“Ladies and dried pollock have to be overwhelmed each three days for higher style” – so goes an outdated saying that was frequent in South Korea within the Nineteen Sixties when Choi Mal-ja was rising up in a small metropolis within the nation’s southeast.
Again then, male violence in opposition to ladies was extensively accepted. So when Choi bit off a part of the tongue of a person who allegedly tried to rape her, it was she who was labeled the aggressor and jailed for grievous bodily hurt.
On the time, Choi was 18 and residing at dwelling along with her household. Now 78, she’s making an attempt to clear her identify within the hope that vindication will pave the best way for different victims of sexual crime in South Korea, one of many world’s most superior economies however one the place society remains deeply patriarchal.
After Choi’s push for a retrial was rejected by courts within the metropolis of Busan, she took her case to the Supreme Court docket. The highest court docket dominated in her favor, sending the case again to Busan, the place proof might be known as in coming months.
Specialists say the decision may rewrite the authorized precedent set by her authentic trial, with far-reaching penalties for different ladies.
“The court docket should admit the truth that its unfair ruling has turned one particular person’s life the other way up, and take duty with simply judgement now,” Choi wrote.
‘Like I’d been hit with a hammer’
One spring night in 1964, Choi, then a teen, stopped to assist a person who was asking for instructions in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang province.
After strolling with him for just a few meters, Choi gave him additional instructions and circled to return dwelling, however he tackled her to the bottom.
“I used to be feeling woozy, like I’d been hit on the top with a hammer,” Choi instructed a local TV show in 2020.
Choi misplaced consciousness for a short time, however she remembers the person climbing on high of her and making an attempt to pressure his tongue inside her mouth. She was solely capable of escape by biting 1.5cm (0.6 inch) of his tongue off, she stated.
Greater than two weeks later, the person, who isn’t named in court docket paperwork, and his pals compelled their method into Choi’s home and threatened to kill her father for what Choi had performed.
Ignoring her claims of sexual assault, the person sued Choi for grievous bodily hurt, main her to sue him for tried rape, trespassing and intimidation.
The police deemed Choi’s argument of self-defense cheap; nevertheless, prosecutors in Busan thought in any other case.
They dropped the tried rape cost in opposition to her assailant and accused Choi of grievous bodily hurt, based on court docket paperwork.
Choi Mal-ja on stage at Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line’s worldwide ladies’s day occasion on March 8, 2025. – Lee Chakyeong
In 1965, Choi was sentenced to 10 months in jail and two years of probation, a harsher punishment than that of the aggressor, who was sentenced to 6 months of jail and one yr of probation for trespassing and threatening.
“It didn’t take a very long time for the sufferer of a sexual crime to be become a perpetrator, nor did it take the energy of many individuals,” Choi wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court docket final yr, as a part of her software for a retrial.
Choi additionally claimed that her rights had been infringed upon through the investigation and trial course of, throughout which she and her supporters say she was handcuffed at one level and later made to bear a take a look at to show her virginity, the results of which was made public.
No phrase for home violence
Till latest instances, the social norm in South Korea was for ladies to assist the lads of their household. For instance, when the nation was growing quickly after the 1950-53 Korean Conflict, daughters had been generally despatched to work at factories to financially assist their brothers’ training.
“Ladies’s function was perceived as bricks that lay basis in society (for males), somewhat than a topic of affection, so society on the time didn’t consider ladies’s rights when it got here to sexual violence,” Chung Chin-sung, an emeritus professor of the sociology division at Seoul Nationwide College, instructed CNN.
And till the Eighties, South Korea was so targeted on rebuilding from the devastation of the warfare and Japan’s brutal occupation earlier than that, that preventing for ladies’s rights was thought-about “a luxurious,” based on Chung.
In 1983 the Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line counseling middle opened to marketing campaign in opposition to “all establishments, customs and conventions that impose inhumane lives on ladies,” and set up a “simply and peaceable household and society,” based on its assertion.
A manufacturing unit employee checks electronics parts at a manufacturing unit in Seoul, the place computer systems and televisions are manufactured, on July 13, 1987. – Patrick Robert/Sygma/CORBIS/Sygma/Getty Pictures
On the time, there was no phrase for home violence.
“Bodily abusing and sexually assaulting ladies was so frequent that there weren’t even phrases to outline such actions,” Kim Su-jeong, a director of the middle, instructed CNN.
“That is the Eighties. So, think about what Choi Mal-ja needed to undergo for her case, within the Nineteen Sixties,” stated Kim.
In line with Choi’s testimonies, prosecutors and judges requested her through the investigation and trial whether or not she want to marry the aggressor to conclude the case.
Turning into his spouse, so the idea went, may make amends for his accidents, as no different lady would wish to marry a person with half a tongue.
Wang Mi-yang, the president of the Korea Ladies Attorneys Affiliation, stated the 1965 ruling mirrored the “social prejudice and distorted views on victims of sexual violence that remained deeply rooted in our society.”
