Injured and Ashamed: The Limitation of the Expanded Coercion-Based Rape Model in South Korea

Abstract

Rape is a form of gender-based violence in which the line between coercion and consent is frequently blurred or contested. What happens when a court system broadens its definition of rape to include a broader range of coercive and potentially nonconsensual behaviors? In recent decades, South Korean courts have shifted the scope of coercion required for rape convictions, expanding from direct to indirect force to cover a broader range of rape cases. In this article, I investigate what has and has not changed with the expanded definition of coercion, through quantitative and qualitative analysis of 872 South Korean court decisions between 2013 and 2020. The analysis demonstrates that, despite a broader definition of coercion, the coercion-based rape model reinforces gender hierarchy by depicting the victim as the one who is supposed to be severely injured and ashamed in order to be believed. This study contributes to a better understanding of what we lose when femininity is defined by vulnerability, and it also engages the global debate over coercion-based versus consent-based legal models for rape adjudications.