Creative Korean Advertising #11: Going All The Way
( Cha Su-yeon (차수연) and Jung Il-woo (정일우). Source )
Probably the only Korean commercial ever to feature a woman repeatedly moving up and down on top of her boyfriend(!), in hindsight it’s kind of bizarre that I barely noticed it when it came out two years ago:
Much more interesting though, is what is said and written in it. Not only does the background text read “You need Vitamin C for love too!” (사랑에도 비타민C가 필요하다!) for instance, but like Chris explains here, who also thought the commercial was perfectly innocent at first:
Boyfriend is trying to airplane girlfriend but he’s having trouble maintaining, if you know what I mean, and so he downs a bottle of 비타500. Immediately invigorated, dude now has no problem keeping her up, and at the end he asks her, “Where shall we go?” She replies, “Hong Kong!”, which I now know is a pretty popular euphemism here in Korea for an orgasm, its origins being the affluent image of Hong Kong that was held in the collective consciousness of Korea until not too long ago. So ladies, next time your man asks where you wanna go, demand he take you to Hong Kong, and don’t let him stop till you get there.
Noble sentiments indeed.
I confess, that was also the first time I’d ever heard that of that slang, although I’d add that when I first arrived in 2000, for this particular usage of the English “coming” the equivalent was “going” in Korean, so “going to Hong Kong” makes sense. Unfortunately for the sake of linguistic variety however, by now the Korean (and Japanese) seems to have been completely Anglicized.
Regardless, can you imagine such explicit sexual slang being used in a daytime commercial in most English-speaking countries? Wondering if it represented a trend, I looked at Vita500′s commercials going back to 2004 here, but unlike for alcohol commercials there’s definitely no shift towards more risqué ones over time. Actually, the only other remotely sexual one was this one with Rain (비) and Shin Joo-ah (신주아) from 2005:
But just because Vita500 has only spiced up one of their commercials in recent years doesn’t mean that other food and drink companies haven’t. If you thought that that oh-so-subtle sexual symbolism above was lame for instance, then clearly you haven’t seen this commercial for Seoksu (석수) mineral water from last year (which I discuss here):
But it was particularly these ones for the ironically named Poker Chips (포카칩) that I was reminded of while writing this post. While this may sound a little strange given the screen capture below, personally I find the first one quite endearing:
I couldn’t tell you who appeared in those or when exactly they came out sorry, but clearly they’re all pretty old.
Given that context, then it just goes to show how strange it was that this commercial for Hong Kong clothing company Giordano with Jun ji-Hyun (전지현) and Jung Woo-sung (정우성) was banned when it came out in 2004, and how completely arbitrary Korean censorship can be sometimes:
On the plus side, its banning gave it some notoriety, and rapidly spawned so many clones that the censors just seemed to give up with those sorts of commercials thereafter. This much raunchier one for the tea drink “17차,” also with Jun Ji-hyun, came out just one year later for instance:
These days, aside from the government’s push for a “real name” internet system of course, one other notable censorship issue is the Youth Protection Committee’s (of the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs; see #4 here) recent banning of music group TVXQ’s latest songs from being played on TV and the radio because of “lewd content” (see here also). But one might ask what exactly the point was considering the album has already been out for six months though!
(For all posts in the “Creative Korean Advertising” series, see here)
Korean Gender Reader
( Source )
Apologies for the Korea Gender Reader’s one-month hiatus. Naturally even I can’t cover everything I missed(!), so today’s post will be a mish-mash of news from March and from last week.
1. Baek Ji-young Chosen as Soju Model
The innocent victim of a sex-scandal in 2000, singer Baek Ji-young (백지영) has had to fight hard against Korea’s double-standards to rehabilitate her career, and it’s both a reflection of that and how much Korea has changed since that she was recently chosen in an online-poll as the next model for “Ip-Saeju” (잎새주) soju, produced by Bohae (보해양조).
