[Kim Myong-sik] Warning: MeToo movement here may turn political

An inappropriate comment has been made on the ongoing movement against sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. Kim O-joon, a podcast host, said that the MeToo campaign was a scheme to divide and attack liberal supporters of the Moon Jae-in government.

He may have drawn the idea from the fact that the targets of the social media accusations of sexual outrage include some celebrities in the literary and drama worlds, who are on the left of Korea’s political spectrum. Appearing in the news these days are names that were on the “blacklist” during the conservative Park Geun-hye administration.

Yet, this claim could not be farther from truth if we consider how the uproar started in this country.

When Prosecutor Seo Ji-hyeon raised the torch against practices of sexual abuse in prosecutors’ offices, she mentioned two names: Ahn Tae-geun, a senior aide to the justice minister in October 2010 when she experienced sexual harassment at the funeral of her colleague’s father, and Choi Kyo-il, then chief of the Prosecution Bureau in the Justice Ministry, who allegedly buried her protest.

Ahn later became chief of the most powerful bureau in the Justice Ministry, but he retired following Park’s downfall. Choi joined politics after retirement and is currently a lawmaker with the opposition Liberal Korea Party. I doubt that Seo could have summoned the necessary courage had they remained at the top of the prosecution hierarchy.

We can be pretty sure that poetess Choe Young-mi pointed her finger at Ko Un, one of former president Kim Dae-jung’s allies and several times nominee for Nobel Literature Prize, touching off an avalanche of accusations in the artistic circles. The daily Chosun Ilbo editorialized in a front page article that those known sexual assailants were mostly from the left and leftists aided them with silence.

Kim O-joon is reacting to the conservative daily’s assertion with a flimsy conspiracy theory, “From the point of (rightist) schemers, it is desirable to push some victims of sexual abuse into using the liberal media with their MeToo claims, thereby making a chance to split the liberal forces. Recent Internet postings reveal that their ultimate target is Moon Jae-in’s Blue House.”

Well, the left-right war in this society seems to have found a great cache of ammunition in the tears of the poor women who suffered at the hands of cowardly men in workplaces, drama rehearsals, in small editing rooms at publishing houses and even at funerals. Warriors on both sides are trying to dilute responsibility by claiming that the accusers are politically motivated.

You may say anything in political warfare, but please do not try to vindicate those who use their social power to seek sexual gratification against emotional and physical pains of women who are faithful helpers at work and in most cases great contributors to their success.

Thanks to Seo’s revelation, light was shed on the downtime habits of prosecutors, which were not much different from their contemporaries in other lines of work. We are only a little surprised to know the vulgarity of the way they socialized.

In a diary she wrote under a borrowed surname, Seo Ji-hyeon disclosed in detail how male prosecutors routinely insulted her with words and acts that bore lewd sexual implications. We cannot blame them for merrymaking after work, but intoxication seems to be the order of everyday business.

“A woman is worth just a half of a man. You should work more than twice as much as what your male colleagues do to win my recognition. I don’t like non-drinking prosecutors, I hate Ewha graduates and I hate the princess-type. You are those three combined,” she quoted the chief of her division as saying during a staff dinner at which alcohol flowed.

Other quotes:

“The number of women prosecutors has exceeded 100. I am very concerned about the future of our organization.”

“A woman of your age will find it hard to find a husband in this country. You’d better look for one from abroad or seek a man trying for a second marriage.” (This advice continued until she got married.)

“I am lonely. Aren’t you lonely, too? It’s a big problem for me that you look prettier day by day,” a senior prosecutor said as he left an office dinner. He had a wife.

“Sis, I hate going home tonight. I will get out of this car only after you give me a hug,” insisted a junior prosecutor, who also was married.

“I can make an unforgettable night for you,” a married colleague said, and he pretended that he remembered nothing the following morning.

Her story went on and on, describing how the division chief kept her small hand in his palm for a long time during a staff dinner while her colleagues looked away. Male prosecutors liked to dance blues steps with her at karaoke bars and Seo had to busy herself pounding the tambourine to avoid it.

What has Seo earned by suffering the pains, just biting her lips, for the past several years? She said she did so because she had learned from childhood that endurance is woman’s virtue and because she was afraid of being disadvantaged at work.

Exercise of that virtue helped her little, and she was eventually sent to the remote Changwon office in South Gyeongsang Province.

The only advice she got from her female seniors was keeping mum to avoid being branded as problematic. Chances came to her in two ways: one was the awakening of a sense of mission by the global MeToo movement and the other was her assailant’s loss of power as a result of last year’s change of government.

A special investigation team is now at work to gather the behavioral data of all prosecutors including instances of sexual aberration. Standards will be established to punish relatively serious offenders. But I do not believe that our prosecutors will be able to rid themselves of moral impurity and enjoy public trust as long as they remain indulged in binge drinking of the same frequency and heat as Seo painted in her diary.

What’s essential is learning to respect women at work or in times of leisure.


Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. – Ed.