SOUTH KOREA
Global Post
March 9, 2018
By Ann Babe
On International Women’s Day in South Korea, where gender inequality is deeply entrenched, the government announced new measures to combat sexual assault in the workplace — increasing maximum prison terms and extending statutes of limitations.
The initiative, a joint effort of five ministries, comes as the country continues to reel from Tuesday’s news of a prominent politician’s resignation after his secretary accused him of rape.
The politician, the former governor of South Chungcheong Province, Ahn Hee-jung, issued an apology in a Facebook post, saying, “It’s all my fault,” and retracting an earlier statement of denial.
Ahn is the latest in a string of high-profile men to be toppled by South Korea’s #MeToo movement that in the past several weeks has quickly spread through the country’s political, religious, educational, business and arts and entertainment sectors. This reckoning is considered by many to be not just a movement — which had previously been confined to “radical” feminist outliers — but a broad people’s revolution.
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