South Korean Woman Cleared Decades After Biting Attacker's Tongue During Attempted Rape

South Korean Woman Cleared Decades After Biting Attacker’s Tongue During Attempted Rape - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/world/asia/south-korea-woman-tongue-attempted-rape.html?unlocked_article_code=1.k08.QjA0.boor-9pCLa98&smid=url-share


Choi Mal-ja, who was convicted of inflicting bodily harm, said she fought for a retrial so other South Korean women would not suffer as she did.


“​I, Choi Mal-ja, am finally innocent!” shouted the 79​-year-old woman on Wednesday after ​the district court in the city of Busan ruled that her act was “justified as self-defense.​”

On a May evening in 1964, Ms. Choi, then 18, was sexually assaulted by a 21-year-old stranger​. He pinned her to the ground, straddled her and tried to force his tongue into her mouth. She bit his tongue and escaped.



The police considered Ms. Choi innocent and arrested the man. But prosecutors later released him and let him stand trial as a free man. The man was charged with trespassing and blackmailing, but not with attempted rape. Prosecutors instead arrested Ms. Choi​. She was charged with inflicting “grievous bodily harm” on the man.

During interrogations​ by prosecutors, Ms. Choi had to go through a virginity test, and the result was made public during her trial, according to court records. Ms. Choi and her lawyers also said that prosecutors and ​judges blamed her for “crippling a young man” and asked whether she would like to settle the case by marrying her attacker.


Ms. Choi could never let go of the injustice. She passed a general equivalency diploma test and enrolled in a correspondence college in her 60s, studying women’s issues and human rights. In 2020, inspired by the #MeToo movement, she filed for a retrial, 56 years after the incident.