[Trigger Warning]
Netizens have expressed their fury over a certain webtoon on 'Naver'.
As of recent, the webtoon called 'Hell-per' has been heavily criticized for its overly misogynistic and sexually violent content. Although the work is restricted to readers over the age of18, netizens are demanding that such restriction is "not enough" and that it must be taken down for good.
Some of the controversial content in 'Hell-per' include dehumanization, verbal violence, psychological manipulation, and excessive torturing and raping of children and women of all ages, including the elderly. Netizens have also noted that certain scenes and characters allude to real-life celebrities including both male and female K-Pop artists.
Ever since the release of its 2nd season back in 2016, 'Hell-per' has been featuring such episodes taking place in a fictional city of Ganashi where men battle each other using supernatural weapons. The majority of its readers are known to be men.
The most recent controversy involved the sexually explicit torture scene featuring a female elderly character. Stripped of her clothing and hair pulled out entirely, the elderly character is depicted forcefully taking liquid drug injections.
This scene was denoted as "the final straw" for the netizens, who shared comments such as "This is disgusting", "What is going on inside the artist's mind?", "I can't believe this hasn't turned into a bigger controversy yet", "The line has been seriously crossed", "How is this even allowed as a webtoon?".
Furthermore, online community forums have gathered contextual evidence regarding the webtoon's misogynistic and extreme content, such as kidnapping children and raping flight attendants, with most cases leading to murder and verbal violence.
It has been reported that many male subscribers of the webtoon have also voiced their negative opinions on the series. Starting from September 11 KST, netizens are using the hashtag '#Webtoon_Stop_Your_Misogyny' (in Korean) to start a movement in ceasing publication of misogynistic content. The controversial webtoon 'Hell-per' currently has an average rating of 1.8 stars on Naver.
Other comments include:
"This is not 'freedom of expression' -- it's at the level of crime"
"I can't believe the law has not restricted the artist from publishing this content at all"
"This is crazy"
"How is it possible that someone in their right mind would depict middle school girls and the elderly in that way?"
"It would give me the chills if there's anyone out there who would enjoy this webtoon"
i'm not typically for penalizing fictional content but if its content thats going into the realm of the depraved, and this is, it should be taken down
there are sites that might host it but it shouldn't be on a site that young people might frequent