Getting Bare on the Issues
This last Saturday, June 9, over 20,000 women took to the streets of Seoul to demand government intervention in what has become a growing scandal concerning “molka” - hidden cameras designed to record intimate actions, targeted mostly towards women. There has been an emerging epidemic of these being installed in public restrooms, spas, and motels as greasy sh*theads monetize invasions of privacy to a public that has no access to pornography.
A few months back, I wrote a small series of articles titled “What Happens when you make Porn Illegal." Pornography - its production (beyond softcore and nude modeling) and distribution - is completely illegal in South Korea. Any attempt to access streaming sites or even Playboy are met with the most irritating blueballing cockblock -
“WARNING. Prevention of illegal information.”
And my main point was that the banning of this type of medium, although it sounds very kosher on paper, actually nurtures a spectrum of in-the-shadows type of dealings. The desire and need for pornography doesn’t simply evaporate because of a firewall. In fact, it makes the audience more desperate and hungry for anything they can receive. Hence, a rise in unsavory tactics to fill the void of wanted content. I would suspect a sharp decline in this type of practice if the Korean government allowed to distribution and access of foreign pornography on home soil.
Searching for secret cams. Source
And so now, citizens are caught in this vulnerable no man’s land that no-one can directly handle. Because of porn’s technical illegality, the government doesn’t have much protocol in place for when it is successfully distributed other than censorship. In a country as tech savvy as South Korea, this is an ineffective strategy. There are the occasional takedowns and issued fines but the seedy side of the industry persists and without comprehensive reform and structured consequences, many women will be subject to constant invasion.
Let me know what you think. What should the government do here? And the average citizen?
