\u201cWomen and dried pollock need to be beaten every three days for better taste\u201d \u2013 so goes an old saying that was common in South Korea in the 1960s when Choi Mal-ja was growing up in a small city in the country\u2019s southeast. <\/p>\n
Back then, male violence against women was widely accepted. So when Choi bit off part of the tongue of a man who allegedly tried to rape her, it was she who was labeled the aggressor and jailed for grievous bodily harm. <\/p>\n
At the time, Choi was 18 and living at home with her family. Now 78, she\u2019s trying to clear her name in the hope that vindication will pave the way for other victims of sexual crime in South Korea, one of the world\u2019s most advanced economies but one where society remains deeply patriarchal. <\/p>\n
After Choi\u2019s push for a retrial was rejected by courts in the city of Busan, she took her case to the Supreme Court. The top court ruled in her favor, sending the case back to Busan, where evidence will be called in coming months. <\/p>\n
Experts say the verdict could rewrite the legal precedent set by her original trial, with far-reaching consequences for other women. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe court must admit the fact that its unfair ruling has turned one person\u2019s life upside down, and take responsibility with just judgement now,\u201d Choi wrote. <\/p>\n
One spring evening in 1964, Choi, then a teenager, stopped to help a man who was asking for directions in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang province. <\/p>\n
After walking with him for a few meters, Choi gave him further directions and turned around to go back home, but he tackled her to the ground. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was feeling woozy, like I\u2019d been hit on the head with a hammer,\u201d Choi told a local TV show in 2020. <\/p>\n
Choi lost consciousness for a short while, but she remembers the man climbing on top of her and trying to force his tongue inside her mouth. She was only able to escape by biting 1.5cm (0.6 inch) of his tongue off, she said. <\/p>\n
More than two weeks later, the man, who is not named in court documents, and his friends forced their way into Choi\u2019s house and threatened to kill her father for what Choi had done. <\/p>\n
Ignoring her claims of sexual assault, the man sued Choi for grievous bodily harm, leading her to sue him for attempted rape, trespassing and intimidation. <\/p>\n
The police deemed Choi\u2019s argument of self-defense reasonable; however, prosecutors in Busan thought otherwise. <\/p>\n
They dropped the attempted rape charge against her assailant and accused Choi of grievous bodily harm, according to court documents. <\/p>\n
In 1965, Choi was sentenced to 10 months in prison and two years of probation, a harsher punishment than that of the aggressor, who was sentenced to six months of prison and one year of probation for trespassing and threatening. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t take a long time for the victim of a sexual crime to be turned into a perpetrator, nor did it take the strength of many people,\u201d Choi wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court last year, as part of her application for a retrial. <\/p>\n
Choi also claimed that her rights were infringed upon during the investigation and trial process, during which she and her supporters say she was handcuffed at one point and later made to undergo a test to prove her virginity, the result of which was made public. <\/p>\n
Until recent times, the social norm in South Korea was for women to support the men in their family. For example, when the country was developing rapidly after the 1950-53 Korean War, daughters were commonly sent to work at factories to financially support their brothers\u2019 education. <\/p>\n
And until the 1980s, South Korea was so focused on rebuilding from the devastation of the war and Japan\u2019s brutal occupation before that, that fighting for women\u2019s rights was considered \u201ca luxury,\u201d according to Chung. <\/p>\n
In 1983 the Korea Women\u2019s Hot-Line counseling center opened to campaign against \u201call institutions, customs and conventions that impose inhumane lives on women,\u201d and establish a \u201cjust and peaceful family and society,\u201d according to its statement. <\/p>\n
At the time, there was no word for domestic violence. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the 1980s. So, imagine what Choi Mal-ja had to go through for her case, in the 1960s,\u201d said Kim. <\/p>\n
According to Choi\u2019s testimonies, prosecutors and judges asked her during the investigation and trial whether she would like to marry the aggressor to conclude the case. <\/p>\n
Becoming his wife, so the theory went, might make amends for his injuries, as no other woman would want to marry a man with half a tongue. <\/p>\n
Wang Mi-yang, the president of the Korea Women Lawyers Association, said the 1965 ruling reflected the \u201csocial prejudice and distorted views on victims of sexual violence that remained deeply rooted in our society.\u201d <\/p>\n
Anti-sexual violence movements flourished in the 1990s and even included campaigns seeking justice for \u201ccomfort women,\u201d a euphemism for the victims of sexual slavery enforced by the Japanese military in Korea during and before World War II. <\/p>\n
