Over 980 Peeping Toms caught this summer: police

At least 983 people were caught taking of intrusive pictures of women's body parts, during the summer holiday season, police said Sunday. 

The Korean National Police Agency checked 415 public restrooms and changing rooms at beaches, 705 restrooms at subway stations and 2,070 changing rooms at waterparks in an intensive crackdown that ended on Aug. 20. 

Yonhap

Restrooms and changing rooms have long been easy targets for rigging cameras up on the ceiling and wall. 

The number of voyeurism crimes has jumped tenfold from 517 in 2006 to 5,185 cases in 2016. The percentage of voyeurs among the total number of sex crime perpetrators also went up from 3.6 percent in 2006 to 24.9 percent in 2015. 

Sexual crimes occur more frequently in the summer season, the 2012-2016 National Police Agency data showed, with an average of around 6,400 cases being reported from June to August, which is 30 percent more than those that occurred from December to February. 

During the 50-day intensive crackdown period, the police found that devices such as a car key equipped with a micro camera and a pen-type camera were used in voyeurism crimes. Some even uploaded what they recorded in subways to pornographic websites. 

To prevent additional and secondary damages on victims, the police vowed to continue with the intensive crackdown online until November through monitoring with the Korea Communications Standards Commission. They will mainly crackdown on voyeurs from uploading or spreading the videos they recorded on pornographic websites and control those who broadcast obscene contents on live streaming channels. 

The current law states that those who take pictures of others’ body parts without consent can be jailed for up to five years and be fined with 10 million won ($8,700). Those who sell, distribute or openly screen such pictures can also face the same punishment.

However, in most cases, if the violators are a first-time offender and are not considered to be a danger to society, they are usually not detained and just fined with a small amount of penalty.

While blame the legal loopholes for the increase of such crimes, there are no regulations currently to curb the misuse of the high-tech equipment in Korea.

“Considering the suffering that victims experience, the legal measures are not strong enough to make the peeping toms realize that they are committing serious crimes,” Lee Sang-hyun, an emeritus professor at police administration of Dongguk University.

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)