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“The perpetrator’s lawyer said he had read your petition and even praised it, saying, ‘You really can write. I guess that’s what I’d expect from a journalist.’”
Gwak Ah-ram, 47, said chills ran down her spine when she heard those words from her lawyer.
The perpetrator was a stalker who had harassed Gwak for years — a man whose name she did not even know at first. Gwak had sued him in 2021, and a year later, she was preparing for an appeals trial when her lawyer casually delivered the comment.
At first came disbelief. She had written the petition to the court out of desperation, her hands shaking as she asked for severe punishment. But how had the accused’s lawyer been able to read it?
In an interview near Gwanghwamun, Gwak recounted the terrifying experience she went through in 2022. Shortly after the conversation with her lawyer, she received a letter from the stalker, who was serving his sentence after the first trial. It included parts of what she had written in her petition to the court, along with curses and expressions of hatred.
Gwak said she first turned to the court, thinking what was done could not be undone. What mattered now was preventing it from happening again. But even after she repeatedly submitted petitions asking the court not to share her filings with the perpetrator or his legal representatives, she received no reply.
Court records are available for the accused to review and little can be done, explained her lawyer. For Gwak, the explanation was difficult to accept. She said that was when disillusionment set in.
“Writing was the only thing I could do to protect myself, and that was when I realized it was putting my life at risk instead,” she said.
Gwak Ah-ram interviews Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk at his home in November 2017. Courtesy of writer Han Jung-sun
A stalking nightmare
Gwak had worked as a reporter at the Chosun Ilbo since 2003. As part of her job, she appeared on podcasts and other public platforms, often with her full name and face disclosed.
She believes she became a target of stalking because she was both a woman and a reporter. The harassment began in 2019, but it took her nearly two years to grasp what was happening. The warning came indirectly, when someone alerted her that a YouTuber had been uploading videos saying he would “donate sperm” to female reporters.
When Gwak looked up the channel, she found a video of a man she had never met washing his car. The title read, “Scrubbing reporter Gwak Ah-ram clean.” Horrified, she reported the channel, which YouTube soon removed.
She received an enraged email not long afterward. The mail berated her for treating his phrase, “giving you my sperm,” as sexual harassment, and demanded 10 million won (around $6,600) in compensation.
When Gwak blocked the address, another video appeared on what seemed to be a newly created account. “I’ve set my eyes on you, and your life is in my grasp,” the man said in the video, with a large ax hanging on the wall behind him. Gwak said that was the moment she became afraid.
For all she knew, the stalker could appear at any moment. He knew where she worked and where she walked. Anxiously scanning people in the building lobby became part of her daily routine, while the threatening calls showed no signs of stopping.
In the end, she decided to take the matter to court. In November 2021, she filed a criminal complaint against him on charges including obscene acts through telecommunications media, insult, extortion and violations of the anti-stalking law. In May 2022, prosecutors indicted the perpetrator without detaining him.
But the nightmare did not end, as comments appeared under her colleagues’ articles threatening retaliation unless Gwak drops her case, while menacing videos continued to appear on YouTube.
The ordeal ended only in September that year, when the court sentenced the accused to one year in prison. That month, Gwak filed an additional criminal complaint against him on charges including retaliatory intimidation under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes, defamation and violations of the anti-stalking law.
Stalking victim Gwak Ah-ram speaks during an interview with Hankook Ilbo at an office in Jongno District, Seoul, on May 24. Korea Times photo by Min Gyeong-suk
Relentless stalking behind bars
“He’s locked up. I’m finally safe,” Gwak told herself. But the relief was short-lived.
A month later, she received a letter the stalker had sent from prison. It included obscene drawings and language, along with a suggestion that if she dropped the charges against him, he would stalk another woman instead. Her colleagues also received letters asking them to persuade Gwak to drop the case and send money to his prison account.
Things took a darker turn when the prosecution’s investigation into the new charges was delayed, with the stalker’s release date fast approaching. Gwak said she called the prosecutor’s office, pleading for him to be taken into custody before he was released. She also submitted petitions to the court, explaining that the threats had continued.
“I wondered who would stand in front of me when he is released and comes after me?” she said. “Then I realized: No one. People would only glance over when I end up dead.”
Thankfully, the convicted stalker was taken into custody before his release. But months of living in fear had left Gwak battered and drained. In April 2024, the stalker was sentenced to two and half years in prison in the second case. The sentence was finalized that December.
The third case began around the same period.
“In July 2022, I belatedly learned that the perpetrator, apparently resentful over my complaint, had written an obscene story with me as the main character and posted it on a blog,” Gwak said.