“The social environment of the time in all probability had the prosecutors siding with the person, and I imagine the idea of sexual violence possible didn’t exist,” Wang instructed CNN.
Ending a long time of silence
Anti-sexual violence actions flourished within the Nineties and even included campaigns searching for justice for “comfort women,” a euphemism for the victims of sexual slavery enforced by the Japanese navy in Korea throughout and earlier than World Conflict II.
For a few years, “consolation ladies” saved their trauma secret to keep away from disgrace and humiliation, however they lastly spoke out, turning into what Chung calls South Korea’s “first MeToo motion.”
“These individuals lived 70 years, unable to speak about what they’ve skilled, as a result of they’d get blamed… however them revealing themselves to the world means society has modified that a lot,” Chung stated.
The worldwide #MeToo motion correctly took maintain in South Korea in 2018, holding highly effective males to account and pushing the federal government to implement harsher punishments for crimes of sexual violence.
Altering attitudes motivated Choi Mal-ja to hunt a retrial.
“The woman’s life, which couldn’t even blossom, was ceaselessly unfair and in resentment… the nation should compensate for my human rights,” Choi wrote in her letter to the Supreme Court docket.
Kim, from the Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line counseling middle, stated whereas there’s nonetheless work to be performed, attitudes towards victims of sexual violence have modified dramatically.
“The notion that the sexual aggressor is at fault, not the sufferer, that girls are extra weak to sexual crimes, and it’s the federal government’s duty to punish the perpetrator and shield the sufferer is so extensively unfold out among the many individuals now,” she stated.
Protests in solidarity
With the assistance of the Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line, Choi requested a retrial in 2020, however the court docket denied her software, calling the unique ruling “inevitable” as a result of “circumstances of the time.”
Choi condemned that call as “really embarrassing.”
“I used to be so drained, having come such a great distance, that I needed to put the whole lot down,” she wrote in her letter final yr to the Supreme Court docket.
South Korean demonstrators maintain banners throughout a rally to mark Worldwide Ladies’s Day as a part of the nation’s #MeToo motion in Seoul on March 8, 2018. – Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Pictures
However she persevered, pushed by the considered “ladies of future generations.”
A petition by the Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line gathered greater than 15,000 signatures and Choi began a one-person relay protest in entrance of the Supreme Court docket for a month to strain the very best court docket to annul the unique determination to disclaim a retrial.
In whole, 42 individuals together with Choi took half, swapping out after every day of protest, to point out their solidarity along with her trigger.
The Supreme Court docket granted her request, calling Choi’s testimonies about unfair therapy throughout investigation by the prosecutors “constant” and “credible,” including that there was no proof that contradicted her claims.
“Each drop of water pierced the rock. Once I heard the information, I shouted hooray!” Choi stated in a live-streamed press convention after the Supreme Court docket’s ruling in December.
The retrial might be held on the Busan District Court docket, which initially dismissed Choi’s retrial software in 2021.
The proper to self-defense
Choi’s lengthy battle for justice is well-known in South Korea.
Her case is even cited within the Prison Process Act textbook – used to teach generations of scholar attorneys – for instance of utilizing extreme pressure in protection.
A profitable retrial may develop the definition of self-defense and set new protections for future victims of sexual violence, stated Kim from the Korea Ladies’s Scorching-Line.
“I believe it should turn into a vital case in getting ladies’s rights to protection, their responses in opposition to home or sexual violence, acknowledged extra extensively,” she stated.
In 2017, a lady was discovered responsible of grievous bodily hurt, like Choi, for biting the tongue of a person who allegedly tried to rape her.
The Incheon District Court docket partially acknowledged the person’s fault, however sentenced the girl to 6 months of imprisonment and two years on probation, citing the severity of the harm and “the failure to achieve a settlement.”
Choi Mal-ja holding a one-person protest in entrance of the Supreme Court docket in Seoul on Might, 2023. – Korean Ladies’s Scorching-Line
Kim stated there’s nonetheless a notion amongst investigators and the courts that victims are chargeable for sexual violence, significantly in instances involving “the sufferer going to the aggressor’s home, ingesting collectively or going to a spot the place they’re left alone.”
In line with police statistics, greater than 22,000 rapes and indecent assaults occurred in 2023 in South Korea.
It’s unclear what number of victims had been charged after making an attempt to defend themselves.
Kim stated there have been nonetheless “many instances of girls’s proper to protection not being acknowledged.”
In her letter to the Supreme Court docket, Choi stated outdated, victim-blaming beliefs should change if ladies’s rights are to enhance in South Korea.
“I imagine that girls will solely be capable to shield themselves from sexual abuse and make a world with out sexual violence when the court docket indisputably redefines sufferer and perpetrator, acknowledges self-defense, and modifications the outdated regulation,” she wrote.
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