SEOUL: A department store in Seoul has filed a police complaint after a message threatening to rape women was displayed on its outdoor electronic board, officials said on Thursday (Nov 16).

The message read, “I will rape all Korean women”, according to the police and Lotte Department store.

It was displayed on Tuesday night in Korean and English, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The electronic board was part of Lotte’s Christmas decorations. It was meant to display digital postcards with messages submitted online by the public.

A Lotte employee eventually took down the message that contained the threat.

But a member of the public filed a report with the department store the following day, The Korea Times said. The person told the store that a photo of the incident had been circulated online.

Lotte said its system filters banned words from appearing on the board, according to Korea JoongAng Daily. But the store admitted that some words were not censored.

The department store said it has asked police to track down the person who transmitted the rape threat.

Lotte has since suspended the use of the electronic board for displaying public messages. It is instead running Christmas images on the display.

Concerns have grown over women’s safety in South Korea after a spate of gender-based violence cases. They have been fuelled by the tendency of Korean courts to take mitigating factors for perpetrators into account, The Korea Herald reported in September.

 -ANN