Of course, by now it’s quite rare to find Korean soju and beer advertisements that feature virginal-looking women, although they were the norm two years ago when both were almost exclusively marketed towards men. I wonder if Baek Ji-young would have been considered too risqué had a similar poll have been conducted then?
Update: Somehow I missed it the first time, but – not to put too fine a point on it – that one on the left has to be literally the sluttiest soju ad I’ve ever seen. In the strange event that you haven’t already, click on the image for a closer look to see what I mean.
Baek Ji-young does mention in those above links how happy she is to appear in soju advertisements like top stars Lee Hyori and Song Hye-gyo, but regardless of how true or not that is, one senses that they wouldn’t personally consent to appearing bra-less and with an open zipper in them. It smacks of desperation.
On the other hand, however unfair or unwarranted she’ll always be stuck with her promiscuous image, so she may as well play into it.
2. Statistics on the Effects of the Recession on Women
On many occasions I’ve pointed out that, like during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, women workers are again the biggest victims of the current recession. But finally, here are some actual figures:
According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), Sunday, the number of people employed in their 30s fell by 167,000 to 5.81 million in February from a year earlier, the lowest since the office began compiling data in June 1999.
In particular, the number of female workers in that age bracket dropped sharply by 157,000, while male workers declined by 9,000, indicating women are more severely affected than men by the unfolding corporate downsizing and the collapse of self-run businesses.
And why…
”A significant portion of 30-something female workers are employed on a non-permanent and temporary basis, without job security and other fringe benefits. Companies target them first when things go bad because it is easier to lay them off than regular workers,” the official said.
3. Another Knocked-up Korean Star Gets Married
( Source: Unknown )
An inelegant way to put it perhaps, but how else to convey just how routine this is becoming? Of course, in practice just like everyone else Koreans have long been more tolerant of premarital sex and pregnancy provided that the couple ultimately “did the right thing,” but it’s certainly been only recently that Korean celebrities, usually held to much higher moral standards than the public, could start being so blatant about it.
Or can they? In this particular case, minor celebrity Jung Sia (정시아) still felt compelled to deny pregnancy rumors until an wedding date was set, but despite that I’m quite confident that sooner or later not only will some female celebrity be unrepentant after being “exposed,” but will also be supported by most Koreans (albeit by indifference more than active censure).
4. The Continuing Korean Low Birth-Rate Saga
While it’s been one of my areas of interest for a long time (see here and here), even I tire of repeated articles that mention that Korea’s birth rate is one of the lowest in the world and…little much else really, so I’ll try to keep this section to a minimum:
—–———-4 in 10 Korean women report that they are delaying pregnancy due to the recession, but certainly not helping are management and colleagues’ changed perceptions of new mothers’ abilities and career ambitions once they return to work.
—————Last year, the average marrying age was 31.4 for men and 28.3 for women, but the number of marriages is beginning to dwindle.
—————Health, Welfare and Family Affairs Minister Jeon Jae-hee and comedian Kim Ji-sun (right) are currently holding radio campaigns to “boost the country’s birthrate,” which totaled about 630,000 infants in 2000 but declined to 430,000 in 2005 (although there was a temporary increase in 2008 because Koreans rushed to get married before – and then have children during – the auspicious Year of the Pig).
Although that’s better than nothing, one gets the sense that it’s like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic considering the wider problems with inadequate and expensive childcare facilities and workplace discrimination that are the real reasons Korean women are discouraged from having children: it’s not just a matter of feeling more maternal. But to be fair, John Jae-hee does acknowledge that the benefits of incremental improvements to policy are likely to be moot given the current recession (Note: rather confusingly, not least for the Ministries themselves, there is a seperate Gender Equality Minister by the name of Byun Do-yoon).
————–Lawmaker Park Sun-young of the minor Liberty Forward Party (LFP) recommended that in order to increase birth rates Korea should adopt the French policy anonymous birth, under which pregnant women can visit a hospital, register anonymously, give birth and leave.
