Anger at verdict for man who attacked ‘feminist’

A man who assaulted a convenience store worker after suspecting she was a feminist due to her short hair has been sentenced to three years in jail, amid anger from activists who denounced the verdict for failing to recognise the case as a hate crime.

A court in Jinju, about 280km from Seoul, ordered the man to pay 2.5 million won (HK$14,500) in compensation to the shop’s owner and 10 million won to a customer who was injured while trying to stop the attack in November last year.

According to police, the intoxicated defendant reportedly told the woman employee: “Since you have short hair, you must be a feminist. I’m a male chauvinist, and I think feminists deserve to be assaulted.”

He later punched and kicked her, resulting in multiple injuries, including hearing loss.

The accused also used a chair to hit the shopper who attempted to intervene, causing grievous injuries to his shoulder and nose, the court heard.

The prosecution had sought a five-year jail term, but the court said psychological evaluation of the man showed he was in an unstable mental state at the time of the incident.

The victims expressed their disappointment at the lighter punishment, while gender rights groups rebuked the court for refusing to treat the case as a hate crime directed against women.

“It is regrettable that the court did not see the incident as a hate crime … If an act of targeting someone out of hate, just because they belong to a specific group, is not considered a hate crime, then what is?” a coalition of women’s rights groups said in a statement on Tuesday following the ruling.

Jinju city government said it would honour the convenience store customer, who was so traumatised that he quit his job, and help him find employment.

“He sacrificed himself while trying to rescue a citizen, so we [Jinju city] decided that we should help him,” the local administration said.

It added that the man would be designated a “wounded noble person” by the law and receive state compensation, The Korea Herald reported.

This is the latest in a string of misogynistic cases involving women with short, cropped hair in South Korea.

In 2021, Olympic gold medallist archer An San, who has short hair, was subjected to an intense cyberbullying campaign for “looking like a feminist”.