'Me, three' in Korea

By Jason Lim

Shim, Yang and Kim. No, I am not opening up a new law firm in Seoul. These are the surnames of the three "Me, too" victims that made the news recently in Korea.

The biggest news centered around Shim Suk-hee, the 22-year-old short track gold medalist who publicly accused her former coach Cho Jae-beom of multiple rapes and sexual assaults beginning in 2014 when she was still in high school.

Adding a little more sensationalistic bent, Yang Ye-won, a South Korean YouTuber, won a court verdict against a man who was charged with sexual harassment and circulating her unauthorized, explicit photographs online.

Of course, what's politics without a sex scandal? Ahn Hee-jung, a former presidential hopeful accused of sexual abuse by his former secretary, Kim Ji-eun, was initially found not guilty by a lower court last July. The appeal hearing wrapped up Jan. 9, with the prosecution asking for a four-year sentence for Ahn.

Shim is receiving virtually universal support. It's a textbook #MeToo case. Her story has become the symbol for everything wrong with how South Korea manages its sports. In a society with a pathological need to be first or bust, especially in the international arena, choosing to pursue professional sports is akin to signing up to be an indentured slave to coaches, managers, and the sport-specific association executives who literally have the power to make or break your career.

A monopoly over opportunities and exposure, allocated through an intricate web of nepotism, has bred a culture where medalist wannabes are considered as commodities to be physically and sexually abused by the gatekeepers. One coach was even quoted as saying, "Why should we (coaches) go to a room salon? We have our players" (presumably to take care of their sexual needs).

The social reaction in the Kim vs. Ahn case, as evidenced by the not guilty judgment in the initial trial, is harder to gauge because it's more nuanced.

The court found that Kim behaved as a willing sexual partner, not a victim of sexual coercion, based on a chain-of-command relationship. Albeit unspoken, the underlying suspicion was that Kim made the intentional choice to have an affair with Ahn with dreams of becoming the nation's first lady if Ahn won the presidency. When Ahn refused to leave his wife, the unspoken accusation alleges, Kim jumped on the #MeToo bandwagon to have her revenge. Hell hath no fury and all that.

If Kim's case is nuanced, then Yang's story can be downright messy. Yang had originally answered a call for a modeling job to pose for a group of amateur photographers who paid money to take live pictures of attractive young women posing suggestively. Yang claims once she agreed to pose and arrived at the studio, the managers chain-locked the door and coerced her to pose pornographically. Additionally, despite the modeling contract specifying non-distribution, the accused manager uploaded the photos online. When Yang became aware of the photos' online presence ― by which time Yang had achieved growing fame as a YouTuber with her boyfriend ― she came out on YouTube in a tearful accusation against the studio and its management.

Despite winning the trial, however, Yang is not receiving much public support. One of the accused men actually committed suicide last July, but not before releasing a Kakaotalk text history in which Yang repeatedly asked him to book her more gigs because she needed the money. The general reaction was that Yang was more than a willing participant and only painted herself as the victim when her photos started showing up online and threatening to derail her burgeoning YouTube career.

Unfortunately, not every sexually abused woman can be a Shim. Say that we believe that worst about Kim and Yang. Let's assume they had the basest motives for crying sexual abuse. However, that doesn't mean they are not legitimate victims and any less deserving of legal recourse than Shim. All three women are victims of sexual abuse by men who were in positions of authority over them.

In Kim's case, Ahn was her boss, which means they were in a professionally hierarchical relationship whereby Kim's professional wellbeing absolutely depended on Ahn's graces. And Ahn wasn't just any boss. He was one of the leading lights in Korea's progressive political circles with a real chance to be the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. Anyone who says there wasn't coercion isn't looking hard enough.

Yang was a young woman surrounded by sexually predatory men in a locked space, under their absolute control, probing their cameras into her most intimate places with a sense of hungry entitlement to fulfill their fantasies. That Yang willingly participated in additional sessions speaks to her youthful indiscretion and lack of good judgment, not that the actual sessions weren't coercive to begin with.

Admittedly, both Kim and Yang will have to live with the criticism aimed at their behavior; it's a social burden they will have to bear for the rest of their lives. However, they don't have to be perfect to be acknowledged as victims. Sexual abuse is a necessarily contextual crime built on varying degrees of relationships and situations ― and actors don't behave consistently good or bad throughout the narrative.

#MeToo shouldn't be reserved for only the perfect victims.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.