Image: Poster for Han Gong-ju. Credit: CGV Arthouse.
Twenty years later, one of the grisliest cases of sexual assault in South Korean history continues to reverberate. In the southeastern city of Miryang, Gyeongsangnam-do Province 경상남도 밀양, 44 high school students formed an organized gang dedicated to violent sexual assault that victimized five middle school students in the area for over a year. Another 75 high school students abetted the ongoing sexual assault by standing watch or shooting videos of the assaults, implicating a significant portion of the mid-sized town.
Horrendous as it was, the victimization of the middle school students didn’t end with the sexual assaults: Miryang residents closed ranks to attack the victims. In a survey conducted by the Miryang Sexual Violence Counseling Center 밀양 성폭력 상담소 immediately after the story broke, 64% of 645 Miryang residents surveyed said the girls were at fault for inviting the sexual assaults. The victims and their families - whose identities were not concealed - were harassed and bullied by Miryang residents until they were forced to relocate.
The police, for their part, dragged their feet while blaming the girls for the assaults, and ultimately indicted only ten of the 119 high school students implicated in the conspiracy. In the end, not a single member of the gang was imprisoned, or faced any penalty harsher than juvenile supervised release. The ordeal was depicted in the critically acclaimed 2013 movie Han Gong-ju 한공주 starring Cheon U-hee 천우희, whose role won her Best Actress in the Blue Dragon Film Awards 청룡영화상, one of the most prestigious awards in South Korean filmmaking.
This month saw the incident return to the headlines after an anonymous YouTuber purported to reveal the identities of the perpetrators. Although some of the information was correct, 16 individuals filed police reports claiming that they lost their jobs or suffered online harassment after being falsely accused by the YouTube channel. After a week of online furor, one of the victims of the assault publicly requested that the YouTuber take down the video, saying she never consented to revealing the identities of her attackers.
