*February 27, 2026 Gender Watchdog Supported by End Rape On Campus (EROC)*

On February 26, 2026, the Cannes Film Festival announced that Park Chan-wook would preside over the jury of the 79th edition — the first South Korean director ever to hold this role.1 Festival president Iris Knobloch and director Thierry Frémaux declared themselves "delighted to celebrate his immense talent and, more broadly, the cinema of a country deeply engaged with the questioning of our time."1

The film industry Park represents is indeed deeply engaged with a question of our time: whose suffering counts?

The "Solidarity" Statement and What It Costs

In accepting the appointment, Park said: "In this age of mutual hatred and division, I believe that the simple act of gathering in a theater to watch a single film together, our breaths and heartbeats aligning, is itself a moving and universal expression of solidarity."1

Park's sole documented public statement on the industry's sexual violence crisis was made at a 2016 anti-sexual violence forum organized by Cine21 in Seoul. There, he said he was "under the impression that the Korean film industry had cleaned up well compared to before."2 That statement was made before the KWDI documented that 61.5% of female students in Korean university film and arts programs experience sexual violence.3 Before it was confirmed that the legal architecture preventing those survivors from prosecuting would remain intact.4 Before the convicted criminal who embezzled public education subsidies became Dean of the most prestigious film department in Korea.5

Park was on notice as early as 2016. That decade-old statement — dismissive, minimizing, and factually wrong — is not silence. It is the record.

The CMPA-PGK Partnership: A Deadline That Passed

On December 17, 2025, the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Producers Guild of Korea (PGK). On February 18, 2026, Gender Watchdog — the advocacy organization supported by End Rape On Campus (EROC) — wrote formally to CMPA CEO Reynolds Mastin and Board Chair Kyle Irving of Eagle Vision, detailing the documented human rights risks embedded in that partnership.6

The letter gave CMPA seven days to respond before we released our full findings publicly.

That deadline was February 25, 2026 — one day before Cannes announced Park's appointment. CMPA did not respond.6

The Canadian Media Producers Association signed with an industry. We documented what that industry does. They chose silence.

The Convicted Official at the Center

Any audit of the Producers Guild of Korea begins at Dongguk University's film department — the academic-industry pipeline that feeds PGK, KFPA, and Korea's production infrastructure.

Tcha Seung-jai (차승재), three-term President of the Korean Film Producers Association and founder of Sidus FNH, was a professor at Dongguk's Graduate School of Digital Image & Contents when police began investigating him in June 2015 for embezzling approximately 350 million KRW (~CAD $340,000) from government education subsidies.78 In his 2017 trial, he was convicted of bid-rigging — manipulating which vendors received contracts funded by public education money.7

Dongguk University's response: they promoted him.

  • 2020: Appointed Research Institute Director.910
  • 2023: Inaugurated as the 11th Dean of the Film & Video Production Department — six years after his criminal conviction.111213

Dongguk's own institutional history page permanently records the 2023 appointment: "2023.03 · 제11대 원장에 영상영화제작학과 차승재 교수 취임."14

This is the institution the CMPA-PGK MOU is designed to deepen Korean co-production ties with. Sidus FNH, the company Tcha founded, shares physical facilities with the graduate school — blurring the line between industry recruiter and academic gatekeeper. When Gender Watchdog documented this pipeline, Sidus FNH issued an aggressive legal threat demanding retraction within 48 hours and threatening criminal charges for defamation and obstruction of business.15

Gender Watchdog's response: forward the threat — with full documentation of Sidus's false claims — to Korean prosecutors, Korean police, KOFIC, the Korean National Human Rights Commission, 30+ embassies in Seoul, the French CNC, Cahiers du Cinéma, EROC, RAINN, ATIXA, and the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Sidus was CC'd on the distribution, confirming they knew where it was going.16

Sidus's threat directly contradicted Dongguk's own archived website, which as of April 14, 2025 still stated: "The department is located in the building, so-called 'Choong-Moo-Ro Yeong-Sang Center,' in which Sidus FNH, one of the top five film production companies in Korea, is based."16 Corporate intimidation deployed against verifiable, archived evidence is not legal strategy. It is panic.

