Korea U. embarrassed by series of sexual scandals

Korea University, which got bad press in 2011 when three med students were caught sexually assaulting a female classmate on an outing, is in the headlines again for a student and a teacher surreptitiously taking pictures up women’s skirts.

The university said yesterday it requested Seongbuk Police Station in central Seoul to investigate a 24-year-old student for taking surreptitious pictures of 19 female students from May 2011 to last March using a small spy cam. The victims were classmates of the suspect and the pictures were taken when they drank together.

The student was exposed by a friend who found three CDs containing pictures and video clips of the victims when he visited the suspect’s home earlier this month.

“The friend of the suspect reported the CDs to the university’s sexual counseling office,” Ma Dong-hun, the university’s spokesman, told reporters at a press briefing yesterday. “We decided to request an investigation by the police to prevent those pictures from spreading through the Internet. Three of the victims filed separate complaints with the police.

On July 25, Seongbuk police searched the suspect’s residence and secured the suspect’s PC hard disk and USB drives. They found that the suspect allegedly took pictures up women’s skirt and of their breasts on subway escalators.

“We will investigate whether the suspect ever sexually assaulted any women, especially the three women who have filed separate complaints,” a spokesman of the police said.

The university is also trying to determine what to do about a business department professor who is currently being investigated by the Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office on similar suspicions. The professor, surnamed Cho, was caught allegedly taking pictures up the skirt of a woman who was sitting behind him at a movie theater in May. The professor allegedly used a spy cam in his wristwatch.

According to prosecutors, the victim suspected the professor was up to something funny because he changed his seating position often. When the woman confronted the professor, he rushed away from the theater but accidentally dropped a business card.

The police allegedly found 3,000 pictures of women’s bodies on his computer, and some were allegedly the professor’s students. The professor admitted the allegations, police said.

In the 2011 case, one Korea University student was sentenced to 30 months in prison for groping the female classmate, and his two friends got 18 months for assaulting the classmate and taking pictures of her being molested.

BY KWON SANG-SOO, LEE YU-JEONG [sakwon80@joongang.co.kr]