While commendable in itself, I doubt there’d be much effect on the birth rate in a country with a strong stigma against raising children out of wedlock (see #3 above). More interesting in that report are statistics on the extremely high number of abortions in Korea, and the fact that only 1% of fathers take advantage of the *cough* generous 3-day paternity leave to which they are entitled, introduced last year. To be fair to Korean fathers though, as an undergraduate I read that even with the extremely generous provisions offered in Scandinavian countries that few fathers took up the offers there either, and I’ve read on at least one blog here (although I’ve lost the address unfortunately) that many Korean employers are completely ignoring or effectively prohibiting male employees from taking paternity leave.
In today’s economic climate, the maxim “Choose your battles” comes to mind, and 3 days hardly seems worth it.
—————A strange report on a bill to reduce the term limit for abortions from 28 weeks to 24. Strange because first it notes that Korea has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and then it states that:
Healthy women who undergo elective abortions can be imprisoned for up to one year or fined two million won. Doctors performing the abortion can be imprisoned for up to two years.
And yet doesn’t comment on the obvious contradiction .
If you’re interested in the debate about term limits, then you’ll probably be interested in last year’s decision in the UK to keep the abortion limit to 24 weeks (see here and here). In sum, that limit was set in 1990, and there was a move to reduce the limit to 20 weeks because of advances in medical technology since, but in fact despite those the rates of 24 week-old and younger premature babies surviving is virtually unchanged. Hence although it was made a conscience vote (not along party lines), it was overwhelmingly rejected.
—–———Finally, by 2020 probably up to 50% of teenagers in many rural areas will be biracial (see here also). But see here for a brief report on the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse faced by many of their immigrant mothers.
5. PETA Demonstration in Seoul
For the story behind the jarring image on the right (source), see here.
I’m definitely anti-fur, always bought free-range eggs and chicken before moving to Korea (which lacks them), and was even vegetarian for the odd couple of months or so as a student, but despite all that I’m vehemently anti-PETA, and for so many reasons that I could write several posts just on that subject alone. Keeping on topic though, while I often disagree with much of what I read on the blog Feministing, its critique of PETA’s use of (attractive) naked women to advertise its cause is spot on:
…the thing I hate most about this particular PETA propaganda is that it takes what should be a message of empowerment, Love-Your-Body-style, and turns it into yet another affirmation of the female ideal. As [co-author] Renee puts it, “It seems that they respect the rights of animals far more than they respect women. Consider that they don’t use images of male nudes, nor do they use images of women with varying body sizes.”
As you’ll recall, PETA has defended this advertising strategy with the weak response that “sex sells.” It’s an excuse I expect from Axe and Maxim, but not from a movement that is supposedly about justice.
Granted, the Korean woman on the right isn’t particularly attractive, but then she would have been included to add a token sense of local legitimacy: the modus operandi and the arguments against it remain the same.
As a guy I find the notion that naked women are the only way to get me interested in a cause very patronizing, and besides which I seriously doubt that men’s greater awareness of PETA via admiring notorious advertisements like this (second from the top) really translates into effective support.
If I happened to be Korean too then I also would annoyed at the audacity of foreigners thinking that: flying in from the US; walking around naked for 5 minutes; then flying out to do exactly the same thing in another country the next day would somehow be enough to influence my opinions, although I’m not for a moment saying that foreigners shouldn’t protest in Korea and/or that they can’t be effective, especially in situations where Koreans lack local expertise, aren’t interested (but should be), and/or are too concerned about their own reputations to protest themselves.
6. Adidas Korea Finally Uses an Actual Athlete For Advertisements
Too distracted by them to notice myself, commentator Sonagi was right to point out that the skinny, decidedly nonathletic models used to launch Adidas Korea’s “Me Myself Campaign” in February, supposedly all about rejecting the fashion industry’s impossible standards and promoting healthy and fit body images for women, achieved anything but in reality.
