:
ourners march during a rally on Saturday to pay tribute to a South Korean woman who was stabbed to death near Gangnam Station in Seoul. [AP/NEWSIS]
For years now, South Korea has been trying to build a legal system to deal with the problem. As Dr Kyungja Jung, of the University of Technology Sydney told me, the country has come far since the days when police themselves would sexually assault detained female activists.”There has been tremendous changes in legislation, services, and programs for the victims,” she said.
Neither is South Korea the only country struggling with the issue. All countries experience some baseline level of sexism and the latest numbers from the World Health Organisation suggest 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced sexual violence.
But South Korea, a country with one of the most influential youth cultures in Asia, is also a society with a deep gender inequality according to the World Economic Forum which ranks the nation 117 out of 142, putting it alongside Qatar and Nigeria.
This is a subject Koreans do not like to discuss, partly because defamation laws in the country are strong, making criticism of the government, police, or major corporations dangerous. Many of those I contacted over the last two weeks were afraid to talk for fear of a lawsuit, though few would say so outright.
When they responded, they were often “too busy.” One person who worked in a frontline support service for rape victims told someone who had contacted them on my behalf: “This is a sensitive issue and I am Korean.”
Those more willing to speak out were young activists. One male activist who worked on a team which monitored rapists on Sora.net told me that in 1995, seven out of 10 women were victims of violent crimes, but that number has increased to nine out of 10. Because I can’t speak Korean, I cannot easily verify those numbers, but I asked him why he thought that was. [Vice News]
You can read much more at the link, but in my opinion this article is poor journalism which this last excerpted paragraph is an example of. The writer admits that he can’t verify the statistic that 9 out of 10 women in South Korea were victims of violent crimes, but went ahead and published it anyway. If 90% of the women in Korea are victims of violent crime there would be a political revolution to improve public safety. The President is a woman so does anyone think she would stand for such a thing?
Poor Example
A random murder by a mentally deranged homeless person that had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals does not suddenly make South Korea a haven for violent crime against women. Speaking of this murderer the article made no mention that he was schizophrenic and instead led readers to believe he simply killed the woman because he hated women. This narrative is about as honest as the “gentle giant” narrative used by the US media after the Michael Brown shooting.
As far as some of the other examples used in the article such as the Australian woman interviewed and the man acquitted of rape because he had a curved man part I would like to hear the other side of the story because often these stories are never as simple as advocates claim them to be. With that all said the premise that South Korea has a problem investigating sexual assault cases I think is true, I just hate tabloid journalism being used to make this point.
Past Investigations
In the past South Korean authorities were just incompetent with dealing with violent crime against women. I can remember when a US soldier was raped shortly after she arrived at Incheon International Airport and the rapist was acquitted because the soldier did not resist enough. In another case the sentencing for rape was so light that whether the suspect committed robbery as was the focus of the case because it had more jail time. Then there is this case of a foreign English teacher who was brutally raped and forced to suffer police incompetence afterwards. Finally who can forget the Miryang Gang Rape case which was just a travesty.
I do have to admit that things have gotten better in recent years such as South Korea finally barring teachers convicted of sex crimes of getting their jobs back. Even the ROK military has launched a campaign to crackdown on sexual assault and harassment within their ranks which they have long been known for. What do the statistics say? Well they say arrests for rape have skyrocketed over the last decade.
It is important to keep in mind that just because arrests are up this does not necessarily mean that rape is up. It can be argued that due to awareness campaigns in South Korea women are now more likely to report rape and the police are taking the allegations more seriously.
How do these statistics stack up against the United States? With a population of 51 million people in South Korea and 20,045 rape arrests in 2014 this has a occurence rate of 1 in 2,544 people. The Department of Justice reported 284,350 rapes in the United States in 2014 and with a population of 318 million this comes out to an occurrence rate of 1 in 1,118 people. This is higher than South Korea, but keep in mind difference in statistic compilation does make comparisons difficult, but does give an indication that rapes are lower in South Korea than the US.
Conclusion
Today I think the problem is mostly how Korean police look differently at alcohol related sexual assaults than other countries. If Korea is like the US, the vast majority of rape cases are probably he said/she said cases that involve alcohol. When alcohol is involved South Korean authorities are well known for showing more leniency towards perpetrators though in recent years there has been some changes to the law. In the United States alcohol is not considered the mitigating factor for committing crime like it is in South Korea. In fact at least in the US military alcohol has been used as factor to over prosecute people for sexual assault.
