[Reporter's Column] Cutting vicious chain of violence

During the recent trial of her famous husband facing domestic violence charges, Seo Jung-hee revealed that she was in fact forced to marry comedian Seo Se-won after being nearly raped at age 19, and that she’d been constantly abused and confined during their 32 years of marriage.

“Your honor, do you think I ended up here because I was abused only once?” the 55-year-old who filed for divorce said in tears during the hearing.

CCTV footage showing Seo being dragged by the ankle and physically abused by her husband rattled many while prompting more rumors over what was portrayed publicly as a rosy marriage. Some claimed both were at fault, while others blamed the wife for putting up with it for all these years.

Just a year before, Kim Joo-ha, a prominent TV news anchor, filed for divorce, claiming she had been physically abused by her husband since 2004. It took her nine years to come forward. The agony behind Kim’s image as a successful woman seemed to unveil the uncomfortable reality here, where domestic violence is often still blamed on the victims, who therefore choose silence instead.

When looking at statistics, Seo and Kim are just two of some estimated 3.7 million people who have been abused at home in South Korea as of 2009. According to government data, 15.3 percent of all South Korean women aged 65 or under had been abused by their spouses at least once as of 2013. The rate was more than five times higher than in other developed nations, such as Japan and the U.K.

On top of that, more than 80 percent of all domestic abuse cases occurred in marriages.

Almost 63 percent of them never report the violence, mostly because of fear and concern for their children.

“Many abused women fear divorce for many reasons,” said a shelter worker who asked to remain anonymous. “Those who do not work fear that they may not be able to support their children. Others fear that their children may be stigmatized as children of single mothers.”

So what do these numbers tell us? After all, Seo and Kim stood for what many women and mothers pursued. Seo managed to send her children to prestigious schools in the U.S. and Japan while running her own interior design business. Kim was undoubtedly one of the most influential media figures here.

Perhaps that is why their cases rattled so many, as they reminded once again that no matter where you are on the social ladder, it is still hard to come forward against abuse.

Although the number of women in the high social tiers traditionally occupied by men is rapidly rising, their vulnerability to violence, and furthermore, social condemnation against female victims seems to persist.

Seo’s grown-up daughter, who is currently a Ph.D. student at the Wharton School of Business, recently supported her mother’s decision to file for divorce. She told local media that she “didn’t realize her father’s actions against her mother were wrong as a child, but learned to accept that they were not right as she grew up.”

Park Cheon-taek, a public servant who oversees domestic violence issues at the Gender Ministry, said that exposing children to domestic violence, including letting them witness their mother being abused by their father, is also a form of serious child abuse. In parts of in the U.S., it is considered a crime. “It’s an emotional abuse,” Park said. “Kids exposed to domestic violence are at a higher risk of increased emotional and behavioral problems.”

According to a 2010 study released by the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations, 51 percent of 998 teenagers surveyed said they have witnessed domestic violence at least once in their lives, and those who have witnessed it had a higher chance of becoming bullies in school.

One in 5 juvenile offenders in South Korea is from a single-parent household or homes with conflict. The number of teenagers who run away from home is also increasing ― from 15,114 in 2009 to 21,813 in 2012. Many of them turn to illegal prostitution.

Often, issues of domestic violence turn into a gender war on Internet forums. But perhaps, there is a need to accept that combating domestic violence is not a battle of the genders but a fight against a brutal crime that demolishes not only the victim but also the next generation.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)