disclaimer: i am emotionally activated to say the least–so this entry probably won’t be so controlled and thoughtful. but my personal reactions of rage and grief over this incident and the attitude of the people responding to this is just as valid as any thoughtful and controlled entries. basically, what i’m saying is… i’m pissed off.
i can’t stand the convoluted response of the media and the country to the awful and horrifying news in korea of the woman who was raped, murdered, and dismembered after placing a phone call to the police—it makes me flip my lid.
the news in itself is horrifying.
to sum it up: a woman places a call at night to the local police station, reporting that she is being raped. the police responds in a less-than-satisfying manner, and finds the perpetrator and the victim 13 hours later after the woman has been raped, killed, dismembered, and placed in plastic bags. the police keeps lying about what happened until the truth can no longer be hidden, and it is reported that the phone call was close to 8 minutes long in length, with about 80 second coherent conversation with the victim in which she reported the exact location of where she was. after interviewing the residents in the area, some report hearing the victim’s cries for help and had dismissed it as a private matter between a husband and wife. one lady even said that she saw the victim get dragged in by the man in which the victim was begging for her life, and she dismissed it as a marital conflict and did not report it to the police.
okay. what the hell?
how can the police respond with such leisure after getting that phone call? after having 80 seconds of conversation with a coherent and alert victim? why in the name of all that is holy would you ask who is hurting you and how do you know him and how did you enter the building? why the hell do you need to know that when the urgent matter at hand is finding where she is and stopping this crime?!
and why would you send two cop cars who do nothing but circle around the area, looking at all the wrong places when it was clear in the phone call that she was inside a building? why wouldn’t you knock on doors and interview the residents to see if they saw anything? what use is it to be asking for an address for the rest of the 7 minute phone call when she’s clearly unable to answer because the perpetrator is back in the room and she is screaming in pain and dying?
and the residents too—how could you watch a young woman be dragged into a man’s house when she is obviously begging for her life and check that off as domestic disturbance? wouldn’t you call the police for the safety of the woman, whether they were married or not?! are you sleeping well with all that screaming going on in your neighborhood?!
this reminds me of my friend’s experience. she told me that she once told afriend of her experiences being sexually harrassed, and he responded to her vulnerability by saying, “well, you smile too much. you shouldn’t smile at everyone.”
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! you know? like a girl can’t even smile at someone without inviting men to harass and violate you?
the thing that kills me is i knew the guy. he is very caring, loving, and overall a well meaning person. he had good intentions and a good heart. but the fact that he said that to her… it just shows the level of ignorance.
and apparently, he proceeded to tell her that he understood the women’s troubles and that korea has changed. that they have started to be more equal in their gender rights, that most of the time women are more stronger and powerful than men are.
and then these things happen.
how does that even make sense?
people are so ignorant and apathetic to violence against women. it’s so prevalent and so…normal! how can women walk around town without fearing for her life? how can we sleep soundly at night?
i’ve been following the news articles being published on nate for a few days now. i’ve been reading on how people are commenting and what kind of tone the news articles are taking. people are responding in a few different ways.
1. they are chastising the police: the way the call was handled, the way they tried to cover up, and the way they are continuing to respond to the media even now. one of these articles talk about the language in which the police is explaining themselves, and the dangerous undertone of ignorance and apathy.
112 센터의 지령을 받고 현장에 출동했던 경찰관들은 단순 성폭행으로 판단해 추가 인원을 배치하거나 상부에 보고하지 않았다.
The police who received the command from the 112 center (t/n: same calling the police) judged the call to be a simple rape case and did not report or call for back up.
그러나 살인 등의 추가 범죄가 성폭행 뒤에 이루어지는 점을 감안하면 단순 성폭행이라는 판단 자체가 치명적이었다고 할 수 있다.
But rape usually is followed by murder and other violent crimes, and it is a critical miss to dismiss a call as a “simple rape” case.
경기경찰청은 8일 이번 사건에 대한 감찰 결과를 발표하면서도 ‘단순 성폭행’이라는 단어를 남발했다.
