New Delhi: The name ‘Gangnam’ rings a bell almost instantly. In 2012, the South Korean capital’s ‘Beverly Hills’ area gained worldwide fame when singer Psy’s music video ‘Gangnam Style’ went viral on the internet globally.
Seven years later, Gangnam is back in international headlines, but not in a way it would want.
In the last few months, over 4,000 people in Seoul’s Gangnam district, including several K-pop stars, have been questioned over allegations involving drugs, prostitution, sexual assault and illicit filming linked to Gangnam’s club scene.
Police have arrested 354 people in connection with what has become known as the ‘Burning Sun scandal’ — named for the club at the centre of the allegations — with 87 of those being arrested for procuring prostitutes, illicit filming without consent and rape. The actual number of assaults is believed to be much higher.
The scandal has drawn attention to an entrenched system of exploitation and sexual abuse in Gangnam, and the misogyny that is rampant in Korean society.
‘Bring me zombies’
According to a BBC investigation, rich clients at clubs in Gangnam were prepared to pay thousands of dollars to have girls drugged and taken to a nearby hotel room so that the clients could rape them, often on camera.
The system worked like this. Hosts, known as MDs, would build relationships with “pretty girls” and bring them to clubs with the promise of free drinks. MDs would then encourage the girls to drink with their clients, known as VVIPs, taking 13-15 per cent of the profits from drink sales. The VVIPs would request that MDs drug the girls, often with a substance known as GHB, or Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate. The girls would be taken to nearby hotel rooms, where men would sexually assault them. Some men would take videos of the assaults and share them online, or use them to prevent the girls from going to the police.
VVIPs described drugging these girls as a “game”, and one rich VVIP told the BBC that he preferred ‘normal girls’ to prostitutes because of the “sense of achievement” of gaining access to something he wasn’t allowed to have.
“Bring me zombies”, one VVIP reportedly told an MD, requesting that the MD drug two girls for him.
GHB (the “date rape drug”) is an odourless, colourless sedative that can cause loss of consciousness, amnesia and hallucinations in higher doses. GHB only stays in the system for a few hours, making it difficult to detect in a blood test. Further, girls who can’t remember the details of their assaults are reluctant to come forward for fear of not being believed.
Many underage girls were also recruited to have sex with paying customers. The girls were promised jobs in the entertainment industry or even plastic surgery in exchange for “working” at the clubs for two to three years. Sex with a minor is statutory rape under South Korean law.
Videos of these girls were used to stop them from leaving the club’s service. Many minors reported that the sex was sometimes so violent that they would require medical attention.
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How K-pop drew attention to Gangnam abuses
On 14 June, Yang Hyun-suk, head of YG Entertainment, one of South Korea’s top three entertainment agencies, resigned amid a series of scandals connected to the Gangnam district. Yang is under investigation for covering up a police probe into drug sales to one of his artists, procuring prostitutes for investors and tax evasion.
YG is known for the success of bands like BIGBANG and BLACKPINK, as well as ‘Gangnam Style’ artist Psy. The company’s shares have dropped from KRW48,900 (US$42.29) in January to KRW28,400 (US$24.56) this month.
Seungri, ex-member of BIGBANG and part owner of the Burning Sun nightclub, retired from music in March after evidence emerged in which he and three others discussed, via text messages, supplying prostitutes to potential investors. He denies the allegations, but dropped his career in the wake of massive public backlash.
Later that week, singer Jung joon-young confessed to filming women without their consent and sharing the videos in a chatroom, in which Seungri and another artist were allegedly also members. Jung was charged with illegal filming and leaking visual material. He was also charged with filming a partner without her consent in 2016, but those charges were dropped when the allegations were withdrawn.
This week, Psy was questioned for attending a dinner in 2014 with Yang and Malaysian businessman Jho Low, who is an international fugitive after masterminding Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal. YG allegedly offered prostitutes to the investors at the dinner. Psy admitted he introduced the investors to Yang, but denies involvement in the prostitution.
The scandals involving celebrities have encouraged others to come forward. When reports surfaced that police officers were “purposely conducting incomplete investigations”, President Moon Jae-in removed the Gangnam station chief and called for an investigation into alleged police corruption.
Many are frustrated that it took a spotlight on the police and celebrities to probe the allegations of widespread sexual exploitation in Gangnam.
Entrenched sexism in ‘K-beauty’ norms, perpetuated by K-pop stars
South Korea’s rampant misogyny is reflected in the country’s multi-billion dollar entertainment and beauty industries, which convey mutually reinforcing messages.
Female K-pop stars often build their success on overt sexualisation and face intense pressure from their labels to look and act a certain way. ‘No dating’ clauses are common in K-pop contracts because the artists are selling a ‘product’ — a ‘character’ that their label creates for them. K-pop star HyunA’s ‘character’ was designed to sell a “sex fantasy”, and that fantasy was shattered when she revealed she was dating fellow star E’Dawn. The two were subsequently dropped from their label for breaching their contracts.
Female K-pop stars have also come under fire for sharing content that could be construed as feminist. Contrastingly, male groups, such as the record-breaking BTS, have drawn praise for their socially progressive messages about self-acceptance and mental health.
In February, the South Korean government attempted to pass non-mandatory guidelines restricting the number of K-pop idols a TV programme can show at one time, for fear of perpetuating unrealistic standards of beauty. The government later withdrew the guidelines after opposition critics likened them to censorship under the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, who imposed rigid standards on the length of hair and skirts allowed.
Seoul is often dubbed the “plastic surgery capital of the world”, with over 500 clinics in the Gangnam district alone and over one million surgeries per year. Research firm Gallup Korea estimated that one in three women in South Korea aged 19-29 has had plastic surgery, though some estimates put that number higher.
Critics say the industry exploits entrenched gender norms and preys on the insecurities of young women for profit.
“Korean society has become completely distorted by this rush to undergo surgery and, speaking personally, I believe it is very sad that it has shifted to the point that women are seen merely as sex objects that have to undergo the scalpel to be perfect,” Emanuel Pastreich, head of the Asia Institute, told the Telegraph in 2018.
Women are fighting back
The movement against plastic surgery and K-beauty standards, known as Escape the Corset, has been described as a ‘natural evolution of the #MeToo movement’.
“Women are not simply looking to destroy the cosmetics industry by smashing makeup,” Yoon-Kim Ji-Young, a professor at the Institute of Body and Culture at Konkuk University in Seoul, told NPR in May. “Their aim is to subvert the huge male-centered matrix called the patriarchy.”
Last summer, over 20,000 women took to the streets of Seoul to protest South Korea’s ongoing ‘spy cam epidemic’. Thousands of cameras are hidden in public bathrooms, gym locker rooms, and swimming pools, where footage of primarily women ends up on pornographic sites. Of the 5,400 people arrested for spy cam crimes in 2017, only 2 per cent were jailed.
President Moon has called for harsher punishments for sex crimes, and the Korean National Police Agency has set up a unit to investigate crimes against women. Moon also kept his promise to make his cabinet 30 per cent female, showing that the government is listening to women.
The protests have let South Korea know that women are fed up with gender inequality. Society is changing, slowly.
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