Thigh Man Reached the Supreme Court?

Of course, I’m asking to get crapped on here for making this comment, but here goes.

I think this is a bad decision based on a law that is vague. And I’m no legal scholar, but I do know that the “right” to not be photographed against one’s will in Korea — LEGALLY defined — is based on the right of privacy, and as such, is squarely within the realm of CIVIL law to sue people for defamation, use of their image for commercial use without permission, causing harm to one’s livelihood, etc.

Now, when it comes to sexual harassment, I think that can happen with or without a camera. I think the camera being used is incidental. Now, if you invade someone’s private space, or take a picture of something that couldn’t be seen at a reasonable angle (e.g. sticking a camera under a skirt, hidden cameras in bathrooms, using a telephoto lens to get in someone’s love motel window), I can understand.

But the standard “body parts which may cause sexual desire or a sense of shame: is pretty vague and subjective, and sets a REALLY dangerous precedent. Yeah, in this case, it’s easy, and some old ajussi was photographing a high school girl’s skirt. Eww. Nasty. Fine him, right? Put him in jail, right?

But who’s sense of shame? What body parts? The vagina? breasts? Lower legs? Upper? The shoulders (which people can be embarrassed about)? From what distance? High high?

Now, if someone pulls out a camera and start snapping away and the person says “Stop!” and you don’t — that’s harassment, regardless. But if I take a picture of a girl walking down the street, at a perfectly normal angle (which I do about every day), is it sexual harassment just because they “feel shame?”

What’s dangerous about the law is that there aren’t even any attempts to be specific, or draw a line. Which body parts? From what distance? It may sound ridiculous, but according to the law, If a girl raises her arm and I take a picture of a scene and she happens to be in it, and she says she feels a sense of shame because she is embarrassed that I took a picture of her hairy armpit — when perhaps I wasn’t even taking the picture because of that, which happens all the time because people are so sensitive to cameras here, that they occasionally think I am taking their picture when I am in fact NOT — the legal standard is whether she feels a sense of “shame.”

Point is, there needs to be more distinction between types of photography that are normal versus the kinds that are harassing — I mean, if you’re going to go the road of CRIMINALIZING it. Being “subject to up to five years in prison and up to a 10 million won fine” for very vaguely defined laws that clearly overlap with many kinds of LEGITIMATE photography is a very dangerous thing to do.

What this is all a response to are the so-called “molka-jok” who used to stand on Apkujeong street corners and take pics in full view, in groups of several or more, and take pictures of women even when asked directly to stop. They were creating a public nuisance and directly harassing women, and rudely replying when asked what they were shooting for, refusing to answer the women who had been shot.

Of course, the police didn’t arrest them, even though they should have. Technically, they were not violating any laws with regard to photography, and when they published them, they were smart enough not to publish the faces, which could have gotten them sued (although not tried in criminal court). Still, the way they DID it was harrassing — yet it hit the news over the last couple summers, and people were incensed. What do we do about the problem?

Create a really vague law that actually goes too far. No wonder documentary and street photography are dead here, and the only people who do it are foreigners now, as with the Magnum project that happened here — I went to the exhibit and all I could hear the crowd saying about the photographs of some of the world’s most reknowned photographers was, “Isn’t this molka?” (”secret camera”) or “Isn’t this illegal?”

Now, it’ll get even worse. No wonder there seem to be more DSLR’s and $1000+ lenses here per capita than any other country I’ve seen, but people are absolutely petrified to take each others’ pictures. Which is why blogs and photo club sites are filled with pics of cafe latte swirl patterns, cream sauce pasta, flowers, and pictures of the girlfriend sitting in a cafe. Or why only person one can safely take a picture of — with all that expensive photo equipment — is oneself.

Which is perhaps why the logic of “selca” (self + camera) makes so much sense here.

Hey, fetish site or no, since it came up, though…

Got to the page:

http://www.feetmanseoul.com/

It talks about Korean fashion. We take pictures of all kinds of things, people, designers, etc. We have a pretty large readership now, which is mostly female, Korean or Korean American, and interested in Korean street fashion and/or culture in general.

How would you define “fetish site” (besides the first 2 months out of the last 2+ years) and how do we fit the definition you give?

It’s a legitimate question, and a point you broached. And what “creepy methods” do you suppose I employ? Besides walking down the street with me and my camera in full view, that is.

I’m not being facetious or whiny. I’m just asking you to clarify what you mean. Specifics, please.

Thanks, bumfromkorea.

Still, this is the scary thing. That the standard is decided by an emotion or impression, rather than something more on the arguable side, say an image shot from a “reasonable” angle or from the point-of-view that a normal person could see. In these cases, I think there’s a reasonable case to be made that yes, if someone stuck a cellphone under someone’s skirt, few could argue that this was legitimate — no one’s “reasonable” or “normal” angle would involve one’s head under a skirt, or waiting under the stairs, or sticking a fiber-optic cable under a bathroom stall, etc.

But criminalizing a photograph taken from the exact same position as a normal person might see something (sitting on a bus or a public bench) and it being “sexual harassment” based on perception, no matter whose — it’s just way too subjective, and makes the standard no one else’s than the plaintiff’s. In the end, there’s nothing to prove other than if one person or other people want to THINK it’s sexual harrassment, rather than trying to provide (although there’s no such thing as a perfect standard) some kind of objective means of judging this outside of the plaintiff’s mind, or some vague “community” standard.

Simply put, it’s easier and makes more sense to argue whether or not the man took a shot that could be interpreted as harassment based on where the shot was taken from, as opposed to what random people think of the content of the shot.

Again, if I went around taking pictures of people only eating ice cream cones, licking cucumbers, or slurping on things, no matter how weird that is, it shouldn’t be sexual harassment, because it isn’t. But if someone caught me with the pictures, it might meet either of those two vague conditions of causing “shame” or “inciting sexual desire.” Conversely (and this is the point), I could cause those two conditions without taking pictures of sexual things.

In the end, sticking to pictures taken from “reasonable” angles or distances seems to make more legal and common sense. From what I’m hearing, it’s too open to interpretation.

Didn’t the clause also say something about the “intent” of the photographer? Can a Korean person comment on that as well?

#21 Wow. Violence.

The point of the picture and post is that minors ARE sexualizing themselves, just as society is putting pressure on them to BE sexual beings. There’s a link in my mind between the rising skirts trend and the fact that now, minors are trying to imitate their peers, cellphones are sold with the image of rising skirts, and kids are prime targets in a lot of this marketing. I don’t remember which Korean source I was reading about this, but even the advertising for the places that make school uniforms in Korea (using famous stars in very sexed-up and miniskirted versions of the uniforms that the students will be buying) have crossed a certain line with people, and has a lot of parents (rightfully complaining, both about the exorbitant costs, as well as the style of marketing).

Agree with me or not as to the nature of the problem, but I think it’s worth discussing, and doesn’t require any smashing of cameras. And in terms of the subject being a minor or not, as long as that person’s privacy is protected, it doesn’t make any difference. The matter is one of privacy, not of exposing a minor to harm.

And I’ve taught high school boys and girls (now at a girls’ high school) for several years, and am completely comfortable with the picture I took and the commentary I am making. My girls all have the address to my blog, are linked to me on Facebook, and read what I say, and will see that picture and my post on it. I don’t have anything to hide or be embarrassed about. And when we have class again after midterms, it’ll probably come up in discussion, so I’ll likely point to this post and include this line of discussion as reference.

I think that the sexualization of minors, the mixed messages that come from the media, and all that stuff are legitimate topics of discussion and don’t require violence as part of the discussion.