A student council of a local top-tier university on Thursday put up posters revealing a group chat of male students verbally harassing fellow female students, the latest in a series of similar cases that reflect a distorted sexual perception prevalent on campus, reported by Yonhap's journalist.
In the excerpt revealed by the female student council of Seoul's Yonsei University, the male students habitually insulted women through the chat room of the country's most popular messenger application Kakao Talk. The room was comprised of 30 male students.
The comments included "go rape her at first sight," and "I want to order a woman (for a late night snack)."
The student council declined to comment on how they obtained the contents of the group chat or who were involved in the incident.
The university's center for gender equality said Friday the case was filed before it went public and that it is looking into the case to determine if the students involved can be punished based on school regulations.
Earlier in June, Korea University, another prestigious school in Seoul, was embroiled in a similar scandal after text messages from a chat room of eight male students revealed that they had been habitually harassing women for about a year.
They even shared snapshots of random women taken on the subway, according to a special committee formed to represent the victims.
The case came to light after a member of the chat room blew the whistle.
In July, a student council of South Korea's top-ranked Seoul National University also revealed messages of male students at College of Humanities sexually humiliating their fellow female students and making misogynistic comments via the mobile messaging tool.
"Those (students) involved in the cases belittle women as a way of expressing their masculinity and strengthening solidarity," said Roh Sun-yi, activist at the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center. "Those remarks can be made because the members of the group think they have a certain consensus that allow such comments to be permissible."