That was not all. She later learned that he had posted another obscene story in 2020, before she filed her first complaint. Gwak filed a fourth complaint in August 2024 and a fifth in January last year.
The perpetrator showed no sign of remorse. Instead, in February last year, he filed a countersuit against her on charges including stalking and impersonating a public official. Gwak refused to back down. In October of the same year, she filed a sixth complaint against him on charges including false accusation.
She also filed a civil damages suit seeking 50 million won (around $33,000), and the court ruled fully in her favor, awarding the entire amount.
The cover of Gwak Ah-ram’s book “Exceptional Victim,” a tentative English translation of the Korean title, published on May 8. Courtesy of Thinking Power Books
A reporter-victim begins to reclaim the record
Seven legal actions over six years. Gwak recently turned those long, painful years into a book. Its purpose was not simply to tell the world what had happened. For years, afraid the details might reach her elderly parents, she stopped herself from writing even a single column about what she was going through.
Instead, the book was meant to raise questions for the public.
“In the legal system, victims are not treated as parties to their own cases,” she said. “For that reason, even rights that should be guaranteed are repeatedly denied. I wanted to recover my sense of being a party to the case. I wanted to prove that this was something I went through, and that the story was mine.”
Looking back, Gwak said she had been naive, believing without question that the law would be on her side because she was the victim. In reality, victims are pushed out during criminal trials. No one told her the name of the presiding judge or the sentence prosecutors were seeking unless she asked first. Her safety and right to know were repeatedly treated as secondary. She found herself fighting the state, instead of the perpetrator.
“If even I, as a journalist, had this much trouble, how are other victims supposed to survive?” Gwak said.
The question stayed with her. She could not shake the sense that she owed something to victims with fewer resources than she had. So she began calling herself an “exceptional victim,” one in the top 1 percent, with professional knowledge, social connections and the tools to speak publicly.
“At some point, I realized this was not just personal pain, but a social problem I needed to report,” she said. “I started looking at my own case from a distance. I wanted to investigate where the gaps in the system were, how wide they were and make them public.”
Part of a social media post uploaded by Gwak Ah-ram. The post describes the fear she felt over the perpetrator’s possible release and repeated stalking, as well as her distrust of the justice system and sense of desperation. Gwak said these posts later became the first draft of her book. Courtesy of Gwak Ah-ram
‘Once reporting began’
In the beginning, the fear that the stalker knew where she worked made Gwak consider quitting her job. As time passed, however, she began to feel that the media was the last place where she could still place her hope.
In January 2024, when harassment letters from prison had reached their peak, her story was published in the social affairs section of the Chosun Ilbo. Prosecutors, who had remained largely unmoved until then, suddenly contacted her first, saying they would ask the prison to inspect the inmate’s letters.
This year, during the trial for the third and fourth cases, which had been indicted together, she faced another bewildering episode. Prosecutors had left out part of the repeat-offender clause from the indictment, even though it was needed to seek aggravated punishment. They said it was a mistake. Gwak filed a petition, but nothing changed. She then alerted a broadcaster. Once reporters began covering the issue, prosecutors belatedly revised the indictment.
“I never imagined I would feel the magic of the phrase ‘once reporting began’ so directly,” she said.
The experience brought her back to the reason behind her dream of becoming a journalist 24 years ago, and to a professional calling she had forgotten for too long: the wish to change society and help those without power.
Stalking victim Gwak Ah-ram speaks during an interview with Hankook Ilbo at an office in Jongno District, Seoul, on May 24. Courtesy of Min Gyeong-suk
‘The only hill I could lean on’
Gwak said she also wants to address the police. When she filed a complaint over the stalker’s description of her in a YouTube video as “reporter Gwak Ah-ram with sexy thighs,” police declined to forward the insult charge to prosecutors, saying “sexy” was a compliment that meant she had sexual appeal.
Prosecutors later ordered a supplementary investigation and indicted him on the charge. Gwak said the prosecution “was the only hill I could lean on.”
Now, as prosecutors lose investigative authority under changes to the division of investigative powers between the police and prosecution, Gwak looks back on that moment with concern.
“If prosecutors are taken out of the process, countless victims who cannot afford lawyers will be left behind,” she said.
That sense of urgency is why she rushed to publish the book, and why its final pages are packed with a detailed timeline of the case, from the first criminal complaint to the sixth, and the civil lawsuit in between.
“People tend to assume that becoming a victim is some far-fetched story that has nothing to do with them. That is why I have felt so lonely fighting this case for years. For me, it was the greatest misfortune of my life, but also the greatest awakening,” she said.
“I hope my pain can contribute to making this society better. I tried to face everything a victim could possibly go through, because in the end, I wanted to write this story well,” she said.
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.
