What is interesting about this curfew is that servicemembers cannot purchase alcohol, go to any bars or hold a party off base. That is even stricter than most curfews USFK has come up with over the years and this is in response to a horrible crime that US military servicemembers had nothing to do with:
A midnight curfew and other tightened liberty restrictions will take effect Friday for all servicemembers on Okinawa, III Marine Expeditionary Force said Thursday.
The new rules, which III MEF said will remain in effect through June 24, follow the arrest last week of a civilian U.S. base worker suspected in the death of a 20-year-old Okinawan woman. Others covered by the status of forces agreement – including civilian workers and families of servicemembers – are being asked to abide by the restrictions, too.
A III MEF statement said the intent of the measures is “to observe a period of unity and mourning by curtailing off-installation activities” in response to two recent criminal acts that SOFA-status personnel have been accused of committing.
The restrictions include:
• All ranks, including officers, must be on base by midnight.
• Alcohol may not be purchased or consumed off base.
• Patronizing off-base bars and clubs is prohibited.
Flanked by police officers, the suspect behind the brutal murder of a 23-year-old woman enters a karaoke bar near a subway station in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district on May 24, 2016, to stage a reconstruction. The 34-year-old man fatally knifed the victim in the bar’s bathroom a week ago in an alleged random crime, whipping up a nationwide outpouring of mourning. (Yonhap)
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.
Gender Minister Kang Eun-hee looks at a myriad of Post-it condolence messages on the wall of a subway exit in southern Seoul on May 20, 2016, which citizens voluntarily left to mourn the brutal murder of a 23-year-old woman in an alleged hate crime. The woman was fatally stabbed by a stranger in a bathroom near Gangnam Subway Station on Tuesday, sparking a nationwide outpouring of mourning. (Yonhap)
This is a senseless and brutal murder by some homeless guy in Gangnam. However, the usual suspects are out trying to paint this as a hate crime despite the fact the homeless guy has a history of schizophrenia and has been in and out of mental hospitals:
Mass public mourning of a 23-year-old woman who was fatally stabbed by a stranger in a bathroom near Gangnam Station, southern Seoul, on Tuesday, sparked a rallying call against misogyny across the nation.
Hundreds of people voluntarily left Post-it condolence notes and white chrysanthemums near Exit 10 of Gangnam Station to mourn the victim’s brutal slaying since Wednesday morning.
Politicians visited the impromptu mourning site, which was proposed by a Twitter user that went viral Wednesday, to pay their condolences. Moon Jae-in, the former chairman of the Minjoo Party visited the station Wednesday morning unaccompanied by aides. On Thursday, Cho Eun-hee, head of the Seocho District Office, and Park Won-soon, Seoul mayor, visited the site as well.
“I will preserve the mourning site as well as the memory of the tragic event,” wrote Park on Twitter. “I’ll try to heal the world into a place where there will be no more killings due to anger and hatred.”
After the police announced Tuesday that the 34-year-old suspect, a homeless man surnamed Kim, admitted that he didn’t know the victim but killed her out of vengeance against women in general for looking down on him, misogyny in Korea became a trending topic online and in the Post-its at Gangnam Station. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This murder case in Hawaii has just gotten a whole lot weirder. Obviously this NCO has some serious sexual issues if he is having affairs, watching child porn and prostituting himself to other men:
An Army medic charged with conspiring with his lover to kill his wife in Hawaii will be court-martialed for child pornography and prostitution charges that surfaced while investigating the killing.
Sgt. Michael Walker’s general court-martial is set for June 20 and June 21 at Wheeler Army Airfield on Oahu, said Jim Guzior, spokesman for Tripler Army Medical Center, where Walker has been assigned since 2013. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for next week.
Walker has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in civilian court in the killing of Catherine Walker, who was found stabbed to death in November 2014 in the military housing the couple shared in Honolulu.
Army prosecutors revealed new allegations during a military judicial hearing in March, where they said Michael Walker is accused of possessing and viewing child pornography and receiving money in exchange for sex with men. [Stars & Stripes]
A Chinese male (C) suspected of killing a Chinese woman on Jeju Island in late 2015 is brought to the Seogwipo Police Station by police officers in Seogwipo, Jeju Island, on May 15, 2016, for further investigation of the murder case. The body of the dead woman was discovered in April. [Yonhap]
This has to horrible news to the residents of this apartment who have been using the tap water contaminated with a decomposed corpse:
A body was found in a water tank on the roof of an apartment block in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, local daily Kyunghyang Shinmun reported Tuesday.
Management staff at the apartments in Gongdan-dong found the body of a 38-year-old Chinese at 1:30 p.m. Monday after a resident complained that the tap water had a bad smell.
“The body had no particular injuries,” police said. “The Chinese is presumed to have been dead for two weeks.”
Police are investigating and an autopsy will be held Wednesday.
Gumi City has provided bottles of mineral water to apartment residents as an emergency measure. [Korea Times]
Statistics from the Korean National Police Agency.