The kyung-gi police department used “simple rape case” to describe the situation during the press conference.
이는 아무리 다급하게 성폭행 신고 전화를 해도 근무자가 성폭행으로만 끝날 것이라고 판단하면 경찰이 긴장을 풀 수도 있다는 의미로도 읽힐 수 있는 대목이자, 성폭행에 대한 경찰의 한심한 인식 수준을 보여 주는 부분이라고도 할 수 있다.
This implies that even when an urgent call is placed to report rape and other sexual crimes, the call receiver may judge the case to be “just a rape” case and may not respond with urgency. This illustrates the pitiful level of awareness among the police.
(CBS news article via nate, 2012.04.09)
um, “simple rape” case? the police, as well as the author of this news article, seems to have decided that rape on its own is not worth too much attention. the police responded that way. and the author of the news article is saying that because of the danger of violence following rape, rape should not be taken lightly.
what, if a “more violent crime” doesn’t follow the rape, it’s not as bad or something? i can’t even… how am i supposed to take that? i must be mistranslating and misunderstanding this. right? someone please correct me, and tell me that i’m being too sensitive. please?
2. they are focusing on the identity of the murderer. the media made sure to highlight the fact that this man was a joseon-jok, meaning he is an expatriat who came from china as a migrant worker. his ancestry traces up to koreans from the joseon dynasty, but have lived in china for several generations. so, the general message is that they’re not one of us. koreans have often placed emphasis on ancestry, the purity of blood, and the authenticity of koreanness–which is a topic i’ll explore at another time–and they’re using this idea full force to shit-talk about the migrant workers in korea.
and i can’t understand why the media is reporting and highlighting that the psychopath who committed such crime is an expatriate and is a joseon-jok. why the hell does where he comes from and what ethnicity he is matter at this point?
the comments first started reflecting these racist sentiments, then finally an article surfaced. the article lists various crimes and admittedly horrifying violence that chinese migrant workers have committed on korean land. then it proceeds to give numbers of chinese migrants residing in korea as migrant workers or as international students, and criticizes the lenient border policies as well as human rights activist groups that advocate for protection of immigrants’ rights in korea.
the skewed facts grows the level of fear in an already xenophobic and homogeneous group, who is still struggling to make sense of the fast paced globalization and changing ethnic landscape of their nation (again, another topic for a later time).
don’t tell me that there aren’t any korean men who are just as psychotic and have committed such crimes. remember the case of little na young, in which a 50-something year old korean man raped and permanently damaged a little girl’s body through sexual violence? and many other nameless women who faded away from such brutality at the hands of our own people?
this crime has nothing to do with the legislation around immigration and migrant workers. that is not the issue. why is everyone hung up on this little detail of what social group this psychopath belongs to? is no one horrified at the calloused and unprofessional and IGNORANT way that this call for help was handled? the way residents in the neighborhood ignored and wrote off screams for help as domestic disturbance? the way the media is warping the story and making it about koreans versus others, when in reality, it’s about the violence against women (korean or not)?
3. intermittent articles are surfacing about what the victim did wrong to start the whole thing. what the hell.
i’ve read 3 articles now, this being one of them, in which the family members of the victim is having to defend the victim by saying that “she was such a good girl, she wouldn’t have cursed at the man to make him mad” and “she was probably walking home from work because the buses stop earlier on weekends”. what is that implying?
are people really trying to pin this on the victim? that this was her fault?
that she shouldn’t be walking alone at night if she didn’t want to be raped and killed? that she shouldn’t be mad at some random drunk man who ran into her and was rude if she knew what was good for her?
they’re murdering her twice by trying to blame her for getting herself raped and killed. blaming the victim. how typical.
4. this is how they’re NOT responding: no one is talking about the responsibility of the neighbors, the residents, the people who heard the screams and saw the woman being dragged into his home and did nothing about it.
shit. i love my motherland and all, but everything about this is making me flip my lid.
such ignorance. such apathy. everything about this is so…. so…wrong.
