Gangnam Murder

[Anchor Lead]

Two years ago a young woman was brutally murdered in a public restroom in the Gangnam Station area in Seoul by a complete stranger. He said he killed her just because she was a woman. How have Korean society's views on women changed since the tragedy?

[Pkg]

It was raining all day when the public marked the second anniversary of a young woman's death in the Gangnam area. Hundreds of people donning raincoats attended the rally.

[Soundbite] Chung Dae-mang(Seoul Resident) : "I attended the rally two years ago as well to think about what I could do as a man to change this."

The perpetrator claimes to have killed her to vent his stress and anger caused by women. The court decided he committed the crime because he was a schizophrenic. Regardless, the cause of the victim's death was simply, being a woman. Some 35,000 notes hang at the entrance of Gangnam Station... They express pain and pledges to change things. But there is still a long way to go. The female students' committee of one Korean university opened a group chat room to collect hateful remarks about women. But it had to be closed shortly... The chat room was bombarded with hateful remarks about women, such as "Korean woman are germs" and "feminists are fat."

[Soundbite] Kim Ji-young(Alias) (Korea Univ.) : "I believe the frustration and powerlessness of feminists and all women stem from the failure to change things."

An idol singer had to face severe backlash for reading a book about sexism in Korean society, and was even expelled from a university club for posting comments on social media in support of feminism. One women's organization collected 182 hateful remarks on feminism in just one week.