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“As much as possible, I would recommend not giving out information about your personal life and schedule on social media. In my case, when I’m broadcasting and I tell the viewers things like ‘I have a meeting tomorrow’ or ‘I’m working out tomorrow’ or ‘This is when I’m taking a break,’ all of that becomes information.”

Last May, streamer Lilka publicly shared in one of her broadcasts that she had been the victim of stalking. She also shared her tips for dealing with stalking in a YouTube video posted around the same time.

For a period of nearly three years beginning in June 2019, she was stalked by an unidentified man.

At first, he hovered around her home, sending odd messages to her on social media. Feeling threatened, she decided to move, but the man tailed her and found her new address.

When Lilka shared in a broadcast that she had a headache, the man left medicine by her door. He would also ring her doorbell during broadcasts. On one occasion, he followed her taxi on a motorbike, staring at her as he rode.

She finally reported him to the police. Last April, the Seoul Eastern District Court sentenced him to a fine of 100,000 won and eight months in prison suspended for two years for violating the Act on the Punishment of Stalking Crimes.

As streamers grin and bear acts of stalking for fear of the backlash from “reporting fans,” the behavior sometimes escalates into other acts such as sexual assault and harassment.

In 2020, the Cheongju District Court sentenced a man to two years in person for quasi-rape after he lured a 20-something female streamer to his house with promises to provide “advice and editing help” for her broadcasts. (“Quasi-rape” is defined in Korea’s criminal code as sexual intercourse or indecent acts that “take advantage of the other’s condition of unconsciousness or inability to resist.”) Last year, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced a viewer to six months in prison suspended for one year for an act of forcible misconduct against another streamer in her 20s.

In extreme cases, stalking has led to acts of homicide or attempted homicide against streamers’ family members. In October 2021, a man in his 30s in Seoul’s Eunpyeong District killed the mother of a streamer he had been stalking and then took his own life.

Last year, the Uijeongbu District Court sentenced a man to three years in prison for attempting to kill a female streamer’s mother. Believing that “no one else could have” the streamer but him, he plotted the mother’s murder in order to make the streamer stop her broadcasts.

Over 30,000 streamers are regularly active on AfreecaTV, a popular Korean streaming service. According to estimates by Afreeca Helper and TwitchTracker, an estimated 336,000 viewers per day watched streams in real time last month on the three largest such platforms: AfreecaTV, Twitch and YouTube. As acts of harassment and stalking against streamers continue to increase, the limits of the platforms’ preventive measures have become apparent.

AfreecaTV explained that it processes reports on stalking through its customer center, adopting blocking measures in accordance with management policy when confirmed acts of stalking are observed in platform services. But it also said there is little it can do about stalking crimes that happen outside the platform.

“When [users] report being victimized by stalking, we inform them about how to report this to their local police station, and we also offer a free psychological counseling program that connects them with professional counselors,” AfreecaTV explained.

Twitch and YouTube are both based overseas, which means they are even less able to offer such response measures.

This has led some Korean and overseas streamers like Lilka to share videos about their stalking experiences and methods of prevention. In 2020, Sweet Anita, a Twitch streamer from England, posted a video sharing her own stalking experiences and those of other streamers with the hashtag #stopstalking.

Kim Hye-jeong, director of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, explained, “We’ve presented guidelines for the operators of platforms used mainly by teenagers, such as having the ‘report’ buttons be very large and providing information about members in cases of accusations.”

“In the case of streamers, the system of exploitation operates in a similar way because it connects with their livelihood,” she added.

“We need processes to allow for an immediate response by the platform.”

By Lee Woo-yun, staff reporter; Jang Na-rye, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]