Case No. 2024-EQ-0244. Stalking.
Victim: Yoon Jisoo, female, 30. Freelance designer.
Offender: Choi Dongjin, male, 34. The victim's ex-boyfriend.
Duration of harm: 3 years, 2 months. Physical assaults: 0.
Taekyung read the file.
They dated for a year. The stalking began after she told him they were breaking up. An average of 47 texts a day. Twelve calls. Whenever the victim changed her number, he found the new one. She changed it three times. He found it all three times.
He waited in front of the victim's home. An average of four times a week. He followed her on her way to work. He followed her on her way home. Whenever the victim moved, he found her new address. She moved twice. He found it both times.
He approached the victim on social media using fake accounts. He posted photos of her without permission. He sent messages to her acquaintances saying, “Yoon Jisoo dumped me.”
Two violations of restraining orders.
Eleven police reports. Zero arrests. Two fines.
Victim's current condition: panic disorder, insomnia, paranoid hypervigilance. She always looks over her shoulder when she goes outside. She installed three locks on her front door. She can't accept deliveries. Whenever the doorbell rings, she has a panic attack.
Interview room.
Yoon Jisoo was wearing sunglasses. Indoors.
Taekyung sat down.
“You don't have to take off your sunglasses.”
Yoon Jisoo nodded. Her hands were clenched into fists in her lap.
“I'll begin the questions. When did the stalking start?”
“Two days after we broke up. I got a text. ‘Let's start over.’ I turned him down. Starting the next day, he sent fifty texts a day.”
“Did you report him?”
“Three months later. At first, I thought he'd stop if I ignored him.”
“He didn't stop?”
“He didn't. It kept getting worse.”
Yoon Jisoo's voice was flat. Too flat. Her emotions hadn't worn away. She was shutting them off. Taekyung knew the difference. He used the same method himself.
“When were you most afraid?”
Yoon Jisoo paused briefly.
“The day after I moved. I didn't tell anyone. I even signed the lease under someone else's name. But the morning after I moved, there were flowers outside my front door.”
Taekyung's hand stopped.
“There was a card stuck in them. ‘Congrats on your new home.’ That's when I knew. I couldn't get away from him.”
Taekyung set down his pen.
“I haven't been able to sleep since then. Whenever I wake up, I check the front door first. I check all three locks, then the windows, and I'm still too anxious, so I sit in the living room. Until morning.”
Taekyung took notes.
“Are you still working?”
“I'm a freelancer, so I work from home. At least I don't have to go outside. But I can't concentrate. If the doorbell rings while I'm working, that's it. I can't do anything that day.”
“What about your income?”
“It was cut in half. I barely make anything.”
Taekyung wrote down the numbers. Income reduction: 52 percent. Going outside: three to four times a month. Average sleep: 1.8 hours.
“That will be sufficient. Thank you.”
Yoon Jisoo stood, then stopped.
“Assessor.”
“Yes?”
“What did he do to me? He never hit me. I wasn't physically hurt. He just followed me, sent me texts, and left flowers. Is that a crime?”
Taekyung looked at Yoon Jisoo.
“It is.”
“Then what are you giving back? He didn't break any bones.”
Taekyung was silent for one second.
“He took your sleep. He took your home. He took your daily life. When something has been taken, there is something to give back.”
Tears slid from beneath Yoon Jisoo's sunglasses. Without a sound.
“...Thank you.”
Yoon Jisoo left.
Taekyung began the assessment in his office.
Stalking. Physical assaults: 0. And yet the harm ran deeper than physical violence.
For three years, Yoon Jisoo had not felt safe in her own home. She couldn't sleep. She couldn't go outside. She couldn't work. She couldn't see anyone. She had never been hit once, yet she was more damaged than someone who was beaten every day.
How could this be given back?
Taekyung applied the standards for equivalent assessment of psychological harm established in Episode 7. Not a replication of pain, but the equivalent of the life destroyed by that pain.
The areas of Yoon Jisoo's life that had been destroyed.
Sleep: Average of 1.8 hours over three years. A 75 percent reduction from normal sleep. Going outside: Three to four times a month. A 90 percent reduction from normal. Income: Down 52 percent. Social relationships: Zero meetings with friends. One family meeting per month. Effectively isolated. Sense of safety: Zero days feeling safe in her own home. For three years.
Taekyung stopped as he added the final item. Sense of safety. Could this be turned into a number? Sleep duration could be measured. The frequency of going outside could be measured. But how could “not feeling safe” be measured?
Yoon Jisoo had installed three locks on her front door. That was a measurement. She couldn't accept deliveries. That was a measurement. When the doorbell rang, she had a panic attack. That was a measurement. Gather the traces of fear revealed through behavior, and turn them into numbers.
Taekyung combined these figures and calculated her daily-life restriction grade. Grade 2. Higher than Kang Yujin's Grade 3. The stalking had lasted three years, and the harm had spread across every part of her life. Yoon Jisoo wasn't safe at home. She wasn't safe outside. She wasn't safe while sleeping. There was nowhere safe. For three years. That was the basis for Grade 2.
Method of enforcement. Method of enforcement.
Impose the same level of daily-life restrictions on Choi Dongjin for three years. An isolated environment. No outside contact. An irregular sleep environment. And he added one more thing.
“Apply external stimuli to the offender at unpredictable times and in unpredictable ways. Doorbells, text alerts, footsteps. Recreate the ‘fear of not knowing when he would show up’ that the victim experienced for three years.”
Taekyung stopped writing this item.
Was this equivalent?
Yoon Jisoo's fear came from “someone she had loved chasing her.” Choi Dongjin's fear would come from “the state subjecting him to stress.” The causes were different.
But the result had to be the same. A life in which he couldn't sleep, couldn't go outside, couldn't work, and couldn't see anyone. For three years.
Taekyung completed the report.
Jun Kyung read the report.
“The unpredictable external stimuli provision. This is new.”
“Because the core of the harm is ‘unpredictability.’ Yoon Jisoo never knew when Choi Dongjin would appear. That uncertainty itself is the harm.”
Jun Kyung nodded.
“It can be defended legally. I'll approve it.”
Jun Kyung signed and set down the paperwork.
“Assessor. Dating violence, workplace harassment, stalking. You've been assessing psychological-harm cases one after another.”
“Yes.”
“The precedents are accumulating. The standards you've created are becoming South Korea's standards.”
Taekyung looked at Jun Kyung.
“Is that a problem?”
Jun Kyung smiled. His eyes curved like crescents.
“Not a problem. A burden. What you're creating right now isn't a set of numbers. It's the standard for the world.”
Jun Kyung left.
Taekyung remained seated.
The standard for the world.
He had never wanted to create anything like that. He had only wanted to create numbers. Accurate numbers. Numbers untouched by emotion.
But as he assessed psychological harm, emotion was seeping into the numbers. The tears beneath Yoon Jisoo's sunglasses. Song Minjae's trembling hands. Kang Yujin's stories about her dreams.
Taekyung pressed beneath his right eye.
When emotion entered the equation, the numbers wavered. When the numbers wavered, someone was beaten more, and someone else was beaten less.
Taekyung pushed the emotion away.
He opened the file for the next case.
Episode 9 END.