"Quadruple Coercion": Why Students Cannot Speak

Dongguk's promotion of a criminally convicted professor is not administrative failure. It is structural design. Academic and Korean commentator Pak Noja (Vladimir Tikhonov) documented the mechanism in Hankyoreh: elite Korean institutions are captured by mutual-protection networks that create total control over students.15

Gender Watchdog calls this the "Quadruple Coercion" model:

  1. Academic Authority — the professor grades them
  2. Corporate Power — the production CEO hires them
  3. Association Presidency — the industry leader can blacklist them
  4. Defamation Law — the legal system criminalizes their truth-telling

This is not metaphor. Korean criminal defamation law allows prosecution for true statements if they fail a subjective "public interest" test.17 It has been documented as the primary legal tool used to silence #MeToo survivors. The Sidus FNH threat against Gender Watchdog demonstrates the mechanism in active use.

South Korea's Article 297 defines rape as intercourse by means of "violence or intimidation." Korean courts have interpreted this so narrowly that violence or intimidation must render the victim unable to resist — not merely present.4

In a 2019 survey by the National Sexual Violence Relief Centre, well over two-thirds of rape cases received by sexual violence counseling centers in South Korea did not involve direct violence or threats.4 Under the current law, the vast majority of those cases cannot be prosecuted as rape.

In 2023, South Korea's Ministry of Gender Equality and Family raised a proposal to revise the definition to include nonconsensual sex. The Justice Ministry rejected it within hours.4

That same year — June 16, 2023 — Japan's House of Councillors voted unanimously to pass Penal Code reforms creating a new crime of "nonconsensual sexual intercourse."18 Japan, historically one of the most resistant countries on this issue, now has stronger survivor protections than South Korea.

South Korea is not a post-#MeToo industry. It is an industry where #MeToo happened, was documented, and was structurally refused.

The Statistical Baseline: 61.5%

The KWDI 2020 report — commissioned by a Korean government-linked research body — documented the following:3

  • 61.5% of female students in Korean university arts and culture programs experienced sexual violence.
  • Film departments received the highest risk score of all academic disciplines: 81 out of 100.
  • 66% of all campus sexual violence is perpetrated by faculty — not peers.

The talent pipeline the CMPA-PGK MOU seeks to access operates entirely within this documented environment.

"Sponsorship" Is Grooming With a Korean-Language Label

Korean entertainment's normalized "Sponsorship" (seu-pon) system has been documented by industry insiders: organizations and "clubs" deliver young talent to wealthy men, in return for industry access gatekept by sex.19

The clinical definition of sexual grooming is: selection → trust-building through gifts/access → isolation → normalization → control. The "Sponsorship" system follows this sequence precisely. Korean law recognizes grooming as criminal. Active grooming allegations against major Korean film star Kim Soo-hyun illustrate that this isn't historical — it is current.20

Any Canadian talent sent to Korea under the CMPA-PGK MOU enters an ecosystem where "access" is routinely gatekept through this mechanism. This is not a cultural difference. It is a documented exploitation pipeline.

The predatory structure is not limited to the "Sponsorship" system. In July 2025, a Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) staff member was sentenced to one year in prison — with immediate custody — for secretly filming sexual intercourse with a colleague without consent.21 That conviction was handed down on July 18, 2025 — just over two months before Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice opened the same festival at BIFF's 30th anniversary edition in September 2025.22 On appeal, on October 16, 2025, the Busan District Court converted that sentence to one year's imprisonment suspended for two years — meaning the offender walked free from custody entirely, with no prison time served beyond the initial arrest.23 This is not BIFF's first documented institutional failure. In 2023, the Busan Counseling Center Against Sexual Violence formally concluded that former festival director Huh Moonyung committed "a serious incident of sexual harassment in the workplace" — with the investigation finding the harassment was continuous and intentional. BIFF accepted Huh's resignation without proper investigation or disciplinary procedure; the investigating body stated this was "the biggest obstacle to resolving this case." Three top executives resigned and one was dismissed as a result.24 In December 2025, South Korean broadcast journalism documented an entertainment company executive who had multiple prior victims of serial sexual assaults against intoxicated women, served two years, and was released in April 2025. Within months of his release, he allegedly picked up a drunk 20-year-old woman and abandoned her in a Seoul alley with a fractured skull; she lost sight in her left eye. An arrest warrant was applied for. It was rejected.25 This is the industry the CMPA just formally partnered with.

