A director’s apology adds momentum to South Korea’s #MeToo movement

SEOUL — The apology this week by one of South Korea’s most prominent theater directors for sexually abusing actresses is part of a slowly building #MeToo movement in a deeply male-dominated society.

“I feel so ashamed and crushed,” Lee Youn-taek, 65, a former artistic director of the National Theater of Korea, said at a news conference in Seoul. “I am ready to take all punishment, including legal responsibilities for my crimes.”

Mr Lee’s apology on Monday came five days after a Facebook post by a former actress set off a cascade of abuse accusations against him.

“I could not refuse. He was the king of the world where I belonged,” said former actress Kim Soo-hee, describing how Mr Lee had called her to his hotel room.

“When I opened the door, I saw him lying on the bed, and as expected, he ordered me to give him a massage. After a while, he suddenly took his pants off.”

In South Korea, men still dominate the top echelons of government, business and the arts, presiding over a strictly hierarchical code that makes women particularly vulnerable to abuse and bias.

Women’s rights advocates have long warned that male supervisors exploit the country’s command-and-compliance work culture, where an employee’s personal relationship with her bosses often determines her chances for promotion.

Mr Lee’s admission attested to the lasting nature of the problem.

“This is a very bad thing that has been happening customarily for the past 18 years,” he said.

South Korea has made strides on women’s rights in recent years, as more women have moved into the government, judiciary and corporate world. Long gone are the days when women in a Korean family were not allowed to eat at the same table as men or had to wait until men were finished. Government agencies and big corporations have instituted mandatory classes on harassment in recent years.

Still, in this deeply patriarchal society, sons in many families still get the lion’s shares of inheritances from parents, and in workplaces, women are often treated like temporary employees expected to quit once they marry.

The World Economic Forum ranks the country 118th of 144 in terms of gender equality.

Men earn 37 per cent more than women on average, a gap in wages that puts South Korea at the bottom of member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (The gap is 18 per cent in the United States and 26 per cent in Japan.)

As elsewhere, sexual abuse victims often remain quiet for fear of losing their jobs or being ostracised in the workplace.

In 2009, a young actress named Jang Ja-yeon killed herself, leaving behind a handwritten note saying she had been forced to provide sexual favours to entertainment executives.

But as the #MeToo movement has erupted around the world, complaints in South Korea have trickled out.

In November, a 25-year-old employee of furniture maker Hanssem posted a detailed account of being sexually assaulted by male colleagues. In another episode, nurses at Hallym University Medical Center in Anyang, south of Seoul, said they were told to dance in skimpy outfits at work-related events.

A broader outcry and lasting reforms, however, have been slow to materialise.

A tipping point appears to have come last month when a prosecutor named Seo Ji-hyeon asserted that a senior male prosecutor groped her at a funeral in 2010.

Writing in an internal web log for prosecutors, she said she had been so deeply traumatised that she had a miscarriage.

“I wanted to speak out but many discouraged me, saying: ‘It will be a piece of cake for them to turn you into a fool. If you speak up now, they will make you look like an inefficient, problematic, weirdo prosecutor,’” she wrote in her posting.

“They said, ‘Keep your mouth shut and go back to your work.’”

After taking the rare step of appearing on TV to describe how she had been suppressed in the male-dominated legal world, Ms Seo drew a wave of public support, forcing the Justice Ministry to open an investigation.

Other women, including graduate school students and corporate employees, have since come forward with their own stories of sexual assault.

Ms Seo, the prosecutor whose case set off the #MeToo wave here, said that after she first sought an investigation, she was transferred to an obscure post in a provincial town.

She spoke up publicly after the senior prosecutor she accused, Ahn Tae-geun, was fired last year in a corruption scandal.

Mr Ahn told reporters, “It happened so long ago, and I was heavily drunk, so I don’t remember, but if such an act happened, then I sincerely apologise.”

In November, Parliament improved protections for victims of sexual harassment, increasing penalties for employers who discriminate against them or fail to investigate abuse.

Still, a fresh reminder of the obstacles victims have faced in South Korea came only minutes before Mr Lee held his news conference on Monday.

In a Facebook post, another former actress, Lee Seung-bi, wrote that she had been subjected to a “witch hunt” after she rebuffed Mr Lee.

“Even my boyfriend, who was a member of his theatre group, kept silent,” she wrote. THE NEW YORK TIMES