This dissertation examines how political and technological shifts have affected the recognition of victims’ injuries in South Korean courts from the 1960s through the 2010s. Using the South Korean case, which features a strongly institutionalized state and intense anti-feminist backlash, my research actively engages the empirical puzzle of sexual violence: Despite the consistent development of legislation and medical infrastructure for victims, why does a country face growing acquittals and restrictive criteria for recognizing victims?
The theoretical dimensions of my dissertation contribute to an understanding of gendered subjectivity, with a focus on agency and vulnerability. In analyzing how states recognize crime victims, scholars have tended to portray a sequence where victims transform into survivors, whether through social movements and government programs or in response to ineffective criminal justice systems. While these studies have illuminated how narratives of agency for self-prevention, protection, or recovery can be used against victims, they remain constrained by a binary view of vulnerability and agency. Instead, my research demonstrates the multi-layered and multi-structured relationship between the two. I develop the concept of agentic vulnerability to illustrate the legal expectation that victims are vulnerable enough for protection and simultaneously agentic enough to be worthy of protection. In doing so, my project shows how the concept of agentic vulnerability can explain the failure of advanced institutions and knowledge, with implications for logics of victim blaming beyond the specific case of sexual violence and beyond South Korea.
The research uses a mixed-methods approach, with both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data. The quantitative analysis is of court records, which I collected from 1,085 South Korean court decisions involving rape victims between 1966 and 2020. The qualitative analysis is based on two years of fieldwork in Seoul, South Korea, where I observed court proceedings, volunteered at a hospital-based government Sunflower center (equivalent to the American SANE program), and volunteered for two grassroot victim support NGOs. I also conducted 30 interviews and did archival research on sexual violence legislation, policies, feminist activism and government medical subsidies.
My empirical findings reveal an inherent tension: while the legal model that defines crime through evidence of force and coercion and medical expertise-oriented support systems expect victims to demonstrate vulnerability and injury, the verification of injuries was constrained by simultaneous expectations of victim agency. Over time, my research shows how injuries shifted from serving as evidence of victim resistance to becoming a matter of reliable documentation.
Chapter 1 examines how the legal definition of rape crime shapes victims’ injuries. This chapter demonstrates the association between victim’s injuries and prison sentences under South Korea’s coercion-based model. It investigates how victim’s physical attributes, such as being tall and overweight, as well as their lack of shame or fear of rape, mitigate the punishment of perpetrators. This chapter shows that the coercion-based model of rape precludes the possibility of female affirmative consent and essentializes female vulnerability.
Chapter 2 examines how the court accepts or rejects substantiating medical evidence. This chapter analyzes rape victims’ medical records in cases of acquittal by South Korean courts during the period between the 1960s and the 1990s. The analysis examines injury evidence in court cases, where victims failed to meet expectations of appropriate victimhood if they lacked defensive injuries from fighting back against their attackers.
Chapter 3 traces the medicalization of social responses to sexual violence victims beginning in the late 1990s. This chapter looks at how government support for the victims solidified through the medical institutionalization of the Sunflower center in rivalry with feminist NGOs. Also, the chapter depicts a psychiatric turn in academic discourse and government institutions, prioritizing clinical assessment of victims’ status over counseling practices.
Chapter 4 analyzes the legal revisions in rape laws that were driven by political shifts between the 1990s and early 2010s. In response to a series of sexual violence incidents, feminist activists founded anti-rape centers and pushed for new rape laws based on sexual autonomy rather than female chastity. This chapter examines these legal revisions and reevaluates their effects through the lens of vulnerability and agency.
Chapter 5 examines the legal interpretation of medical evidence in the 2000s and 2010s, building on the political and medical shifts described in Chapters 3 and 4. This chapter demonstrates a legal transition from an earlier emphasis on victim’s injury as evidence of resistance to a contemporary expectation of victim’s medical documentation of physical and psychological harm. However, it also shows that this transition did not end victims’ double bind of vulnerability and agency.
Chapter 6 delves into how feminist organizations in South Korea challenge the legal and medical reliance on victims’ injuries. First, as part of legal mobilization, these organizations have argued for a consent-based rape model that does not require proof of injury to establish rape. Second, resisting medically dominated victim support, feminist organizations have restricted their acceptance of government subsidies and their response to victims’ requests for medication. This chapter also uncovers diverse perspectives among feminist organizations regarding victims’ injuries as a source of movements.
In sum, this dissertation analyzes how using law and medicine to promote gender equality can result in unintended consequences by limiting victim’s status and options. It contributes to our understanding of the disparity between law on the books and law in action, particularly focusing on how gendered logics shape legal interpretations and enforcement. Furthermore, by examining victims’ medical injuries as evidence of vulnerability and agency in courts and feminist movements, this research elucidates the promise and pitfalls of strong institutions and professional expertise in constructing gendered subjects.