Racialized Targeting: Zero Foreign Women Reach Leadership

The crisis is not only gendered. It is explicitly racialized.

Despite decades of Korean entertainment exports generating billions in revenue, there are effectively zero foreign women in Korean entertainment creative leadership roles. Foreign women — predominantly from China, Vietnam, the Zainichi Korean community, and beyond — are recruited for their tuition money and cultural cachet, exploited through the sponsorship pipeline, and then erased.26 Their visa dependency amplifies every coercive dynamic described above.

Gender Watchdog's Xiaohongshu (China's "Little Red Book") post documenting Dongguk's sexual violence crisis generated 3,256 views and 85 comments, with multiple survivor testimonies — including a graduate school applicant who withdrew her Dongguk admission after a professor asked inappropriate personal questions during her interview.27

This is the testimony the CMPA's due diligence should have uncovered. And when incidents do occur, English-language Korean media systematically suppresses reporting on racist violence against non-Koreans — including confirmed hate crime convictions — while providing immediate coverage when Koreans report discrimination abroad.28

The Fake Partnership Infrastructure

Dongguk University's international credibility — marketed to foreign students to justify enrollment and tuition — has been systematically fabricated. Gender Watchdog audited the school's partner network and confirmed 34 institutions as falsified, denied, or severely misrepresented.29

The mechanism is what we have termed "Semantic Fraud": a component-level or non-binding agreement with a single faculty or business school is listed institution-wide, with no disclosure of scope — misleading prospective students into believing they have access to an entire university's exchange infrastructure. As Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford confirmed to Gender Watchdog, "some institutions are addicted to gaming" academic rankings.30

A cross-audit of the University of Strasbourg's official international partnerships database illustrates the pattern precisely. Konkuk University lists "University of Strasbourg" on its international office page without qualification — implying a full institution-wide agreement. The Unistra official record confirms only a single component-level agreement restricted to EM Strasbourg (the business school), not the institution as a whole.31 This is a restricted departmental agreement dressed up as a general partnership.

Konkuk University listing University of Strasbourg without scope disclosure — the actual agreement is limited to EM Strasbourg business school only

Above: Konkuk University claims "University of Strasbourg" as an unrestricted partner — while the Unistra official database confirms only an EM Strasbourg component agreement.

The contrast with Yeungnam University — which accurately lists the same agreement as "University of Strasbourg EM Strasbourg Business School" — demonstrates that honest disclosure is both possible and practiced by some Korean institutions.31 Konkuk's omission is not an administrative oversight. It is a choice.

Yeungnam University correctly disclosing the EM Strasbourg scope — a model of accurate partnership representation

Above: Yeungnam University lists "University of Strasbourg EM Strasbourg Business School" — the correct, scope-limited version. This is what Konkuk should have written.

The confirmed fraud extends well beyond a single French database cross-check. When Gender Watchdog attempted to verify Dongguk's claimed partnership with the University of British Columbia — Canada's highest-ranked university — UBC failed to produce any records of communication with Dongguk for an entire academic year. The BC Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) had to formally intervene before UBC responded. The eventual FOI answer confirmed no active institutional agreement exists.29

The University of Southampton took a different approach: upon receiving our partnership verification request, they automatically escalated it to their Freedom of Information office (Ref: F-25-0507). The initial response could not confirm any partnership. A subsequent FOI correction established that a dormant "limited-scope" agreement exists — fewer than five students per year, effectively inactive — reclassifying the claim from "False" to "Zombie Partnership." But the disclosure that followed was the more consequential finding: Southampton confirmed that its agreements carry explicit contractual obligations for student safety that partners are legally bound to meet.32

An institution where a convicted criminal presides as film dean, where 61.5% of female students in the flagship program experience sexual violence, and where the legal architecture refuses to prosecute that violence as rape — does not meet the conditions under which a safety-compliant partner institution could lawfully send students. Southampton's contractual disclosure transforms the partnership fraud question from an administrative matter into a potential legal liability for every institution that currently holds a live agreement with Dongguk.

