Legs good, love shots bad.

Two stories on sexual harassment rulings in two days from the Korea Times. Yesterday a court ruled that photographig a woman's legs in public does not constitute sexual harassment. Today the KT reports that forcing a woman to do a love shot does. An excerpt:

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a construction company owner identified as Koo, 48, must pay a 3 million won ($3,000) fine, upholding a lower court's decision.

The businessman was indicted without physical detention in August 2005 on charges of harassing two waitresses at a golf club's restaurant in South Gyeongsang Province.

In the ruling, the court said ``Despite the waitresses' resistance, Koo forced `love shots' on them by utilizing his relationship with the restaurant's owner.''

``Given overall matters concerned with this case ― the waitresses resisted Koo's attempts to hug and caress them before drinking ― we can only conclude his behavior was sexual harassment,'' the court said.

I'm wondering whether I should bring this up at my teachers' workshop this afternoon. I'm afraid, though, that if I give them an article with the line "Despite the waitresses' resistance, Koo forced love shots on them" I'll be charged with sexual harassment, too.

Actually I just brought up the teachers' workshop so I could sneak the "love shots on them" line in there. I'm sure this topic would induce just as much silence among them as any other. I've never witnessed forced love shots at a company dinner. The strangest time I recall was last month when one of the office workers started counting out the virgin women sitting at the table. "One virgin, two virgin, three virgin," and so on. At first I thought he was just really confused about the terms we use for unmarried women, since Koreans are virgins before marriage , and just had forgotten a term like Miss or unmarried. Then my coteacher clarfied things by saying that "virgin is somebody who didn't have sex." I must have misunderstood him, but now it made perfect sense. He wasn't trying to tell me about who was single, he was just telling me who hadn't had sex.

One commenter on the KT site has weighed in with his take:

schengen (121.129.42.54) 03-26-2008 02:27
PS lets line up this Koofucker together with the farmers who both represents old korea

schengen (121.129.42.54) 03-26-2008 02:25
ballast can have a destabilising effect on a ship in response a shipscrew will pump out the ballast my solutions is to get rid of this cocksucker Koo who is destabilising the progress of korea

So that's how that works.