34 Asia The EconomistMarch 28th 2020
21“F
irst he justasked for a picture of my
body, but then he asked if I could send
one that showed my face...and then he
asked me to play with myself...to use
school supplies,” the girl told a local radio
show on the morning of March 24th. She
went on to describe a weeks-long ordeal
during which she sent more than 40 graph-
ic videos to a man she feared would public-
ly humiliate her if she stopped complying.
“He had all my personal information...I
was afraid he would threaten me with that
if I quit.”
The girl was a middle-school student at
the time of the alleged incident two years
ago. She is only one of dozens of apparent
victims in the latest sexual-abuse scandal
to rock South Korea.
On the same day that she described her
plight, police revealed the identity of the
man who stands accused of running a
range of porn channels, known as “nth
rooms” on the Telegram chat app, charging
up to 30,000 subscribers between $200
and $1,200 (most of that, it seems, collected
in bitcoin to avoid detection) for access to
graphic sexual content extorted from
young women and under-age girls. Cho Ju-
bin (pictured), a 24-year-old graduate and
former college-newspaper editor who
called himself baksa, or “doctor”, was
named after 2.5m South Koreans signed a
petition clamouring for his identity to be
made public. Almost 2m people signed a
separate petition demanding that the po-
lice also identify all the subscribers to the
channels. Authorities say they have count-
ed more than a quarter of a million sub-
scribers across chat rooms featuring ex-SEOUL
Yet another sex scandal provokes
national outrageSexual abuse in South KoreaNaming and
shaming
Like other East Asian countries, Japan
has learned from previous epidemics, such
as sarsand bird flu, about the importance
of containment: pains are taken to identify
infection clusters and then to track down
transmission routes, says Shindo Nahoko
of the who. A compliant population heeds
government health advice about frequent
hand-washing and accepts unpopular
measures such as the closure of schools.
Yet the government has to date commu-
nicated little sense of crisis—in part, the
suspicion goes, to make everything appear
normal so that the games could go ahead.
Instead of adopting the stringent suppress-
ion measures being pursued across Asia,
Europe and America, Japan is relaxing its
restrictions. Hokkaido, with a big cluster of
infections, has lifted the state of emergen-
cy declared in late February. Mr Abe says
that schools can reopen next month.
Meanwhile fewer than a sixth of work-
ers are working from home. Over the week-
end, Tokyoites ignored official guidance
and turned out in throngs to admire the
cherry blossoms. A kick-boxing event in
Saitama prefecture attracted 6,500 fans.
Late-night revellers slurp shoulder-to-
shoulder at ramen joints before heading
home on crowded trains. In the land of
bows, senior officials greet foreign visitors
with hearty handshakes, to show that
everything is fine.
Given that infections continue to rise,
some are finding the general nonchalance
unnerving. Reports are growing of corohara
(short for “coronavirus harassment”): the
bullying of people who have recently re-turned from abroad, or who cough in pub-
lic places. Experts in public health are
alarmed. Some say the government’s test-
ing only of those who have clear symptoms
or who have been in contact with a carrier
risks missing the spread of infection
through the wider population. Mr Abe has
set up a task force and an expert panel but,
says Iwata Kentaro of Kobe University, no
one appears to be in charge. Kami Masa-
hiro, who heads the non-profit Medical
Governance Research Institute, fears that
in a climate of complacency and restricted
testing, coronavirus cases could “explode”.
For now, raising such fears is taboo
among national politicians and at the pub-
lic broadcaster, nhk—just as suggesting
that the games should be postponed was,
only a week ago. But that may soon change.
Faced with a new clutch of infections in her
city, the governor of Tokyo, Koike Yuriko,
this week warned that the city of 13m might
face a lockdown if cases could not be con-
tained. Transmission routes were becom-
ing increasingly hard to identify, she said;
the coming three weeks would be critical.
She urged Tokyoites to stay at home this
weekend, although she stopped short of or-
dering it.
Her comments ought to shake the city’s
residents out of their complacency. Nor
can the prime minister afford to be com-
placent. If the pandemic is mishandled,
even next year may prove too early to hold
the games. Party rules dictate that Mr Abe
retire by the autumn of 2021—which means
he could miss the games he did so much to
bring about, just like his grandfather did. 7L
ike manyothers,thegovernmentof
Bangladesh has issued a ban on public
gatherings to curb the spread of covid-19.
Yet not even the threat of a pandemic
could deter supporters of Khaleda Zia, a
jailed opposition leader, from turning
out en masse to witness her release on
bail. The 74-year-old, who leads the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (bnp), was
granted a six-month reprieve from pri-
son on March 25th in order to seek medi-
cal treatment.
Mrs Zia, who served as Bangladesh’s
prime minister from 1991 to 1996 and
from 2001 to 2006, was handed a five-
year prison sentence in 2018 for misusing
funds intended for a charity for children.
The bnpclaims that case and others
against Mrs Zia—there are 34 in all—are
politically motivated. For a time the
leadership of Bangladesh seesawedbetweenthetwobegums,Mrs Zia and
Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the incumbent
prime minister. But since her re-election
in 2008 Sheikh Hasina has governed in
an increasingly authoritarian vein.
“I hope this will bury the old ani-
mosity and pave the way for a new fu-
ture,” says Badiul Majumdar of shujan,
an anti-corruption group. But most
explanations of the decision are more
cynical. Tasvirul Islam, a bnpdistrict
leader, says it is designed to “divert the
attention of the people” from the covid
outbreak. Others speculate that the
government is worried that Mrs Zia
might die behind bars. “There would be
riots,” says one Bangladeshi journalist.
Whatever the government’s motivation,
Mr Islam sighs, “The current health crisis
will mean the government is even less
tolerant of opposition.”Ee begum!
Politics in BangladeshThe government releases a jailed opposition figure