Questionable line in SBS drama 'Yong Pal' that seems to imply rape victims are at fault sparks heated debate

SBS's new drama Yong Pal (starring Kim Tae Hee and Joo Won) has been criticized for fanning the wrongful and misguided views that society holds on rape, which all began with a line in the drama that seemed to lay the blame on a rape victim.

The August 13 airing of the drama told the story of one woman who was hospitalized after being sexually assaulted by a Hallyu star named Cha Seh Yoon. The woman, knowing Cha Seh Yoon was also hospitalized in the same hospital, hatched her vendetta by planning to blow up the entire hospital, with the hope of killing her rapist in the process. The scene in question showed Joo Won, who plays a surgeon named Kim Tae Hyun, trying the persuade the woman to abandon her destructive vendetta.

His exact lines were, "Cha Seh Yoon deserves to die for what he did to you but that doesn't mean your wrongdoing for willingly following him into the hotel, so that you can find an easy way to become a celebrity, just disappears. You can't kill innocent people just to cover up your guilty conscience."

After the airing of that episode, many posts were uploaded on internet forum DC Inside (likened to 4chan or Reddit), protesting and heavily criticizing the drama. Some of the comments read, "Does it make sense to say that the rape victim is trying to 'cover up her guilty conscience,'" "Isn't the line 'you willingly followed him in,' taking the side of the rapist?" There were also comments that the lines in the drama demonstrate the general attitude and the overall level of awareness society has towards rape.

Choi Ran, the director of the 'Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, proclaimed, "One of our society's deep-seated conventional perception is that the rape victims are at fault, as well. This line [in the drama] brings to the forefront our distorted and wrongful perception of sexual violence. That there is a line laying the blame on the rape victim in a drama that has a great social influence, is a problem. Some may argue that it is just one line but there may be the possible side effects of the victim projecting [the blame] upon themselves."

SBS responded with a statement of their own, explaining, "It wasn't our intention to imply that the blame lies on rape victims. There is the possibility that due to the editing cutting out the scenes before and after, the context wasn't delivered well."

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