For many years, \u201ccomfort women\u201d kept their trauma secret to avoid shame and humiliation, but they finally spoke out, becoming what Chung calls South Korea\u2019s \u201cfirst MeToo movement.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThese people lived 70 years, unable to talk about what they\u2019ve experienced, because they would get blamed\u2026 but them revealing themselves to the world means society has changed that much,\u201d Chung said. <\/p>\n
The global #MeToo movement properly took hold in South Korea in 2018, holding powerful men to account and pushing the government to enforce harsher punishments for crimes of sexual violence. <\/p>\n
Changing attitudes motivated Choi Mal-ja to seek a retrial. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe girl\u2019s life, which couldn\u2019t even blossom, was forever unfair and in resentment\u2026 the country must compensate for my human rights,\u201d Choi wrote in her letter to the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n
Kim, from the Korea Women\u2019s Hot-Line counseling center, said while there\u2019s still work to be done, attitudes toward victims of sexual violence have changed dramatically. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe perception that the sexual aggressor is at fault, not the victim, that women are more vulnerable to sexual crimes, and it\u2019s the government\u2019s responsibility to punish the perpetrator and protect the victim is so widely spread out among the people now,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
With the help of the Korea Women\u2019s Hot-Line, Choi requested a retrial in 2020, but the court denied her application, calling the original ruling \u201cinevitable\u201d due to the \u201ccircumstances of the time.\u201d <\/p>\n
Choi condemned that decision as \u201ctruly embarrassing.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI was so tired, having come such a long way, that I wanted to lay everything down,\u201d she wrote in her letter last year to the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n
But she persisted, driven by the thought of \u201cwomen of future generations.\u201d <\/p>\n
A petition by the Korea Women\u2019s Hot-Line gathered more than 15,000 signatures and Choi started a one-person relay protest in front of the Supreme Court for a month to pressure the highest court to annul the original decision to deny a retrial. <\/p>\n
In total, 42 people including Choi took part, swapping out after each day of protest, to show their solidarity with her cause. <\/p>\n
The Supreme Court granted <\/strong>her <\/strong>request, <\/strong>calling Choi\u2019s testimonies about unfair treatment during investigation by the prosecutors \u201cconsistent\u201d and \u201ccredible,\u201d adding that there was no evidence that contradicted her claims. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery drop of water pierced the rock. When I heard the news, I shouted hooray!\u201d Choi said in a live-streamed press conference after the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in December. <\/p>\n The retrial will be held at the Busan District Court, which originally dismissed Choi\u2019s retrial application in 2021. <\/p>\n Choi\u2019s long fight for justice is well known in South Korea. <\/p>\n Her case is even cited in the Criminal Procedure Act textbook \u2013 used to educate generations of student lawyers \u2013 as an example of using excessive force in defense. <\/p>\n A successful retrial could expand the definition of self-defense and set new protections for future victims of sexual violence, said Kim from the Korea Women\u2019s Hot-Line. <\/p>\n \u201cI think it will become a very important case in getting women\u2019s rights to defense, their responses against <\/strong>domestic or sexual violence, acknowledged more widely,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n In 2017, a woman was found guilty of grievous bodily harm, like Choi, for biting the tongue of a man who allegedly tried to rape her. <\/p>\n The Incheon District Court partially acknowledged the man\u2019s fault, but sentenced the woman to six months of imprisonment and two years on probation, citing the severity of the injury and \u201cthe failure to reach a settlement.\u201d <\/p>\n Kim said there\u2019s still a perception among investigators and the courts that victims are responsible for sexual violence, particularly in cases involving \u201cthe victim going to the aggressor\u2019s house, drinking together or going to a place where they\u2019re left alone.\u201d <\/p>\n According to police statistics, more than 22,000 rapes and indecent assaults occurred in 2023 in South Korea. <\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how many victims were charged after trying to defend themselves. <\/p>\n Kim said there were still \u201cmany cases of women\u2019s right to defense not being recognized.\u201d <\/p>\n In her letter to the Supreme Court, Choi said old, victim-blaming beliefs must change if women\u2019s rights are to improve in South Korea. <\/p>\n \u201cI believe that women will only be able to protect themselves from sexual abuse and make a world without sexual violence when the court indisputably redefines victim and perpetrator, recognizes self-defense, and changes the outdated law,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWomen and dried pollock need to be beaten every three days for better taste\u201d \u2013 so goes an old saying that was common in South Korea in the 1960s when Choi Mal-ja was growing up in a small city in the country\u2019s southeast. Back then, male violence against women was widely accepted. So when Choi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} The right to self-defense<\/h2>\n