One Molka Eliminated for Woman, One Giant Leap for Womankind

“My life is not your porn.”

Nearly 70,000 women were on the streets of Seoul during a protest on August 4th, 2018. It was the largest female-organized demonstration in South Korea and also the fourth protest that year against the unnerving prevalence of hidden camera-related crimes, also known as molka.

Over 30,000 molka cases have been reported in South Korea since 2013. Disguised as smoke detectors in fitting rooms, drilled into toilet seats, or rolled into the lips of trash bags in public restrooms, cameras can be found everywhere (May, 2018). Moreover, of all molka perpetrators, 98% are male, only 31.5% face prosecution, and only 8.7% face jail time, which has induced an outrage among women across the nation and has even drawn international attention (Gong, 2018). To solve the problem of molka would be one step forward in achieving the UN's 16th Sustainable Development Goal: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions.

A viable solution to molkas would be a mobile app for molka detection that utilizes the phone’s camera and flashlight functions and additional hardware. This app would detect hidden cameras through a double-scan process. The first scan would scan for RF, or radio frequency, transmitters. Molka perpetrators commonly utilize wireless cameras, which transmit RF when sending illegal footage. They can be detected by this scan. A limitation is that cameras cannot be detected if turned off (Harper, 2019). However, when turned off, they impose no serious problem. Another downside is that other devices also transmit RF, including radios, Wi-Fi routers, satellites, and radars (EPA, 2021). They would also be caught during the first scan, causing false alarms or false positives. This is why the second scan is necessary to identify which devices are hidden cameras. The second scan will utilize the phone’s camera and flashlight. Its goal is to identify molkas by the reflection of their lenses by flashing an intensive light onto them. This reflection-based technique is often utilized by government agents to find hidden cameras and will likely produce effective results in the mobile app as well (Murray, 2021). The second scan will be selectively conducted on the suspicious locations identified during the first scan, which will lead its user to the likely molka locations. The app will guide its users through this process, so any user will be able to check her safety by herself.

In order for this solution to be successful, the software and hardware engineers building the app will have to cooperate with businesses. Such businesses are the likes of Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, which controlled 44% of the smartphone market in 2017 (Gartner, 2017). This is because the hardware needed for the RF-based scan is not present in any smartphone model yet. The app engineers must cooperate with businesses to incorporate RF modules into increasingly slim phone models. If they cooperate, the necessary hardware could be released in future products, and the app could be utilized by buyers across the world. Since not everyone can afford the latest iPhone, we must also consider underprivileged women around the world. A big tech pattern in the past decade was that companies tend to copy each other with major innovations. Once big brands release phones with RF-detecting hardware, smaller businesses selling cheaper products would follow (Pogue, 2016). These affordable companies could be the likes of Motorola, whose $160 smartphone released in 2021 received rave reviews (Sin, 2021). The widespread availability of this app in phones of every price range ensures that every user can feel safe anywhere, any time.

The creation of this app will enable women to feel at peace in a public space without having to fear their vulnerability being exploited by molkas - finally putting an end to one aspect of society’s “boys will be boys” mindset. That’s one molka eliminated for woman, one giant leap for womankind.

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