‘Spycam porn’ sparks protests in South Korea

SEOUL — Even a record heatwave will not keep Claire Lee from joining tens of thousands of South Korean women at a mass protest Saturday against secretly-filmed spycam pornography – as anger over the issue swells, prompting national soulsearching.

Since May, the monthly demonstration in Seoul has shattered records to become the biggest-ever women’s protest in South Korea where the global #MeToo movement has unleashed an unprecedented wave of female-led activism.

The target of their fury: so-called “molka” or spycam videos which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, toilets and changing rooms and which are so prevalent they make headlines on a daily basis.

“Entering a public bathroom is such an unnerving experience these days,” Lee said, adding that she always looked around the walls to see if there were any “suspicious holes”. “You never know if there’s a spycamlense hidden inside... filming you while you pee”, the 21-year-old student told AFP, saying she sometimes stabbed the holes with a pen to shatter any secret lenses, or stuffed tissues inside them.

The statistics are startling, with the number of spycam crimes reported to police surging from around 1,100 in 2010 to more than 6,500 last year.

The offenders have included school teachers, professors, doctors, church pastors, government officials, police officers and even a court judge.

In some cases, the victims’ own boyfriends or relatives were responsible for the crimes, in a troubling reflection of South Korea’s deep-rooted patriarchal norms.

Fed up of living in fear, women are fighting back.