Suitably chagrined, I suggested that some kick-ass female boxers could be used instead, but Adidas ultimately plumped for a yoga instructor who goes by the name of Jessica (left, source). Meanwhile, rival Nike Korea is now has a side-contract with actress Park Shin-Hye (박신혜), but currently world-famous ice skater Kim Yu-na (김윤아) is their frontwoman, replacing BoA who was the year before.
I don’t mean to imply by the above that non-athletes are bad choices in themselves, and indeed BoA in particular is clearly very physically active, but as Korean women overwhelmingly prefer passive methods of losing weight (see here and here), then absolutely any link between losing weight and active exercise is to be strongly encouraged.
To illustrate the transformative effects attributed to merely drinking something, for instance, the music group Girls’ Generation (소녀시대) is currently promoting a skin-cleansing drink despite its members’ typical teenage acne, actress Song Hye-gyo (성혜교) is doing the same for one that makes you look White lightens your skin, and Kim Tae-hee (김태희) is still selling drinks that make your face more of a “V” shape.
Bear in mind that such obsessions exist despite Korean women still being the least obese in the OECD. On the plus-side though, limits are emerging as to how skinny a woman’s legs can be before even Korean netizens think twice about praising them.
7. More Bizarre Standards For Female Celebrities
Like this post explains, most Korean female celebrities start with a cute and innocent image and try a sexier and more mature one later, but actress and singer Sandara Park (박산다라), who had a modest career in the Philippines before becoming popular in Korea, is making news for her photoshoot for the “lads’ mag” on the right while she was there (source).
But while it’s true that Korean fans are often upset with real-life behavior out of character with actresses’ roles in dramas and TV (no, really), considering the number of Korean women that have appeared in Korean equivalents – a standard method for advancing one’s career – then I’m at a loss as to what all the fuss by netizens is about. Especially as it’s quite clear that it was a one-off and that it was done because her image in the Philippines then was simply too cute and innocent!
8. Family Who Raped Mentally-handicapped Relative Given Jail Time
Undoubtedly due to public pressure, the four men who repeatedly raped their mentally-handicapped relative over seven years, but whom were given suspended sentences because there was no-one else to look after her (see #8 here, then here), have been re-sentenced to prison time.
9. Sex Offenders Free to Teach In Korean Schools
One does have to wonder where the motives for stereotyping foreign male teachers as pedophiles comes from when you discover things like this:
Currently, criminal records of those sentenced to less than three years in prison are removed after five years. As such, schools can’t always ascertain the criminal record of would-be teachers.
Which meant that a Korean teacher with seven counts of “sexual assault and other crimes” against teens was able to get a job teaching them: for the details read Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling here, KoreaBeat here, and Brian in Jeollanamdo here. Matt also rounds off with an excellently researched and comprehensive “State of Korean Youth” post here, and don’t forget to also read this one describing how a teacher was only given a six-month sentence for sex with an 11 year-old, and how the maximum sentence is still only three years.
Why Do Young Koreans Live With Their Parents?
( Source: Unknown )
In Saturday’s Korea Times. As always, here’s the original version:
…Everyone knows the strong Korean custom of adult children living with their parents until marriage, yet a report released earlier this year revealed that one-person households now account for a fifth of all households in Seoul
This is lower than national figures for most other developed countries, the Seoul Development Institute report notes, and the number for Korea as a whole is likely to be lower still. But the rise puts Seoul on par with Australia, and the rate is predicted to grow to a quarter of all households by 2030.
How to interpret this? Does it signal that the Korean custom of staying in the family home until marriage is under threat?
That is unlikely. The figure includes single professionals, jobless youth, those separated from their spouses, divorcees, and senior citizens, with growth in every category. It does not imply a sudden glut of young Koreans leaving home.
While Korea has experienced many periods of great labor mobility in its recent history, particularly of young, single, working-class women moving to work in factories in cities in the 1960s and 1970s, there is definitely no tradition of young middle-class Korean university students leaving home to share private accommodation with fellow students, and there are still strong taboos against openly cohabiting with partners.
