The South Korean Parliament approved an app that will warn victims when a court-monitored suspect approaches. (Credit: Hikari Hida)
As evening falls over her university in Seoul, a quiet dread returns to Min-seo Park like muscle memory. She double-checks the stairwell, scans the sidewalk from the lobby, and holds her keys between her fingers until she reaches the subway platform. It has been more than six months since she last reported her stalker to the police, but she still catches herself glancing at reflections in the train windows.
Park’s nightly routine has taken on a new meaning this year as South Korea prepares to release a real-time tracking app designed to warn victims when a suspected stalker is nearby. The National Assembly introduced this app as a revision to the Act on Electronic Monitoring in order to help victims to move to safety more quickly. As the country debates whether technology can succeed where institutions have faltered, Park’s fears remain intense.
“My stalker used to wait outside my subway exit every night,” Park said. “Even now, if someone walks too closely behind me, my chest tightens. So yes, I’ll download the app the moment it comes out, but unless the police actually show up when the alert goes off, it’s just another icon on my phone.”
Next spring, the South Korean government plans to launch the app designed to warn victims when a court-monitored suspect approaches their vicinity, marking the first of its kind globally. The system, paired with automatic police notifications, is designed to intervene earlier and more reliably than current reporting methods, which often require victims to call for help during the incident.
But whether the tool will work depends not only on the software, but on the institutions that have repeatedly failed women long before danger becomes lethal.
Soo Jung Lee, a forensic psychologist at Kyonggi University, calls the app overdue but warns that expectations are realistic.
“The app can help identify violations quickly,” she said. “This technology is significant, but without structural reform, better enforcement, and more officers trained in gender violence, we risk outsourcing women’s safety to an app. It’s a tool, not a solution.”
South Korea’s gender-based violence crisis has intensified sharply in the past few years. Reports of dating violence surpassed 120,000 cases in 2022, nearly triple those of a decade ago, according to the National Police Agency. Stalking offenses, especially, rose by 35 percent in 2023, despite the introduction of harsher penalties by the government in 2021.
Public outrage over stalking-related murders, most notably the 2022 killing of a young woman at Sindang Station in Seoul, showed how slowly authorities often act even when victims repeatedly signal fear. Many women say their cases were dismissed as misunderstandings, exaggerations, or dating disputes.
This routine dismissal nearly cost Ji-eun Lee her safety. A man who had been following her for weeks appeared outside her workplace, learned her commute, and eventually found her home address.
“People think a stalker is someone hiding in the shadows,” she said, “but mine smiled at the security guards and brought me coffee. By the time anyone believed me, he already knew where I lived.”
Lee believes the app might have provided documented proof earlier, but worries that documentation alone has never guaranteed action.
Even as South Korea embraces high-tech responses to crime, the country is grappling with a deeper cultural and institutional reckoning. Young women have led nationwide protests against spycam crimes, online hate communities, and widespread digital harassment.
Ji-Yeon Lee, professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, researching digital abuse, says stalking increasingly spans both the physical and digital worlds.
“Offenders track women through hacked accounts, social media activity, delivery records, and location-tagged photos,” she explained. “A victim alert system is welcome, but it doesn’t change how easily women can be monitored online.”
Lee notes that the state’s history of struggling with digital crime raises questions about its capacity to manage this new tool safely. Over the past decade, widespread spycam networks operated undetected for years; leaked databases from chat apps exposed thousands of women; and the notorious “Nth Room” case revealed authorities had missed early warning signs despite multiple tips.
“South Korea has world-class technology,” Dr. Lee said, “but its record on protecting women from digital crimes is uneven. A security breach, misuse of tracking data, or slow enforcement could undermine the app’s purpose entirely.”
The app’s potential hinges on factors far beyond software design. Those who have hope in its potential say the tool may create a verifiable digital trail of stalker proximity violations, thus strengthening evidence. It will trigger faster police response and shift responsibility from victims documenting their own danger to institutions monitoring offenders.
But there are structural obstacles. Police response times are inconsistent, especially outside metropolitan cities. Another major hurdle is that courts issue GPS-monitoring orders for very few stalking cases, thus limiting the scope of the app.
South Korea’s past struggles with controlling digital crimes also cast a long shadow. Despite advanced surveillance capabilities, systemic problems, such as slow investigations, judicial bottlenecks, and victims’ fear of public exposure, have repeatedly blunted the impact of high-tech enforcement.
Following the government’s announcement, a blend of anticipation and unease rippled across university campuses. Administration of Seoul National University has begun tacking up posters about the new system; the student council is preparing guides that explain how the app will function; and campus security teams are updating protocols in anticipation of increased alerts.
A student of the university, who asked for anonymity due to fears related to her experiences with stalking, Seul-ki, said, “I’m glad people are paying attention, but I’ve lived through what happens when warnings aren’t taken seriously. An app won’t fix that on its own”. She had endured months of pursuit from a former classmate who tracked her across campuses, stores, and even her parents’ home hours away. She was told by the police that they could not intervene until the stalker did something physical.
In several parts of the city, building managers have responded to rising fear of gender-based violence by increasing lighting, adding cameras, or escorting women to bus stops at night. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, 24-hour convenience stores across the city have been designated as “Women’s Safety Patrol Houses,” where clerks can activate a direct 112 police hotline to assist potential victims of pursuit. Some workplaces have created informal buddy systems so women do not walk to parking lots alone.
These adaptations, often carried out independently of government initiatives, reveal how deeply gendered fear shapes daily life, and how much pressure is being placed on a future tool that has not yet been tested.
Advocates caution that if the app succeeds, it will do so as part of a broader ecosystem: one that includes specialized anti-stalking units, rapid risk assessments, stronger enforcement of restraining orders, and penalties for mishandled cases. None of these reforms is yet fully established at the scale it is required.
Still, for many women, any intervention feels better than none.
On a recent evening, as commuters funneled out of Gangnam Station, Min-seo stood among them — alert, scanning in quiet calculation the way she does every night. When asked what the app means to her, she paused.
“It gives me a little hope,” she said softly. “But safety shouldn’t depend on whether technology protects me. It should depend on whether the system finally listens.”
About the author(s)
Shivangi Sen is a multimedia journalist and Columbia Journalism School student in the Stabile (investigative) program with experience spanning India, the UK, and the US.