When our full audit became public, Dongguk directly deleted the University of British Columbia from its international partners page and reverted Toronto Metropolitan University to its prior name "Ryerson" — visible in real-time scrubbing caught via website monitoring.30 The cover-up spread: Seoul National University took its entire international partnerships database offline five days after Gender Watchdog published forensic findings; on February 11, 2026, both Chung-Ang University and Sogang University pulled their partnership pages offline simultaneously — forensically captured before they could disappear.33

The Canadian institution that CMPA just partnered with the broader Korean industry operates in an ecosystem where leading Korean universities systematically falsified international partnerships — including those with Canadian universities — and then destroyed evidence of them when confronted with documented audit findings.

Indigenous Visual Motifs as Aesthetic Punchline: No Other Choice and Parasite

No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook's latest film — which received three Golden Globe nominations — has drawn documented criticism for deploying Aboriginal and First Nations visual and cultural motifs as aesthetic devices.34 This follows the pattern of Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winner, which similarly used racialized and Indigenous aesthetic codes as shorthand for the "primitive" or the "comic."34

This is not an isolated stylistic choice. It reflects a documented pattern in Korean prestige cinema: Korean-style racism, as scholars have noted, internalizes Western racial hierarchies — white at the top, Black at the bottom — and deploys Indigenous and racialized visual codes as a reliable aesthetic signifier for otherness, without accountability to or relationship with the peoples whose cultures are being mined.34

Korea is ranked 5th worst for Racial Equity among 89 countries surveyed by US News & World Report — with systemic issues cited including restrictive work permit policies and limited support for immigrant families.35 Sociology professor Park Kyung-tae of Sungkonghoe University describes this as "Korean-style racism" that "internalizes Western racial hierarchies, where white people are at the top and Black people are at the bottom," with nonwhite Asian immigrants facing discrimination amplified by economic hierarchy.35 Cannes has selected as its jury president a director from this context — at precisely the moment global film culture is reckoning with cultural appropriation, Indigenous sovereignty, and the extractive logics of heritage tourism.

Board Chair Kyle Irving of Eagle Vision leads one of Canada's foremost Indigenous-led production companies. The MMIWG2S National Inquiry's Calls for Justice are explicit: media institutions bear specific responsibility for how Indigenous lives and cultures are represented and protected.36 The mechanics of "Sponsorship" in Korea — recruiting vulnerable racial minorities, isolating them from legal support, normalizing their exploitation — mirror the systemic trafficking factors the MMIWG2S Inquiry documented in detail.

Reconciliation is not divisible. You cannot champion Indigenous sovereignty at home while formalizing partnerships with industries that replicate the same structural devaluation of racialized women's lives abroad.

The Epstein Framework: When Exploitation Becomes Systematic

On February 17, 2026 — the day before Gender Watchdog's letter to CMPA — UN Human Rights Council experts stated that the allegations in the Epstein files may amount to "crimes against humanity." They cited "a global criminal enterprise" committed against a backdrop of "supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny."37

The criteria the UN experts invoked — systematic, widespread, racially hierarchical exploitation — are the same criteria that describe the Korean academic-entertainment pipeline Gender Watchdog has documented. The Epstein comparison is not ours. It was made by Korean academic commentator Pak Noja.38 When a prominent Korean intellectual uses that framework to describe his own country's institutions, the international film community has an obligation to listen.

What Cannes Is Endorsing

The Cannes Film Festival is not a passive observer. By appointing Park Chan-wook as jury president — now — it is making an active institutional choice to celebrate Korean cinema without condition, without question, and without accountability.

Cannes says Park's filmmaking reflects the capacity to capture "the multiple impulses of women and men with strange destinies."1 We note that 61.5% of the women in Park's industry's talent pipeline have experienced sexual violence.3 The men who perpetrate that violence are protected by a legal system that does not recognize sexual coercion as rape.4 The women who speak are threatened with criminal prosecution for telling the truth.17

These are not "strange destinies." They are documented patterns. And they are the patterns that Cannes, by omission, is choosing to validate.

Our Demands

To the Cannes Film Festival: Respond publicly to these documented concerns before the jury presidency proceeds. Silence is a position.