At the same time, young Westerners are adjusting their expectations for living arrangements, as the combination of rising university fees, stingier government allowances, and prospect of paying back student loans leads them to defer leaving home until graduating and/or getting their first job. This delay is often both parents’ and children’s least preferred option, but it is a trend likely to continue given the bleak job market for graduates worldwide.
This points to important economic reasons for the differences, and indeed there are big financial hurdles to overcome to live independently in Korea. For instance, at the moment Korean students cannot get student loans without their parents acting as guarantors (although the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is working to change this). Nor do the vast majority of universities accept credit cards for payment of fees. In practice though, the combination of extremely high “key money” deposits required by landlords and the low wages afforded by part-time jobs favored by students are keeping even the most rebellious of youths at home until graduating and getting their first job. And then, he or she faces a dearth of rentals of appropriate size.
But familiarity breeds acceptance, and while cultural factors are still important, in practice they are often overstated, as for all the purported differences in how Koreans and Westerners view and value family life, many would behave in a similar fashion in similar circumstances.
For instance, with a child’s school being such an important consideration for entrance into a preferred university, and seniority-based promotion systems locking an employee into a specific company, then if a man is transferred to a different city it is very logical for his wife and children to remain in the family home rather than the children leaving the good school and/or him starting at a much lower wage and position in another company.
Also, as legions of unhappy mothers driving home every Sunday night can attest, Koreans generally don’t like to give their children to relatives to look after during the week, but with childcare facilities being so inadequate, working parents usually have little choice.
( Source above right: Korea Times. Source left: unknown)
Certainly there are some arrangements that Westerners would almost unanimously reject, such as sending one’s family overseas for years for the sake of the children’s education, but Koreans’ living arrangements do not mean that they are as cold, calculating, or dogmatic as they may at first appear. For instance, while they are not openly discussed, ubiquitous love hotels point to unmarried Koreans having romantic relationships much like Westerners, and as the spate of recent celebrity pregnancies can attest, engaged couples are usually given a great deal of freedom.
Moreover, Korean’s living arrangements may well become more liberal in the future.
A long-running debate within sociology rages over whether capitalism forces very different societies to “converge” and become more similar to each other over time or not, and as one of the only non-Western developed societies, Korea is an important element in that debate.
And as reported by the Economist in March, a decade ago Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick observed that countries with high rates of home ownership have higher rates of unemployment: with few rental options, he argued, young people living with their parents find it harder to move out and get work, or are stuck in local jobs for which they are ill-suited, and earning less than they could.
Perhaps given the dire state of today’s economy, such imperatives will force such a change in Korea? (End)
( Source: Seoul-Lo )
With apologies to long-term readers, for naturally my articles for the KT will tend to be about subjects that I’ve already covered and know well.
As they’re for a newspaper rather than a blog though, then I’m being forced to make the subjects much more newsworthy, contemporary, and concise than in their original rambling manifestations here, which (presumably) can’t help but have positive effects on my writing style in the blog as a whole. At the very least then, my planned next blog post will be much shorter than it would have been had I posted it just a few months ago(!), but never fear, for I am still a geek, and so it will still be an in-depth one on an original subject (update: sorry, it’ll be next week, but I’m not sure what day now).
For anyone new to the blog and wanting to learn more about any of the issues raised in the article though, then please try the following links:
- The Seoul Development Institute’s Report (in Korean), which I analyze in more detail here.
- The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology’s recent moves to allow students to get student loans without their parents as guarantors.
- Why most Korean universities won’t allow students to pay fees with credit cards.
- The effect of the current economic recession on Korean students’ student loan plans and employment prospects after graduation (here and here)
- The sociological debate over whether Japanese (and Korean) society is being forced to become more Western as a consequence of its deeper capitalist development, in two long posts here and here.
- The Economist article on the negative correlation between home ownership and labor mobility.
Enjoy!
