114 women murdered by husbands, boyfriends in 2014

A total of 114 women were murdered by their husbands or boyfriends last year, according to statistics by Korea Women’s Hot Line, a Seoul-based women’s rights advocacy group, released Saturday.

The tally also showed that 95 women survived attacks from their partners.

By age, 25 percent of the victims were in their 40s, followed by women in their 50s (17 percent) and their 30s (10 percent). Such figures reveal that women in a wide range of age groups are the victims of violence, the group said.

The number of teenage victims in 2014 stood at seven, almost double the number from the previous year, showing that younger women are becoming more vulnerable to violence.

To curb increasing teenage violence, the advocacy group urged the authorities to take action to eradicate dating violence, stressing that the authorities have not implemented any particular policies to address the issue.

“We put together the statistics based on cases of violence against females reported by the media. If we had included unreported cases of violence, the number of victims would have been even higher,” an official from the advocacy group said.

By Yeo Jun-suk (jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)