From the Korea Times:
“A survey showed that one out of four women who commute using public transportation have experienced sexual harassment, Wednesday.
The survey of 1,500 men and women by the Korea Transport Institute and the Korean Women’s Development Institute also found out that almost half of the female respondents were scared of being harassed or experiencing violent driving when in a taxi.
Men and women showed different results when asked about inconveniences when using subways, buses or taxis.
About 26 percent of the women said they experienced sexual harassment on buses and 21 percent on the subway, compared to 2.3 percent and 2.4 percent of men respectively.
About 52 percent of the female respondents considered taxis as the dangerous means of transportation, citing reasons such as crimes including kidnapping and sexual assaults (31 percent) and violent driving (16 percent).
The institute pointed out the needs of countermeasures regarding harassment, such as reintroducing the women-only subway cars. It also suggested ideas to prevent violence in taxis, including introducing women-only taxis.”
Really? Their only idea for dealing with the high rate of commuter harassment on public transportation is women-only subway cars and taxis?! Arg.
Kobiljon says
Ah this kind of happenings are very common in Korean Public Transportation. I am very upset about this. I watched a news on korean TV where it shows one man who is in his 50s pretends to be the girl’s boyfriend who is in her 20s. She was sitting just next to that Man i would rather call him old man. And the girl turns out to be drunken and was sleeping and she leans her head to that man’s shoulder. Then old man takes her shoulder and starts kissing her. The video was taken by one Korean man. This kind of news are shown quite a lot on Korean TV. But not all Korean men are like this. Cuz, the person who took the video of that happening could not just watching and he asks the girl after she woke up if she knows that man. Then the video taker gets angry and took from that man’s collar and reports to police.
After watching the news , I asked my Korean girlfriend if she ever experienced sexual harassment on the subway and her response was “Twice” the sad thing is my girlfriend usually commute on the subway line which is very densely crowded line everyday. What i think is if my girlfriend is safe. But as a foreigner in Korea, I want Korean government have more serious punishment for harassment. All these kind of harassment are usually not punished seriously because of the excuses like happened while he was drunk or so.