On March 7, women’s human rights organizations including the National Association of Korea Sexual Violence Relief Centers pointed out that Segye Ilbo should admit that its article “A drop in the rate of sexual assault cases charged with courts… Are female con artists gone?” distorted people’s views on sexual violence and that it should make efforts to prevent such reports from being published in the future.
Women’s groups said “Last June, the National Assembly passed an amendment and deleted provisions which require a sexual violence victim’s complaint for public prosecution. Since then, the police has been able to investigate a sexual assault case without a complaint. In the second half of last year, however, cases filed against courts decreased. Regarding this, Segye Ilbo argued that the rule on offense subject to complaint had led to false accusations, that the elimination of the rule caused a drop in false accusations, and that defendants of settlement cases were innocent.”
Also, women’s organizations added “In open-ended questionnaires we sent to the police, they answered that official interviews did not take place. They also stated that they only offered statistics, not analysis based on the data. We believe Segye Ilbo’s article is based on the inference intentionally made in order to publish a story as it wished. It did that by only making use of the number of sexual violence cases sued against courts.”
“Segye Ilbo should admit that arbitrarily interpreting data released by the police has created bias in sexual violence. It needs to reflect on its wrongdoing and set up countermeasures so that such reports will not be printed. Sexual assault is not an issue that a newspaper company can freely use to induce readers and increase the number of clicks,” said women’s groups.