To the CMPA: Cancel or suspend the December 17, 2025 MOU with the Producers Guild of Korea pending demonstrable reform, and commit to Indigenous consultation before any future international co-production frameworks are advanced.

To Eagle Vision and Indigenous film organizations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond: Make your positions known. The credibility of reconciliation-framed media institutions depends on consistency.

To Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and international film press: Ask Park Chan-wook, on the record, what he thinks about Dongguk's convicted dean. Ask him what he thinks about South Korea's rejection of consent-based rape law. Ask him what he thinks about the 61.5% rate. Print what he says.

To the Academy: The zero Oscar nominations for No Other Choice — announced January 22, 2026, after the film made the shortlist of 15 — have already been noted: not as artistic rejection, but as a moment when the world's most prominent film academy declined to endorse this industry's flagship film during a documented human rights crisis.39 Whether that choice was intentional matters less than whether it becomes a precedent.

The women who were not believed are watching.

So is the international community that claims to speak for them.

Gender Watchdog is supported by End Rape On Campus (EROC). Contact for press inquiries and coalition coordination available on request. Reproduction and translation encouraged with attribution.

Follow the evidence: Evidence Log: https://drive.proton.me/urls/F5PM468JNM#D3aT2Bghd7lb Surveillance Timeline: https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/surveillance-censorship-timeline/

Footnotes

  1. Variety, "Park Chan-wook to Preside Over 79th Cannes Film Festival Jury" (February 26, 2026). https://variety.com/2026/film/global/park-chan-wook-cannes-film-festival-jury-president-1236672634/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. The Hollywood Reporter, "Berlin: How South Korea Is Embracing the #MeToo Movement" (February 2018). https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/berlin-how-south-korea-is-embracing-metoo-movement-1085371 — Park Chan-wook stated at a 2016 Cine21 anti-sexual violence forum in Seoul that he "was under the impression that the Korean film industry had cleaned up well compared to before." ↩

  3. Gender Watchdog Blog (analysis of KWDI 2020 Report), "Sexual Violence in Arts Education After Me Too: Current Status and Policy Issues." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/sexual-violence-in-arts-education-after-me-too-current-status-and-policy-issues/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Human Rights Watch, "South Korea Cancels Plans to Update Definition of Rape" (February 1, 2023). https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/01/south-korea-cancels-plans-update-definition-rape ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. Gender Watchdog Blog, "From Indictment to Dean's Office: How Dongguk University Rewarded a Criminal Conviction with Promotions" (February 18, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/from-indictment-to-deans-office-how-dongguk-university-rewarded-a-criminal-conviction-with-promotions/ ↩

  6. Gender Watchdog to CMPA CEO Reynolds Mastin and Board Chair Kyle Irving, February 18, 2026 (email on record). https://github.com/Gender-Watchdog/genderwatchdog_metookorea2025/blob/master/email_emls/decoded/cmpa-pgk-02272026/decoded_Institutional%20Risk%20in%20CMPA-PGK%20Partnership%20(Sidus%20FNH%20_%20Documented%20Sexual%20Violence)%202026-02-18T06_30_02-08_00.eml ↩ ↩2

  7. Sports World (스포츠월드), "'타짜' 제작자 차승재 교수, 국고보조금 횡령 혐의로 경찰 수사" (June 4, 2015). https://www.sportsworldi.com/newsView/20150604001257 ↩ ↩2

  8. Sisafocus, "차승재 전 싸이더스FNH 대표 경찰 수사" (2015). https://www.sisafocus.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=123718 ↩

  9. Dong-A Ilbo, Dongguk personnel announcement — Tcha Seung-jai appointed Research Institute Director (March 13, 2020). https://www.donga.com/news/article/all/20200313/100141733/1 ↩

  10. Hankyung, Tcha Seung-jai Research Institute appointment (March 12, 2020). https://www.hankyung.com/article/2020031273811 ↩

  11. Yonhap News Agency, "차승재 제11대 동국대 영화영상대학원장 취임" (March 2, 2023). https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20230302140300004 ↩

  12. Business Post, Tcha Dean inauguration (March 2, 2023). https://www.businesspost.co.kr/BP?command=article_view&num=307884 ↩

