Peeping Toms come under lens

A member of Seoul’s ‘hidden camera-hunting’ squad moves a hand-held detector around the toilet seat of a women’s bathroom in search of a ‘secret camera’. (Photo: AFP)

Walking into an empty women’s bathroom stall, Park Kwang-Mi waves a hand-held detector around the toilet seat, paper roll holder, doorknob and even the ventilation grill on the ceiling.

“It’s my job to make sure there’s no camera to film women while they relieve themselves,” the 49-year-old said after similarly inspecting dozens of public toilet stalls at a museum in Seoul.

“It’s weird that there are people who want to see something like that ... But this is necessary to help women feel safe,” she told AFP.

A member of Seoul city’s all-female “hidden camera-hunting” squad, Park is at the forefront of a battle against “molka”, or “secret camera” porn.

South Korea takes pride in its tech prowess, from ultra-fast broadband to cutting-edge smartphones. Around 90 per cent of its 50 million people possess smartphones — the highest rate in the world.

But it’s a culture that has also given rise to an army of tech-savvy peeping Toms in a still male-dominated country with a poor record on women’s rights. Many use special smartphone apps to film up women’s skirts as they ride subway escalators or sit at desks, and spy cameras to gather footage from changing rooms and toilet stalls.

The images are then often shared to numerous molka speciality sites on the Internet.

Such practises have become so rampant that all manufacturers of smartphones sold in South Korea are required to ensure the cameras on their devices make a loud shutter sound when taking photos.

Molka crimes are daily news. A pastor at a Seoul mega-church with 100,000 members was caught filming up a woman’s skirt on an escalator. His smartphone was packed with similar images of other women.

A 31-year-old obstetrician was jailed for secretly filming female patients and nurses in a changing room and sharing some of the images on the Internet.