This is an area I think women in Korea need to be aware of that a date rape type of scenario after a night of drinking alcohol, it is likely to be more difficult to get Korean authorities to vigorously investigate and prosecute the perpetrator. So looking at the facts South Korea does not necessarily have a violent crime problem against women, it just has a different perspective in regards to how vigorously it will prosecute these crimes when it involves alcohol. This perspective appears to be slowly changing with the increased rape arrests and I would not be surprised if arrests continue to increase in the coming years as societal attitudes towards the crime continue to change.
There is a lot to discuss in this article to include the fact that the SHARP training after all these years has been wrong:
How drunk is too drunk to consent to sex?
According to military training aimed at preventing sexual harassment and assault, the answer has been: barely tipsy.
For years, Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention training informed troops that even one drink made a person incapable of giving consent.
In legal terms, that wasn’t true.
The issue has been at the heart of many cases in military courtrooms over the past decade. How many drinks an alleged victim consumed and how much alcohol rendered him or her “incapable of consenting” is frequently disputed at trial.
Now, for the first time, a military court decision has defined the term “incapable of consenting” while overturning a sailor’s conviction for sexually assaulting two subordinates under the influence of “significant amounts of alcohol.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces agreed in a March decision that a person is incapable of consenting when he or she lacks “the cognitive ability to appreciate the sexual conduct in question or the physical or mental ability to make or to communicate a decision about whether they agree to the conduct.” In rendering its decision, the court upheld a 2015 decision by the Navy-Marine appellate court. [Stars & Stripes]
I read the bold text to mean that if someone is able to communicate that they want to have sex that this is consent regardless of whether they were drinking. Because of this definition the sailor convicted of sexual assault in the article for having a drunken twosome was released from prison after serving 21 months of a six year sentence. He left the Navy with an honorable discharge earlier this month.
Here is how the head of a major sexual assault advocacy group has responded to this change:
“There’s that common sense part of it,” he said. “What if you were trying to do a business transaction (with a drunken person)? You’re taking advantage of that guy. He doesn’t understand the intricacies.”
So what if the accused was drinking? Isn’t the accused decision making ability altered as well? How is it just the accuser’s ability to make decisions is hampered by alcohol and not the accused? Anyway I agree with what this lawyer had to say to wrap up the article:
Jack Zimmermann, a Houston military appellate lawyer, said he doubted the case would have a significant effect.
“In reality, it’s going to be very similar to the way it’s been: You look at the words and actions of the people involved,” he said. “The bottom line in these sexual assault cases is that they are going to be won or lost in the courtroom when the complaining witness testifies and the jury believes her or not.”
Even with this new definition I suspect that cases with weak evidence will still get sent to court martial where juries will be left with the difficult job of figuring out the truth of what happened based off of drunken memories.
Here is another story of a senior military leader in big trouble. This time Colonel David Cockrum the former commander of the 51st Medical Group on Osan Airbase was charged with sexually assaulting two male servicemembers, but was found not guilty of those charges, but was instead found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer for fraternizing with the male servicemembers:
An Air Force colonel with nearly 20 years of service was found not guilty of sexual assault during his court-martial last week.
Col. David Cockrum, former commander of the 51st Medical Group at Osan Air Base, South Korea, was found not guilty of two specifications of sexual assault and one specification of abusive sexual contact in violation of Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Pacific Air Forces spokesman Col. David Honchul told Air Force Times on Tuesday.
Cockrum was found guilty of one charge of conduct unbecoming an officer. According to court documents, he faced that charge because he did “knowingly fraternize with enlisted persons, on terms of military equality … such conduct being to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces,” between July 2014 and March 2015.
The military judge sentenced him to 30 days confinement, forfeiture of $5,000 pay per month for eight months ($40,000 total), and a reprimand, Honchul said. [Air Force Times]
Over the past two months two US military colonels have found themselves facing a number of serious charges to include sexual assault. The first one Colonel Shane Tomko has already found himself in jail for violating a pretrial agreement:
A Marine officer facing a general court-martial over allegations of sexual assault has been sent to a county jail for violating the terms of his pretrial agreement.
Col. T. Shane “Rhino” Tomko, the former commander of the Marine Corps’ Wounded Warrior Regiment, was sent to the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia, on May 6, said Rex Runyon, a Marine Corps spokesman. Tomko is in the process of being transferred to the U.S. Navy brig in Chesapeake, Virginia, he added. (………)
Tomko faces charges of abusive sexual contact, fraternization, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, wrongful possession of anabolic steroids, obstructing justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and violations of lawful orders, according to the charge sheet against him. [Marine Corps Times]
According to Marine Corps Life he forcibly kissed a female Marine on the mouth and supposedly said that she was “a hot and intriguing dyke that makes me wish I were a woman.”
