Horrible men and the freeze response (AKA the worst storytime ever)
So, I have something to confess. This one isn’t fun, but I don’t believe in keeping this sort of thing a secret so I’m practicing what I preach. CW for creepy man doing horrible things creepy men tend to do :/
These last month or so the novel Molka by Monika Kim had been advertised to me online before its release. Kim explains the meaning of the word in the introduction to the novel.
“Molka (멀카): the Korean term for hidden or miniature spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often to capture voyeuristic images and videos. Molka is an abbreviation of molrae-kamera (몰래카메라), which means a sneaky camera.”
As a woman that got swept up by Hallyu and the history of the country and the international fandom culture that’s come out of the Korean entertainment industry I have been very aware of this crime for a long time. I think at this point the concept of molka is common knowledge for most people that are involved in these hobbies for a long time. It’s horrible and disgusting and so pervasive that it’s almost normalized. I can tell you that both times I visited Seoul on vacation I had several moments where I had to accept the fact that there could have been a camera recording me in any of the restrooms I had to use outside of our apartment. Who knows, maybe there were cameras in the apartments that we didn’t know about. The same thought crossed my mind when I used the changing rooms to try stuff on as well. I have friends that have mentioned similar thoughts when they lived in the country. You don’t need me to tell you how despicable this practice is and how fucked up it is that we have to accept it or soil ourselves in public.
The book immediately introduces who I believe to be the villain of the story (I’m only a handful of chapters in as of writing this, so I still don’t have a full grasp of what the story is about). He is an office worker that has infested the office with secret cameras. The novel goes into graphic detail of him watching the bathroom stall feeds and getting off on the different women and what underwear they wear. This story, the realization of what the man was doing, brought back a memory from the last time I went to Seoul that I honestly try to not think about much.
We took one day to go to the National Museum of Korea. We had visited before in 2021 and were excited to see it again as it is gorgeous. The layout of the interior is kind of like a big mall. There’s a big open space in the center and you walk around in a circle as you go into the different exhibits, if that makes sense. It’s one big streamlined process across something like three floors. You walk in at an entrance, get spat out into the hall farther down and then you can go into the next exhibition room on the entrance nearby. I feel like that is pertinent here. So, we made it to the Japan exhibit. I was geeked, dude. They have two suits of samurai armor on display and I got lost in the sauce, I can’t lie. My friends and I got separated because I was glued to that glass. The lighting on the armor made the small details jump out so intensely. Please look up photos because WOW. A bit farther into the room they had Noh masks on display. Another moment where I was just glued to the glass, gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. Near the masks was a replica of what I think may have been a traditional home? I’m going to be honest I don’t really remember much after the masks because next to the home replica was a bench where this random man started talking to me.
At first he said hello in Japanese, which caught me off guard because what’s going on, right? I think he said hello in Korean as well and maybe tried to say something in English? I don’t really know, his vibes were creeping me out terribly. I bowed politely and kept walking to try to catch up to my friend. I mentioned to her that some random man started talking to me in Japanese and we kept it going. Except that I kept seeing him, over and over, everywhere. I am the type of person that always feels self-centered if I think “Is this person following me?” Plus, the only way to leave the exhibition room was to go the same direction. So I tried to ignore the man as best as I could and tried to enjoy the museum despite feeling wildly uncomfortable. I saw him on the next room (ancient Greece! Very cool sculptures on that one and there were groups of kids getting tours, which was super cute), and again I believe I saw a glimpse of him in the room after that one. I didn’t bring it up to my friends because I didn’t want to ruin their fun, I thought it wouldn’t be fair when all he did was give off weird vibes and try to talk to me. After all, a few days before while in Gyeongbokgung Palace a nice older man struck up a conversation with us to practice his english. We were apprehensive at first, but he quickly put us at ease and it ended up being a lovely interaction. Who am I to judge this guy just because he came off as a little weird and slimy? Right? Well, I was unfortunately right.
We were running out of time before the museum closed so we stopped for a second to plan out what exhibits we wanted to really see. There was a room entrance nearby and the only restrooms I had seen in the whole place right next to it. As we are loitering near the bathroom I saw a mother and daughter leave the restroom and the same man that tried to talk to me sprinting into it. I hate to admit that I froze in that moment. I didn’t know what to do. I physically couldn’t move for a minute and I felt like I was going to throw up. I have enough proficiency in the Korean language to be able to say “There is a man in the women’s bathroom!” and yet I kept second guessing myself in my head. The only personnel I could see near us was an old lady sweeping the hall. I wondered if I was supposed to go to her. Would she run to get someone else? Would she believe me? Would she even understand me? I wondered if maybe there was a man’s sign nearby that I didn’t see? I was locked in place as I was thinking all of this and I felt like I was going to start crying. Eventually my friends decided which way to go and we kept walking and I didn’t bring it up. I obviously didn’t enjoy the museum much after that, and thankfully we left not too long after. I kept thinking about that moment for the rest of the trip.
Nowadays I don’t think about it as often. It’s been a year, after all. On occasion the image of him running into the bathroom pops into my head, but reading this book has brought all of those feelings back. The fear that I felt, the disgust, the shame at not having done anything. I could have said something to someone but I felt intimidated. I felt way out of my depth. It’s a feeling I am blessedly not used to feeling. Although I know it isn’t my fault that man was doing who knows what I can’t help but feel awful about my own lack of action. I finally told my friends halfway through writing this. It didn’t make me feel better or anything, but it’s something I’ve been carrying by myself this whole time and I don’t think that’s fair to me either.