Image: The finger gesture in the video game Maple Story that supposedly mocked the size of Korean men's genitals. Credit: Nexon.
New heights, or depths, have been reached in the wave of angry paranoia among misogynistic young South Korean men over a supposedly “feminist” hand gesture that they perceive everywhere, mocking - again, supposedly - the size of their genitals. On August 5, OhMyNews 오마이뉴스 reported that the Seocho Police Station 서초경찰서 in Seoul declined to investigate a criminal complaint filed by an animator involved in a November 2023 hand gesture hullabaloo.
The animator, a young woman, became a target of online harassment after a promotional video for the video game Maple Story 메이플스토리 included an 0.1 second-long shot of an animated character making the hand gesture. Although a different animator - a man in his 40s - had in fact been responsible for the character animation in the video, online misogynists targeted the woman animator because she had previously posted feminist content on Twitter.
The animator filed a criminal complaint against her harassers, only for the Seocho police to side with the incels. Explaining the decision not to investigate the woman’s case, police said that “criticism” of her was “logical conclusion” of her “previous tweets apparently sympathizing with feminists.” Without investigating, police wrote off the harassment as “no more than somewhat off-color mockery in the course of expressing opposition to inappropriate behavior by radical feminists.”
After receiving a barrage of criticism that included a small protest in front of the police station, the Seocho police reversed their decision on August 7 and acknowledged that at least some of the animator’s allegations merited investigation.