Then over in Colorado there is an Air Force colonel who seems to be quite the ladies man when he isn’t being accused of sexual assault:
The former vice commander of the 50th Space Wing, charged with rape, assault, adultery and other lewd acts, will head to a general court-martial in August, according to the 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.
Col. Eugene Marcus Caughey, currently assigned to Air Force Space Command at Peterson, was charged Dec.10 with rape and assault at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, after in late 2014 or early 2015 he allegedly used “unlawful force” to hold the victim “against the wall and floor” while committing a sexual act, charge sheet documents reveal. He was also charged with various acts of alleged misconduct — which includes taking photos of his genitals while in uniform — dating back to 2013, according to his charge sheet. [Air Force Times]
You can read more at the link, but this guy supposedly had six different girlfriends while being married and his defense is that they are spurned lovers.
These two colonels are of course innocent until proven guilty, but regardless they are quite the embarrassment for the US military.
At least the Korean courts have decided to keep this dirt bag in jail. I can remember the days when the Korean courts were so weak on sexual assault that they were letting rapists routinely go free:
The Seoul High Court turned down a sexually abusive stepfather’s appeal for a lighter sentence Sunday.
The convicted, 48, was charged for abusing his sleeping stepdaughter, 25, and later threatening her with physical violence in an attempt to prevent her from alerting authorities.
In the original trial he received five years in prison for incestuous sexual assault, but later appealed, saying his sentence was too heavy.
The appeals court turned down his plea in a decision saying, “The nature of the defendant’s crime is malignant as he had not only sexually assaulted his own stepdaughter, but also threatened her with a weapon to cover up his crime.” [Korea Herald]
So basically when it was all said and done Lieutenant General Franklin who was forced to retire because of this was actually right:
An Air Force sexual assault case that spanned two investigations, a lieutenant general’s forced retirement and a finding of unlawful command influence ended after more than three years Wednesday with the acquittal of Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright.
A military jury made up of officers and enlisted personnel — six men and one woman — found Wright not guilty at Joint Base Andrews, Md., after three hours of deliberation.
The accuser’s former Special Victims’ Counsel said the verdict, although disappointing, was not a complete loss.
“I’m disappointed that the panel did not convict him; however, I am happy that the Air Force finally took the case seriously, as it should have from the start, and my former client received the day in court that she deserved,” Maribel Jarzabek said. “I think the fact that the jury deliberated for three hours and asked to see some of the evidence showed that this wasn’t the slam-dunk case that Gen. (Craig) Franklin and others predicted it would be.”
Wright was accused of raping a staff sergeant in her apartment near Aviano Air Base, Italy, after a night of drinking and socializing in 2012.
Wright’s defense, which focused its closing argument on the prosecution’s burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and what the defense lawyers characterized as inconsistencies in the woman’s statements over the past three-plus years, hailed the verdict.
Maj. Jacob Ramer and Cpt. Patrick Hughes said in a statement that “panel member(s) understood the importance of their role and gave their full attention to resolving the question before them.”
They also said that Wright’s unit had been “monumental in… helping him through the most difficult time of his young life.”
Wright did not testify.
After an Article 32 preliminary hearing in the case, then-Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, concurring with the hearing officer’s and legal adviser’s advice, dismissed the case in 2013. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but you have to like the spin the prosecution is coming up with. What is the purpose then of an Article 32 if someone who accuses someone of a crime deserve to have their day in court like the prosecution claims? Lt. Gen. Franklin has now been vindicated that this case did not have enough evidence to get a conviction. Also if anything deliberating only three hours shows how weak of a case this was. Even more troubling about this case is that it was so weak despite having the entire Air Force legal community trying to get a conviction to include using unlawful command influence:
An Air Force judge has ruled that the service’s top legal officer committed unlawful command influence in a sexual assault case, partly for political motives. Nonetheless, the case will proceed to court-martial.
Lt. Col. Joshua Kastenberg, in a July 30 ruling in response to a defense motion to dismiss the case against Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright, found that Lt. Gen. Richard Harding, formerly the Air Force Judge Advocate General, had improperly influenced the case or had given the appearance of doing so.
One such instance, the judge ruled, was recommending that Wright’s case be transferred to another court-martial convening authority for a do-over after the first convening authority, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, dismissed the case in the summer of 2013. Franklin’s dismissal came after an Article 32 investigative hearing at Aviano Air Base, Italy.
