Breaking the Silence by Yura Heo
Footage of a woman writing "slave" on her body, a video of a teenage girl barking like a dog in front of the camera naked. These are just a few out of thousands of sickening videos exploiting sex commercialized for trade through social media. Various methods were used to steal personal information from women in their teenage or twenties to use as a threat to send sexually provocative videos. After collecting the videos of "the slaves", they then secretly spread the footage to hundreds of thousands of people offering money to gain access to the videos. Young adolescents were sexually abused and ridiculed by more than 260,000 users hiding behind the screen.
As much as it sounds like a crazy fictional story, this is the brutal reality of South Korea, the Nth room case. While news headlines flooded with updated information about the worldwide pandemic, other issues in desperate need of our attention were muted like the Nth room case. The first report of this case was by a team of college students for a press contest in July of 2019. The disturbing news started surfacing around March of 2020. Why did it take more than half a year to finally regain the spotlight?
Social awareness greatly contributes to how individuals cognize social issues. Although living in a country where many opportunities are given to me regardless of my gender, people still get uncomfortable or even offended when a conversation about the empowerment of women or sexual assault is brought up. Bringing up notions concerning sex crime in a conversation is considered atypical and even erroneous. Furthermore, oftentimes the word "feminism" has a negative connotation. According to a study conducted by the Korean Women's Development Institute in 2019, one out of two men in their 20s were against feminism with the notion that women were challenging the authority of men, while more than 50% of men in their 40s viewed women as a subject of protection. Sexual harassment and exploitation is not just a title you see from an article. It is a prevalent and constant form of crime hidden behind social indifference. Forcing women to film sexually provocative videos is just one out of many types of sexual harassment. Getting catcalled, sexually ridiculed, and unwanted physical contact is what so many women have to deal with every day. Because of the social stigma that opening up about these issues should be avoided, many cases are ignored. According to the Korea Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, one out of two women experienced sexual harassment in work in 2017. Out of those women, 78.4% of them put up with the insults. When they speak up about the issue, one in ten women victimized for sexual assault was told that getting sexual assault is a shameful thing.
Yet countless NGOs and associations are fighting against the oppression of women every day, we still have a long way to go to raise social awareness about women empowerment. The reason the Nth room case has been muted for a long time is that people were muting themselves from talking about the "uncomfortable truth". The only uncomfortable truth is, however, that society is ignoring the fact that it has built an impenetrable wall of silence around sexual violence. The present-day Korean society has failed to absorb sensitivity to sexual rights, creating an atmosphere in which victims are forced to keep quiet. When people raise their voices to make a change and start a feminist movement, many men in Korea shake their heads believing that feminism is reverse discrimination towards men.
Social awareness greatly contributes to how individuals cognize social issues. However, society will not change unless we, as individuals, change first. We can stop sexual misconduct by establishing an environment where issues about sexual misconduct can be comfortably talked about. People should not be quieted down from starting a lively discussion about the ongoing assault of women. People should not be oppressed by society to come out as feminists and educate each other with the correct information on women's empowerment. Constantly bringing up the issues would be the awakening call that sexual harassment is an ongoing issue which women are fighting against every day. Regularly talking about equal rights would educate people that feminism is not just a movement to defend women. It is a movement that recognizes the equality and full humanity of both genders. So let's face the uncomfortable truth and break the silence.