Tap that ass.

Wednesday was the start of the three-day 2009 Jinha World Women's Beach Volleyball Tournament (2009진하세계여자비치발리볼대회) in Ulsan. The Chosun Ilbo of course has the coverage you're looking for.



I'm pretty sure that's Han Ji-yeon (한지연), the college volleyball star turned model who, in turn, turned up on a Japanese escort service website. In spite of trying to cheer up her teammate here, she looks a little, um, deflated.



To be fair to the Chosun Ilbo, from what I've seen on all sorts of websites, women's beach volleyball exists in the minds of photographers solely for the purpose of snapping pervy photos.



Interestingly, Han Ji-yeon is in the news because she is among several models and athletes to appear on a bikini sports show coming to the E channel on the 29th. The show's called 비키니선수단, and I don't really get the object of it, but maybe I'm overthinking it. You can browse the website here, and you'll see that Han is categorized as "얼짱배구선수." I'll have to add that to my list of racy television programs that will compete with Naked News Korea, the channel whose models are, oddly enough, not naked.




This is a good place to mention a little news story we read about a couple days ago on Korea Beat and Marmot's Hole, about two Indonesian guys busted for taking pictures of women on Haeundae Beach. Yesterday, the Chosun Ilbo put up the following blurb on their site:

Photographers need to be careful where they point their cameras when they're at the beach. Those who snap shots of women in bikinis without their permission can wind up booked for violation of the sexual violence law and face public humiliation.

The Haeundae Police Station in Busan on Monday booked without detention two Indonesian men for taking photos of bikini-wearing women without their consent at Haeundae Beach. The two men wandered the beach for five hours from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday and took pictures of some 50 women without permission.

Excuse me?! Exfuckingcuse me?

Photographers need to be careful where they point their cameras when they're at the beach.

No, it sounds like photographers need to have their press credentials on them when they're taking photos of unsuspecting women. Photographers also need to remember to not be foreign. I've collected some examples of pervy photography on the news sites, especially by the Chosun Ilbo. For example, here's one from the Chosun Ilbo, which was even on the English-language site:



Those same women were photographed by the Busan Ilbo.



Here's the Chosun Ilbo getting between the legs of some white women sunbathing.



Here's the Chosun Ilbo looking at sunbathers at a hotel pool in Itaewon.



Here's more from Haeundae Beach from Yonhap:


Some bikinis, and a big guy, at Gwangangli Beach in Busan.



Here's one Korea Beat found:



And, well, this is getting tedious, you get the idea. I've focused on foreigners in bikinis because the papers seem to be especially aroused by them, but there are of course tons of pictures of bikini-clad Koreans unwittingly photographed as well.

I know beaches are public spaces, and that if you wear a bikini on Haeundae Beach---the most crowded one in the country and perhaps one of the most-crowded in the world---you'll attract attention. It's naive to pretend women aren't aware of the attention they attract. And though it's certainly creepy to photograph these women---I've seen guys hanging out at the back of the beach with their huge lenses ready---is it any more illegal than the pictures we take of without permission of people in markets, in malls, or on the street? Michael Hurt has addressed some of these issues on previous Korea Beat posts here, here, and here. I think if you're going to bust people for taking pictures of women at the beach, then you've got to bust the journalists as well. And if you're not going to punish the journalists---or the bloggers, Korean and foreign, who fill their pages with pictures of women in bikinis at the beach or mudfest---then you shouldn't be punishing ordinary citizens.

On second thought, after rereading Korea Beat's post about photographers busted in Haeundae last year, for the sake of convenience I think I will post some of what Hurt, "The Metropolitician," had to say. You'll see he talks more about the freedom he thinks photographers should enjoy, and indeed are guaranteed:

This is inane and stupid. It’s a public place. So filming/snapping pics of people in a public place, exposing parts of the body that are *GASP* readily visible to anyone — that’s a crime?

Yeah, getting up in people’s grill and continuing to take pictures while violating their personal space, or continuing to photograph after being asked to stop — that’s harrassment. You don’t need a camera to harass. Or sneaking cams into saunas, bathrooms, or sticking special equipment up skirts — that’s private space and wrong. And illegal anyway.

But calling taking a picture of someone on the beach in a public space “sexual violence” is a bit much. Sure, it might not be “nice” or you might be accused of being a dick, but it’s not the same as groping someone against their will.

This is what makes people, in a land where everyone and their dog has DSLR’s and other photo equipment, scared to take pics of other people. And why people continue to largely use the $5,000 cameras and $6,000 lenses to take pictures of their cream sauce spaghetti, cafe au lait swirls, and flowers.

And in a follow-up:

In Korea, any picture taken of another human being without expressed consent is “molka.” Which compresses everything from legitimate candid and street photography into the same category as sticking a fiber-optic cable up a woman’s skirt in the bathroom.

So, to be clear, the article isn’t talking about special devices, as “hidden camera” in English would imply, but simply taking pictures without expressed consent.

Which itself IS NOT A CRIME, even according to Korean law.

Also read what he has to say about "Korean Photo Paranoia."

And I'll just close on another note. I'm working on a bunch of festival previews, and practically all the websites I'm using have foreigners in their promotional material. In Gwangju the other day I saw an advertisement for the Muan Lotus Festival on the side of a bus, and on the left side of the ad was a giant photograph of two white guys giving a thumbs up. Some might say it's nice that foreigners are being included, even though we make up a very, very small percentage of the audience at these festivals. But I have to ask when the objectification of Caucasians and English speakers will end. I think we're still quite a ways off from an honest assessment of these trends. Certainly back in the States we have people looking at how, say, Asians are represented in the media, how they're depicted in popular culture, but leading the charge has always been Asian-AMERICANS: Korean-AMERICANS, Japanese-AMERICANS, Chinese-AMERICANS, and so on. I can only think of a few foreigners offhand who have acquired Korean citizenship, and they're not doing any agitating. Until there's a generation of biracial or binational Koreans, I don't think there will be much change. I would like to hear, though, some answers from Koreans about why festival organizers always use foreigners in their promotional material. I can speculate, of course, but I would like to hear from them. I guess I'll have to ask.