  13. Financial News / Fnnews, Tcha Dean inauguration (March 2, 2023). https://www.fnnews.com/news/202303021801350946 ↩

  14. Dongguk Graduate School official institutional history. https://dic.dongguk.edu/page/1042 ↩

  15. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Sidus Legal Threat Backfires: Evidence of Corporate Panic and Institutional Cover-Up at Dongguk University." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/sidus-legal-threat-backfires-evidence-of-corporate-panic-and-institutional-cover-up-at-dongguk-university/ ↩ ↩2

  16. Gender Watchdog escalation email, "Corporate Intimidation Response & Factual Contradictions — Sidus Legal Threats vs. Archived Evidence" (May 26, 2025), forwarded to Korean prosecutors, 30+ embassies, and international organizations; Dongguk archived website (April 14, 2025) confirming Sidus FNH facility: https://web.archive.org/web/20250414174712/https://www.dongguk.edu/eng/dandae/122#; Escalation email on record: https://github.com/Gender-Watchdog/genderwatchdog_metookorea2025/blob/master/email_emls/decoded/sidus-legal-threat/decoded_sidus_threat_forwarded_to_embassies_%26ko_prosecutor__Subject%20Corporate%20Intimidation%20Response%20%26%20Factual%20Contradictions%20-%20Sidus%20Legal%20Threats%20vs.%20Archived%20Evidence__%202025-05-25T20_26_15-07_00.eml ↩ ↩2

  17. Korea Economic Institute, "Problems with Korea's Defamation Law" (January 18, 2019). https://keia.org/the-peninsula/problems-with-koreas-defamation-law/ ↩ ↩2

  18. Nippon.com, "Japan's Sex Crime Legislation Reforms: Survey Reveals Support but Lack of Awareness" (July 5, 2023). https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01714/ ↩

  19. Gender Watchdog Blog, "BIFF x Chanel, Labor Dualism, and Korea's Exploitation Economy." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/biff-x-chanel-labor-dualism-and-koreas-exploitation-economy-how-sponsorship-and-luxury-consumption-feed-on-racialized-sexual-violence/ ↩

  20. Hankyoreh English, Kim Soo-hyun grooming allegations (2025). https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/1190087.html ↩

  21. Gender Watchdog Blog, "BIFF's Illegal Filming Conviction Isn't Anomaly — It's a Window into Korea's Spy-Cam Crisis and a Culture of Cover-Up" (2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/biffs-illegal-filming-conviction-isnt-anomaly-its-a-window-into-koreas-spycam-crisis-and-a-culture-of-coverup/ ↩

  22. Variety, "Park Chan-wook's 'No Other Choice,' Headlined by 'Squid Game' Star Lee Byung-hun, to Open 30th Busan International Film Festival" (August 3, 2025). https://variety.com/2025/film/festivals/park-chan-wook-no-other-choice-busan-film-festival-1236477572/ ↩

  23. Hankyung (한국경제), BIFF staff member sentenced to one year, immediate custody (July 2025). https://www.hankyung.com/article/2025072113517; News1, BIFF appeal ruling — Busan District Court Criminal Appeals Division (김현희 재판장), original 1-year sentence converted to 1-year imprisonment suspended for 2 years (집행유예 2년), October 16, 2025. https://www.news1.kr/local/busan-gyeongnam/5943546 ↩

  24. Screen Daily, "Busan film festival takes action following sexual harassment investigation" (January 19, 2024). https://www.screendaily.com/news/busan-film-festival-takes-action-following-sexual-harassment-investigation/5189637.article — The Busan Counseling Center Against Sexual Violence investigation concluded it was "a serious incident of sexual harassment in the workplace"; harassment was found continuous and intentional; BIFF accepted perpetrator's resignation without proper investigation or disciplinary action, which the Center stated was "the biggest obstacle to resolving this case." ↩

  25. Xportsnews / SBS 궁금한 이야기 Y, "유명 연예기획사 임원, 알고보니 성범죄자…만취여성 성추행 후 방치 '실명'" (December 6, 2025): Entertainment company executive 강 씨 had 5 prior victims in serial sexual assaults against intoxicated women; sentenced to 2 years, released April 2025; re-arrested on suspicion of new assault leaving victim blind in left eye; arrest warrant rejected. https://news.nate.com/view/20251206n03195 ↩