Such transfers are almost unheard of. It happened in the Wright case, Kastenberg’s ruling says, in part because Harding was worried that “the failure to have charges preferred against SrA Wright would enable Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to gain needed votes on a pending bill to remove commanders from the court-martial process.”
The ruling took Harding to task for supposedly telling Col. Joseph Bialke, Franklin’s legal adviser, that sexual assault cases, absent “smoking gun” evidence about an alleged victim’s credibility, should be sent to court-martial. In so doing, Kastenberg wrote, Harding improperly attempted to shape Bialke’s future legal advice. Katsenberg ruled that the forced retirements of Bialke and Franklin after their handling of the Wright case created an appearance of unlawful command influence. [Stars & Stripes]
All this case has likely done is force other convening authorities to send flimsy sexual assault cases to trial to protect their careers after seeing what happened to Lt. Gen. Franklin.
This report from the American Psychological Association I take with a bit of skepticism just like I do all the other so called surveys done on military sexual assault. Just like prior surveys this one also uses the vague term “Unwanted Sexual Contact”. I have had women grab my butt in the bar before so does that make me a victim of sexual assault that was unreported? There is a big different between rape and someone grabbing your butt in the bar, but these surveys tend to equate the two which inflates the number. This survey is no different:
A study has found that up to 15 times more men in the military are being raped by other man than is being reported by the Pentagon.
The report, released by the American Psychological Association on Tuesday, is based on the responses of 180 anonymous combat veterans.
It says the under-reporting is largely due to the stigma associated with sexual assaults and is the reason that the true extent of male-on-male sexual crimes is so vastly underestimated.
The Washington Times reported that most recent Pentagon sexual assault report, conducted by The Rand Corp last year, found that around 12,000 men said they had been sexually assaulted.
The definition of sexual assault means they had been raped, experienced unwanted sexual contact or someone had attempted to commit those crimes.
Of that number, around a third – 3,850 reported rape or ‘penetrative’ assaults.
But the APA said: ‘Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape and feelings of helplessness.’ [The Daily Mail via reader tip]
I guess we will see how strictly enforced these new measures are on South Korean teachers:
Teachers found guilty of committing sex offenses will be deprived of their teacher’s license, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) said, Thursday.
The office said it will take a zero-tolerance approach to sex offenses by teachers.
The measure came after a group of male teachers at a public high school in Seoul were recently accused of sexually harassing female teachers and students for more than a year.
“Schools should be the safest social fence for students,” Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon said at a press conference at the SMOE building in central Seoul.
“We’ll take stern legal action against teachers found to have committed sex offenses. For a single offence, we’ll not only kick out such teachers convicted of sexual molestation but also disclose their names,” he said.
If a teacher’s sexual misconduct is reported, the SMOE will launch a special inspection immediately and will have the teacher removed from his or her post even before the police investigation is concluded or prosecution’s indictment is issued. [Korea Times]
Here is what civic groups have to say about the new measures:
Civic groups, however, said that the SMOE’s measure would not be an ultimate solution because most of the abusers have been punished softly and returned to schools after one or two years of probation.
“Of a total of 240 teachers disciplined for their sexual abuse in the last five years, 115 teachers, or 47.9 percent, still remain in school,” said a parent group official.
The Stars & Stripes has a report stating that troops still feel like they are being retaliated against for reporting sexual assaults:
Too little progress has been made in countering perceptions of retaliation felt by those who report a sexual assault, and all the services must take measures to protect victims and others who report wrongdoing from reprisals, especially from peers, Pentagon officials concluded from an annual report on sexual assault in the military.
About two thirds of female troops who are sexually assaulted and report those attacks believe they experience retaliation afterward, according to the report.
“We’re not making enough progress on countering retaliation,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at a news conference when the report was released Friday. “Too many servicemembers, the data shows, feel that when they report or try to stop these crimes, they’re being retaliated against in some way.”
The retaliation numbers, which are unchanged from 2012, come from a survey done late last year, and were first released in December. At the time, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced new training and an additional study designed in part to prevent retaliation. [Stars & Stripes]
I think to really understand this issue you have to define what retaliation is? Is retaliation the command going after you with UCMJ and other measures or is it simply people in the unit not talking to you? With an issue like sexual assault people may be uncomfortable talking to someone who made a report and that could be interpreted by someone as being retaliation.
Statistics from the Korean National Police Agency.
