10 years after Gangnam Station murder, feminists reflect on work still left to be done

Individuals in a Hankyoreh roundtable on the Gangnam Station femicide organized with Feminist Yeondae maintain up sticky notes with questions and resolutions concerning the decade that has handed for the reason that 2016 case that sparked a significant motion towards violence towards ladies. Entrance row left to proper: Ham Track-hwa, Cho Hye-won, Choi Yoon-yi; Again row left to proper: Lee Han, Park Ji-a. (Jung Yong-il/Hankyoreh)

On Could 17, 2016, a 23-year-old girl was murdered by a 34-year-old man she had by no means met in a public restroom at a bar close to Gangnam Station in Seoul. Requested why he did it, the perpetrator stated, “Girls have all the time ignored me.” He ignored the six males who had entered the restroom earlier than and focused the girl as she got here in.

This incident ignited mass outrage amongst ladies in Korea. Many took to the streets and mourned the sufferer by plastering Gangnam Station with tens of 1000’s of sticky notes with messages akin to “Your demise is my demise” and “She was murdered merely for being a lady.” 

The notorious homicide turned a rallying cry for ladies to unite towards and protest gender-based violence, spanning the #MeToo motion, condemnation of “molka” (unlawful filming utilizing hidden cameras), prosecution of stalking, and the investigation into the Telegram Nth Room case during which dozens of ladies and minors had been blackmailed into producing sexually specific materials. 

Gangnam Station case nonetheless related as we speak

Ten years later, on Could 5 at 12:10 am, a 24-year-old man killed a 17-year-old highschool lady he noticed strolling down the road in Gwangju.  

“I used to be planning to kill myself as a result of life was no enjoyable, however I did what I did after seeing her and acted on impulse,” he stated.

Ten years have handed for the reason that Gangnam Station homicide, however ladies proceed to be killed or injured on the streets, in school and even at dwelling. In line with information from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Workplace, ladies have accounted for 80% of violent crime victims for the reason that Gangnam Station homicide.

In 2016, the proportion of feminine victims of violent crimes — homicide, theft, sexual assault, arson, and others — remained within the 80% vary at 83.6%, dipped into the 70% vary in 2022 to 2023, solely to rebound to 80.3% in 2024.
 
On Could 5, the Hankyoreh spoke with 5 individuals ranging in age from their 20s to 50s — some launched to the world of feminism by the Gangnam homicide case, others longtime feminist activists — to debate what has modified, and what has not, within the decade since that brutal killing. 
 
The previous 10 years has been marked by persistent misogyny and gender-based violence, from power-based sexual violence circumstances to the Nth Room, deepfake intercourse crimes and stalking circumstances.
 
“After seeing the information {that a} highschool lady was murdered in Gwangju, I instantly considered what occurred at Gangnam Station,” stated Ham Track-hwa, 49, the director of Unni’s Small Library, which is affiliated with the Seoul Girls’s Affiliation. “It made me notice that nothing has modified.”
 
Choi Yoon-yi, 30, who stated that the Gangnam Station homicide had been the catalyst for her curiosity in feminism, stated that the 2 incidents had been “very comparable in how the aggressors had been motivated by hate.” 

“Relatively than confronting their very own points, they tried to cope with them by concentrating on individuals who had been weaker and extra weak,” she stated. “The federal government is at fault for neglecting these circumstances and permitting these two circumstances, that are mainly mirror pictures of each other, to happen.”
 
Cho Hye-won, 26, who calls herself a part of a “era” of younger Korean ladies turned on to feminism by the 2016 femicide, stated, “The homicide in Gwangju is one more reminder that anyplace ladies go, violence towards them follows.” 
 
Defunct countermeasures
 
Every time an incident of this nature occurred, the federal government was fast to announce complete countermeasures. But as a substitute of declining, gender-based violence has continued in Korea. 
 
On June 1, 2016, within the wake of the girl’s homicide in Gangnam, the federal government unveiled a sequence of measures geared toward stopping hate crimes towards ladies in a gathering of ministers liable for regulation and order. The measures included the institution of a police crime prevention evaluation staff, efforts to put in emergency bells, the growth of CCTV protection in crime-prone areas, and the growth of the scope of recent buildings required to put in separate restrooms for women and men.
 
Critics say that such measures solely handle the signs of the issue moderately than the underlying reason for gender-based violence. 

“Gender-based violence additionally occurs in household properties and accommodations. Putting emergency bells and putting in CCTVs in restrooms due to one incident is not going to assist hold ladies secure,” stated Lee Han, 35, the director of the group Feminism with Him. 

“What’s actually vital is altering the best way the offenders suppose [about women]. The issue is that there are not any basic measures for addressing that problem,” he stated. 
 
After the Gangnam homicide case, quite a few ladies’s organizations known as for comparable offenses to be categorized by regulation as “misogynistic hate crimes,” and demanded efforts be made to research and map the dimensions of such crimes within the nation. 
 
The Framework Act on Prevention of Violence In opposition to Girls, enacted in 2018, defines “violence towards ladies” as together with home violence, sexual violence, intercourse trafficking, sexual harassment and chronic harassment, intimate associate violence, and violence utilizing info and communication networks. Nonetheless, the act itself doesn’t embody a separate class for hate crimes based mostly on misogyny.
 