  26. Gender Watchdog Blog, "The Statistical Impossibility: Why There Are Zero Foreign Women in Korean Entertainment Leadership." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/the-statistical-impossibility-why-there-are-zero-foreign-women-in-korean-entertainment-leadership/ ↩

  27. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Viral Xiaohongshu Post Exposes Dongguk University Sexual Violence Crisis: Victims Break Their Silence." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/viral-xiaohongshu-post-exposes-dongguk-university-sexual-violence-crisis-victims-break-their-silence/ ↩

  28. Gender Watchdog Blog, "The Two-Tier System: How Korean English-Language Press Erases Violence Against Non-Koreans" (October 14, 2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/the-two-tier-system-how-korean-english-language-press-erases-violence-against-non-koreans/ ↩

  29. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Semantic Fraud: How Dongguk University's Global Network Collapsed (34 Fake Partners Exposed)" (December 31, 2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/semantic-fraud-how-dongguk-universitys-global-network-collapsed-34-fake-partners-exposed/ ↩ ↩2

  30. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Panic Scrub: Dongguk Deletes UBC, Reverts to Dead Names" (January 19, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/panic-scrub-dongguk-deletes-ubc-reverts-to-dead-names/ ↩ ↩2

  31. University of Strasbourg official international partnership database (Unistra / MoveON). https://unistra.adv-pub.moveonfr.com/report-page-6218/ — Konkuk University holds only a component-level agreement restricted to EM Strasbourg (business school), while its international office page lists "University of Strasbourg" without scope limitation (https://www.konkuk.ac.kr/oiaeng/18825/subview.do). Yeungnam University correctly lists the same agreement as "University of Strasbourg EM Strasbourg Business School" (https://www.yu.ac.kr/english/study/exchange-program.do#search). ↩ ↩2

  32. Gender Watchdog X thread, "CORRECTION: FOI F-25-0507 confirms a 'limited-scope' agreement exists (<5 students/yr)… Southampton confirmed 'explicit contractual obligations' for student safety" (January 7, 2026). https://twitter.com/Gender_Watchdog/status/2008942085542694959; UBC FOI response and BC OIPC intervention documented in Gender Watchdog Blog, "Global Fraud Alert: 3 Confirmed False Partnerships Expose Dongguk University's 'House of Cards'" (December 23, 2025). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/global-fraud-alert-3-confirmed-false-partnerships-expose-dongguk-universitys-house-of-cards/ ↩

  33. Gender Watchdog Blog, "The 'Panic Scrub' Spreads: Chung-Ang and Sogang Universities Go Dark (Audit Obstruction)" (February 11, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/panic-scrub-spreads-chung-ang-sogang-go-dark; Gender Watchdog Blog, "The Harvard of Korea Has Pulled the Plug: SNU Goes Dark" (January 26, 2026). https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/the-harvard-of-korea-has-pulled-the-plug-snu-goes-dark/ ↩

  34. Gender Watchdog X thread, "First it was 'Parasite' and now 'No Other Choice' commits cultural appropriation of Aboriginal / First Nations culture" (November 6, 2025). https://twitter.com/Gender_Watchdog/status/1986465927228260633 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  35. Korea Herald, "'It's just subtle, not serious': What Koreans miss when downplaying racism" (January 4, 2025), citing US News & World Report survey of "Worst Countries for Racial Equity"; Prof. Park Kyung-tae (Sungkonghoe University) on Korean-style racial hierarchy. https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10381673 ↩ ↩2

  36. MMIWG National Inquiry, Calls for Justice (2019). https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/ ↩

  37. Reuters, "Allegations in Epstein files may amount to 'crimes against humanity,' UN experts say" (February 17, 2026). https://www.reuters.com/world/allegations-epstein-files-may-amount-crimes-against-humanity-un-experts-say-2026-02-17/ ↩

  38. Gender Watchdog Blog, "Institutional Capture: Pak Noja and the Epstein Model in Korean Academia." https://blog.genderwatchdog.org/institutional-capture-pak-noja-epstein-model ↩

  39. Korea Herald, "No Other Choice fails to receive Oscar nomination" (January 23, 2026). https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10661761 ↩