“Girls and dried pollock should be overwhelmed each three days for higher style” – so goes an outdated saying that was frequent in South Korea within the Sixties when Choi Mal-ja was rising up in a small metropolis within the nation’s southeast.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 broadly 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 house together with her household. Now 78, she’s attempting to clear her title within the hope that vindication will pave the way in which for different victims of sexual crime in South Korea, one of many world’s most superior economies however one the place society stays 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 Courtroom. The highest courtroom dominated in her favor, sending the case again to Busan, the place proof might be referred to as in coming months.
Consultants say the decision might rewrite the authorized precedent set by her authentic trial, with far-reaching penalties for different ladies.
“The courtroom should admit the truth that its unfair ruling has turned one individual’s life the other way up, and take accountability with simply judgement now,” Choi wrote.
‘Like I’d been hit with a hammer’
One spring night in 1964, Choi, then an adolescent, stopped to assist a person who was asking for instructions in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang province.
After strolling with him for a couple of meters, Choi gave him additional instructions and circled to return house, however he tackled her to the bottom.
“I used to be feeling woozy, like I’d been hit on the pinnacle with a hammer,” Choi informed a neighborhood TV present in 2020.
Choi misplaced consciousness for a short time, however she remembers the person climbing on high of her and attempting 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 mentioned.
Greater than two weeks later, the person, who just isn’t named in courtroom paperwork, and his pals pressured their method into Choi’s home and threatened to kill her father for what Choi had achieved.
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; nonetheless, 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, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.
Choi Mal-ja on stage at Korea Girls’s Sizzling-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 12 months of probation for trespassing and threatening.
“It didn’t take a very long time for the sufferer of a sexual crime to be was a perpetrator, nor did it take the power of many individuals,” Choi wrote in a letter to the Supreme Courtroom final 12 months, as a part of her utility for a retrial.
Choi additionally claimed that her rights have been infringed upon in the course of the investigation and trial course of, throughout which she and her supporters say she was handcuffed at one level and later made to endure a take a look at to show her virginity, the results of which was made public.
No phrase for home violence
Till current instances, the social norm in South Korea was for girls to help the lads of their household. For instance, when the nation was growing quickly after the 1950-53 Korean Battle, daughters have been generally despatched to work at factories to financially help their brothers’ training.
“Girls’s position was perceived as bricks that lay basis in society (for males), reasonably 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, informed CNN.
And till the Eighties, South Korea was so targeted on rebuilding from the devastation of the conflict and Japan’s brutal occupation earlier than that, that preventing for girls’s rights was thought of “a luxurious,” in keeping with Chung.
In 1983 the Korea Girls’s Sizzling-Line counseling heart 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,” in keeping with 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 Photographs
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, informed CNN.
“That is the Eighties. So, think about what Choi Mal-ja needed to undergo for her case, within the Sixties,” mentioned Kim.
In line with Choi’s testimonies, prosecutors and judges requested her in the course of 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, would possibly 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 Girls Legal professionals Affiliation, mentioned 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 informed CNN.
Ending a long time of silence
Anti-sexual violence actions flourished within the Nineties and even included campaigns looking for justice for “consolation ladies,” a euphemism for the victims of sexual slavery enforced by the Japanese army in Korea throughout and earlier than World Battle 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 mentioned.
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 lady’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 Courtroom.
Kim, from the Korea Girls’s Sizzling-Line counseling heart, mentioned whereas there’s nonetheless work to be achieved, attitudes towards victims of sexual violence have modified dramatically.
“The notion that the sexual aggressor is at fault, not the sufferer, that ladies are extra weak to sexual crimes, and it’s the federal government’s accountability to punish the perpetrator and defend the sufferer is so broadly unfold out among the many individuals now,” she mentioned.
Protests in solidarity
With the assistance of the Korea Girls’s Sizzling-Line, Choi requested a retrial in 2020, however the courtroom denied her utility, calling the unique ruling “inevitable” as a result of “circumstances of the time.”
Choi condemned that call as “actually embarrassing.”
“I used to be so drained, having come such a great distance, that I wished to put the whole lot down,” she wrote in her letter final 12 months to the Supreme Courtroom.
South Korean demonstrators maintain banners throughout a rally to mark Worldwide Girls’s Day as a part of the nation’s #MeToo motion in Seoul on March 8, 2018. – Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Photographs
However she continued, pushed by the considered “ladies of future generations.”
A petition by the Korea Girls’s Sizzling-Line gathered greater than 15,000 signatures and Choi began a one-person relay protest in entrance of the Supreme Courtroom for a month to strain the very best courtroom to annul the unique determination to disclaim a retrial.
In complete, 42 individuals together with Choi took half, swapping out after every day of protest, to indicate their solidarity together with her trigger.
The Supreme Courtroom 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 mentioned in a live-streamed press convention after the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling in December.
The retrial might be held on the Busan District Courtroom, which initially dismissed Choi’s retrial utility in 2021.
The appropriate to self-defense
Choi’s lengthy struggle for justice is well-known in South Korea.
Her case is even cited within the Prison Process Act textbook – used to coach generations of pupil legal professionals – for example of utilizing extreme pressure in protection.
A profitable retrial might develop the definition of self-defense and set new protections for future victims of sexual violence, mentioned Kim from the Korea Girls’s Sizzling-Line.
“I believe it is going to change into an important case in getting ladies’s rights to protection, their responses in opposition to home or sexual violence, acknowledged extra broadly,” she mentioned.
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 Courtroom 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 damage and “the failure to achieve a settlement.”
Choi Mal-ja holding a one-person protest in entrance of the Supreme Courtroom in Seoul on Might, 2023. – Korean Girls’s Sizzling-Line
Kim mentioned there’s nonetheless a notion amongst investigators and the courts that victims are answerable for sexual violence, notably in circumstances involving “the sufferer going to the aggressor’s home, consuming 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 have been charged after attempting to defend themselves.
Kim mentioned there have been nonetheless “many circumstances of ladies’s proper to protection not being acknowledged.”
In her letter to the Supreme Courtroom, Choi mentioned outdated, victim-blaming beliefs should change if ladies’s rights are to enhance in South Korea.
“I imagine that ladies will solely have the ability to defend themselves from sexual abuse and make a world with out sexual violence when the courtroom indisputably redefines sufferer and perpetrator, acknowledges self-defense, and modifications the outdated legislation,” she wrote.
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