“Shall I tell you a secret.” The moment you receive a message from a stranger on social media, the gates of ‘hell’ open. Someone sets up a fake account, pretends to be the victimized woman, sends sexual content to a friend’s father, or spreads the lie to a boyfriend that “his girlfriend is cheating,” wrecking relationships. Block the account, and phone calls with only rough breathing come incessantly. Women who have no way of knowing who is on the other end tremble in fear until their daily lives are shattered. Stories fit for a horror film are part of the years-long crimes that cyberstalker Matthew Hardy committed against numerous women in the UK. This case was first reported in 2022 by Guardian journalist Sirin Kale, and it was also featured in the Netflix true-crime documentary <Let Me Tell You a Secret>.

From 2011 until he was charged in 2021, the number of women targeted by Hardy is estimated to have reached into the hundreds. How was he able to evade the law for so many years? Victims went to the police, only to be given the hasty admonition to ‘delete your social media account’ or to have investigations refused on the grounds that ‘there is no real threat such as rape or murder.’ Only in 2019 did an investigation begin thanks to the determination of a sergeant, but the decisive blow that put Hardy in the dock was a 700-page dossier of evidence compiled by a victim. It was thanks to a victim with experience as a legal assistant, who captured every message Hardy had sent to her and to people around her, added an index, and categorized them. At last, in 2022 Hardy received an eight-year sentence and was imprisoned.

[Flat] An analysis of 56 verdicts shows… stalking continued despite electronic ankle monitors, smartwatches, and restraining orders

Reading a recent article about Chosun Ilbo journalist Kwak Aram publishing her reportage <The Excellent Victim> documenting her stalking victimization, I thought of this documentary. Only the setting is the UK; it is a story we have seen and heard often here as well. She too had been stalked by a man she had never met since seven years earlier; she was no exception. Over the course of seven lawsuits to date, her company, supportive at first, tried to cut off support related to the lawsuits midway, and the police, prosecutors, and the courts endlessly told her to prove her harm. The perpetrator, now a defendant, fully availed himself of his ‘right to defense’ and committed further offenses by sending letters even from prison; when she asked for this to be stopped, the reply came back that “sending letters is an inmate’s right.” As she revealed in an interview, even shea graduate of a ‘prestigious university,’ a journalist, and someone with a solid networkfaced this; how much harder must it be for victims who are not. Until the story of stalking from prison ran in the newspaper and a broadcaster began to investigate, the justice system leaned toward protecting the perpetrator, not the victim. This sense of the problem underlies the book’s title, ‘The Excellent Victim.’

In the end, the ‘excellent victim’ is people who stake their lives and fight to bring about justice. So too are ‘Kim Hyun-jin, born in 1998,’ who exposed poet Park Jin-seong’s sexual violence, and Kim Jin-ju (a pseudonym), the victim in the ‘Busan roundhouse kick case.’ ‘Kim Hyun-jin, born in 1998,’ who ended her life this past April, had to fight both the perpetrator who smeared her as a ‘fake MeToo’ and a society that defended him. It took seven years to send Park to prison. Kim Jin-ju herself uncovered the perpetrator’s sexual-crime allegations that had nearly been buried by a shoddy investigation. Lee Chae-won, murdered on the 5th of last month in the middle of downtown Gwangju, was seventeen. After his attempt to murder another woman he had been stalking fell through, Jang Yun-gi attacked Chae-won as she was on her way home. Her parents, saying that what happened to their daughter must never happen again, released her real name and a portrait. For parents who had lost their child in the prime of her life, it could not have been easy.

[Flat] We will remember 17-year-old Lee Chae-won’s dreams and life

The question is who gets to be recognized as a victim. The label ‘victim’ is obtained when one forcefully asserts, ‘I am a victim.’ But it is wrong that one must prove the harm and fight in order to become a ‘victim.’ All this time, South Korea has been particularly indifferent to listening to, or speaking up for, women who are crime victims. Instead, a pattern of suspicion and cornering has repeated. This is how victims’ ‘silence’ is produced. The parents’ plea to not forget the name ‘Lee Chae-won’ feels like a reproach to such a society, and it hurts. Even now, ‘imperfect victims’ for many different reasons are continually raising their voices. Only if we stand beside them can we properly hold ‘perpetrators’ to account.