Update: The SDI’s report also mentioned that 51% of those people living alone in Seoul lived in the districts along subway line No. 2, a very small area relative to the vast conurbation that is the second most populous city in the world! It’s definitely no coincidence then, that those districts are dense with cafes, restaurants and retail shops, in total offering 21% of all the part-time jobs in Seoul.
Most of those pay 4000 won an hour, that article reports; the minimum wage is 3500.
Update 2: Here’s a graphic representation of the “single belt” around subway line No. 2, from p.15 of the SDI report.
Fashionable Until the Very End…
I’m a big armchair photographer so to speak, and sometimeslike to spend about an hour or so looking for images I may be able to use in later posts. But still, I rarely post any on the blog just for the sake of it, lest I rapidly be tempted to do nothing but!
I’ll definitely make an exception for this one though: for the photographer’s details and more photos in the series, see here and here respectively.
Korea’s “Flower Men”: Where’s the Beef?
( Korean Actor Gong Yoo (공유). Source: unknown )
A commentator on my recent post on the origins of Korea’s kkotminams (꽃미남), or “flower men”:
Is there anything to back up your assertions in this essay? I’m just curious, because I’ve never run into anything that would suggest such a mass reaction to the IMF crisis from the married women of korea. There very could have been, but I’ve never seen anything to suggest it and I’m curious as to how you developed this conclusion.
“in just a few short weeks forever changing standards of dress, discourses of sexuality, and cementing these new ideals of the Korean man.” – you’re kidding right? A few weeks? Unless you’re talking a bloody revolution, or something similiarly radical, I”m not aware of any social movements that can change societies that quickly. I highly doubt a soccer tourney ranks like that.
Your essay overall suggests something pivotal occured in the gender relations in South Korea due to the IMF crisis, but you just make some bald assertions without even giving examples. It’s a little tough to swallow, especially to people who are not in South Korea to see what you are talking about, if indeed there is anything to support your assertions.
I thought that last point was a little harsh, but still, those are some valid criticisms. Hence my lengthy response below, which I decided to make a post of rather than burying it in the comments section to a post that most people were unlikely to reread!
( Source: Unknown )
I do have evidence, but I admit that the charge that I “make some bald assertions without even giving examples” is fair. The lack is partially because I wrote this too much in the style of an opinion piece, and partially because regardless it would have been virtually impossible to provide satisfactory evidence in only 800 words. Like I said in that post, in hindsight this was a very bad choice of subject for a newspaper article.
But that doesn’t mean that what I wrote is somehow all just wild conjecture on my part.
I will be giving a presentation on this subject at a conference in a few months, for which I have to write an accompanying paper first, so if you can wait I will be beginning to present the evidence on the blog in a few weeks. But here’s the gist of what it will include below, and my problems with some of your criticisms.
To start, a discussion of a series of films, novels and plays of the mid-1990s that dealt with married women’s sex lives for the first time. Very controversial when they first appeared, they challenged the widely-accepted notions that women suddenly became asexual upon marriage and that they should simply acquiesce to husband’s affairs and frequent visits to prostitutes, and so many portrayed women (angrily) having affairs of their own as a form of revenge.
Left: Kim Byeol-ah, author of the 1995 novel “The Pornography in my Mind” (내마음의포르노); interview in Korean here (source).
Well before the period of the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) then, women’s frustrations with popular notions of Korean sexuality were already being articulated, and they were very receptive to new ideals of Korean Men. It is in this context that the Asian Financial Crisis occurred.
Next, that very rapidly after the AFC, there were many dramas indirectly criticizing the fact that married women were overwhelmingly targeted for layoffs (to the extent that they worked hard to keep their marital status a secret from their employers), and there was a sudden spate of movies depicting relationships between older Korean women and younger men. Thinking that there might be some connection is what got me started on this line on research.
Yes, correlation does not imply causation, and while logical, to claim that the changes were primarily a reflection of women’s anger does require a leap of faith to a certain extent. I am working on finding more concrete evidence for that, but unfortunately, occurring in (still) a largely pre-internet era, and with me having a family of four to provide for(!), then practically speaking that is proving quite difficult. So I have been concentrating my research on other aspects of the origins of flower men first.