There have been growing requires a separate classification of misogynistic hate crimes and for complete investigations of such crimes following the 2023 assault of a part-time comfort retailer employee in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, who was attacked by a belligerent man who noticed her brief hair and assumed she was a feminist. 
 
A petition to create such a classification was submitted to the Nationwide Meeting’s Gender Equality and Household Committee in 2024, however didn’t cross the petition evaluate subcommittee in 2025.
 
“Girls should go to work, stroll down the streets at night time, and meet individuals out on the earth. Nonetheless, their security in these areas that they occupy every day has not been addressed or handled as a severe problem,” stated Park Ji-ah, 50, the co-director of Feminist Yeondae, a coalition of feminists in search of options to gender-based violence.

“We can’t anticipate thorough measures to be put in place if individuals don’t acknowledge that gender discrimination exists structurally in society, and that such discrimination manifests as violence towards ladies,” she stated.  
 
“Legal guidelines on deepfake intercourse crimes had been enacted solely when victims of such crimes got here ahead to report their struggling, and for the previous 10 years, now we have seen a sample the place measures are launched solely after a lady has already died. Take how anti-stalking measures had been reviewed solely after a lady was killed by her stalker in Namyangju,” Park confused. 

Robust backlash complicates efforts to search out answer to gender-based violence
 
Nonetheless, some issues have modified over the previous 10 years. The 2018 #MeToo motion in Korea turned the catalyst for a lot of ladies to talk out about their private experiences with sexual assault. The protests towards unlawful spycam filming in Seoul’s Hyehwa District the identical 12 months demonstrated that ladies had been now not going to maintain silent within the face of injustice. In 2019, the abortion ban was struck down.
 
Nonetheless, the extra progress feminism achieved, the harsher the backlash turned. Cho, who chaired the human rights committee of her college’s scholar council in 2022, talked of how she skilled doxxing and on-line abuse on Everytime, an nameless on-line discussion board for college college students, after issuing a message of solidarity supporting a feminist professor who had been focused by on-line commenters. 
 
Due to that message, Cho was summoned to the scholar council’s steering committee and endured a two-hour ideological screening. In the long run, she was dismissed from her place on the human rights committee and subjected to disciplinary motion. 

Ham shared about experiencing resistance to feminism amongst younger individuals in her family. 

“Sooner or later, my son instructed me that feminism was a ‘dangerous factor.’ Once I instructed my nephews and nieces that I’d ship them merchandise with feminist slogans, they stated that such objects would ‘make them targets,’” she stated. 
 
The deliberate website for the tenth anniversary memorial occasion for the Gangnam homicide case, organized by Feminist Yeondae, was additionally usurped by anti-feminist teams. 
 
“As an alternative of the placement we’ve all the time used, we’re going to have to carry the tenth anniversary occasion on the street in entrance of it. On the day we needed to apply for a rally allow, individuals calling themselves ‘meninists’ had been ready from the early hours of the morning to order that venue,” Park stated.
 
The gradual decline in gender equality training can be a type of backlash, Lee opined. 

“Associated instructional occasions elevated considerably following the Nth Room incident, however began to vanish as soon as curiosity additionally declined. It’s no shock that deepfake intercourse crimes have change into so rampant, contemplating that training on stopping on-line intercourse crimes has additionally declined. These examples showcase how uninterested politicians are in addressing these points. This type of backlash is scarier than the overt variety,” he stated. 
 
“South Korea lacks a correct gender equality curriculum. What we do have is violence prevention training and intercourse training, however we want a extra complete training on gender equality,” he added. 

Whereas violence prevention training on the 4 main sorts of violence — sexual harassment, sexual violence, prostitution and home violence — is legally required, there are not any rules concerning gender equality training.
 
Choi famous the significance of getting politicians who establish as feminists. 

“Whereas now we have made a lot progress in relation to ladies’s rights, ladies are nonetheless weak and face all kinds of discrimination within the office. It will be reassuring to know that there have been individuals who would converse up on these points and make payments that would resolve them,” she stated.
 
Cho, for her half, confused the necessity to set up a “baseline understanding in society that violence towards ladies is unacceptable.”

Whereas talking concerning the latest tragedy in Gwangju, Lee famous that past the Gangnam case, the ever-growing variety of femicides within the nation is partly a “downside dedicated by younger males, or remoted males who’re sick of their lives.” 

“We have to take a look at who’s inflicting this downside. The explanation males change into remoted is due to the boundaries of conventional masculinity that tells them they’ve to carry all the things in, even when they’re struggling,” he stated. “We have to begin fascinated with how we are able to change this masculinity.” 

Returning to Gangnam Station

All 5 of the individuals within the Hankyoreh’s roundtable agreed that the tenth anniversary of the Gangnam Station homicide is the time to take motion on persistent gender-based violence. 

“To be able to be certain that my two children can stay in a world with out rampant gender-based violence, I hope that extra individuals come and be a part of us on the memorial as we speak, and in our combat tomorrow,” stated Ham. 

On Sunday, Could 17, Feminist Yeondae will host an occasion marking the tenth anniversary of the Gangnam Station femicide alongside 122 ladies’s rights teams. 

By Son Ji-min and Park Chan-hee, workers reporters

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