`Even an old horse likes carrots`

A former prosecutor general has been charged for sexually harassing a female employee at a dormitory of the golf resort that he owns. According to the complaint filed by the woman who works as a front desk lady, the man came to the dorm late at night in June last year and gave her a 50,000 won bill (45.64 U.S. dollars) after forcefully embracing and kissing her. He denies the alleged sexual harassment because the woman was with three other female employees at the dorm that day.

Police will find out the truth, but it is embarrassing to see that celebrities are involved in sexual harassments. Park Hee-tae, a former chairman of the National Assembly, sexually harassed a female caddie at a golf course in September. Park enraged the public when he explained, “I did so because she was like my granddaughter.” Internet users criticized him, saying that a grandfather cannot poke his granddaughter’s breast with his finger even if she is cute.

Park is 76 years old and the accused former prosecutor is 70 years old. Old men in power often sexually harass young women due to a combination of many factors including power, culture, and old men’s sex. A poll of 500 people aged 65 or older in the Seoul metropolitan area in 2011 found that 66.2 percent of the respondents have sex life and 35.4 percent paid prostitutes for sex. It is taboo to talk about old people’s sex but they definitely have a desire. Even an old horse likes carrots. The problem is that the opportunity to satisfy old men’s sex desire depends on money and power. Old men who have both power and money are used to people currying favor with them and tend to believe that they can do whatever they want with young women.

Recently, a renowned mathematician who came to Seoul for an international symposium stirred controversy after he got his graduate student who was working as an intern on his lap and sexually harassed her. The habit of the professor who has always been kowtowed by students applied to the intern apparently. It is not long ago since Yoon Chang-joong, a former presidential spokesman, embarrassed the country by sexually assaulting an Korean-American intern during the president’s visit to the U.S. Leadership of our society has probably learned nothing from other celebrities’ embarrassments.