But of course, even if I am fully correct, am I ever going to find bold, unequivocal statements saying “Fuck those previous ideals of strong provider types. I’m going to fantasize about weaker, effeminate ones to get back at them” to prove the link? And yet even subtler expressions of this sentiment are still going to be few and far between, and more open to (biased) interpretation. True, these days internet forums and so on are indeed full of bold expressions of anger at women, again, being the first to be laid off in the current crisis (see #1 here), but beyond these the reality is that Korean women are still under severe restrictions as to how explicitly they can challenge the current state of gender relations in more traditional forms of media, of which I can provide dozens of examples just off the top of my head (see here for one of the best examples). You can imagine how much more restricted they were in 1998.
(Update: In hindsight, of course people don’t really change their tastes so willingly and knowingly like that, do they? Ultimately, it may be quite misguided and pointless of me to seek out explicit confirmations of the shift. Particular events can certainly make people more receptive to new things though, so long as those are available and/or fashionable already….hmmm…)
Which begs the question of what would be “sufficient” evidence for my argument exactly? I’m at a loss as to what more evidence than a spate of indirect critiques in popular culture and increased popularity of other ideals there could be really. But then there is the important counter-argument that flower men ideals were primarily, say, the result of imported manga instead, which I will deal with next.
( Manga Illustrator: Kiyohiko Azuma. Source: unknown )
For the record, although I did do this when I first started researching this subject a year ago, now I will never deny that manga did played a large role – hell, the primary role – in the fact that Korean women’s new ideals of men came to be flower men rather than, say metrosexuals, and indeed I was at pains to allude to that in the article in the last paragraph of the article. For that reason had the AFC not occurred, then I admit that it is entirely possible that some new forms of flower men or similar ideals would have eventually emerged in Korea regardless. But it did, and the timing is crucial, as it renders any claim that the teens that read it then were somehow responsible for the movies and dramas of the late-1990s I describe as naïve and anachronistic at best.
Only just now, in 2009, are there signs of a critical mass of Koreans that are prepared to admit that Koreans have pre- and extramarital sex, and lots of it, and that women’s sexual desires in particular are not just miraculously turned on like a light on their wedding night and just as quickly turned off after the birth of their first child. But still very much today, and sure as hell back in the late-1990s, what public discourses on women’s sexuality that existed were very much confined to married women and that it should and only occur within the confines of marriage. So in short, young unmarried women, very defensive of their virginal reputations, were in no great position to make demands of and/or have their sexual desires reflected in popular culture.
Finally, enter the 2002 World Cup, which no, I’m definitely not kidding about: while people may not have noticed this particular aspect at the time, anyone that was actually here would readily agree that it was an amazing time to be young and in Korea, and was just as revolutionary in terms of expressions of women’s sexuality as I described. In all seriousness, consider what life was like for unmarried women literally just a week prior to the start of the games: they would often be criticized walking down the street for merely wearing short sleeves – remember that 19 out of 20 women would wear t-shirts over their bikinis at the beaches then – and it was quite taboo to discuss sexual feelings and preferred men’s bodies, even to close friends. Meanwhile, soccer was very much seen as a men’s game – who were originally rather taken aback by women’s sudden interest – and members of the national team(!) made less per year than I made then as an English teacher.
And yet four weeks later – yes really, just four weeks – literally millions of women had made soccer their own, often outnumbering men in attendance at games and mass viewings of them on big screens in city streets and then celebrations and rallies and, as it was done in the context of a national event, “allowed” and praised by the media to wear crop tops and so on too, just so long as it was in the context of being “Red Devils,” or supporters for the soccer players, and whose bodies they could now suddenly wax lyrical over (and whom were suddenly making millions in advertising deals). Lest you think that I’m exaggerating about how free women were to do either before though, note that women still came under harsh criticism for doing the same to any foreign players, and that the Korean media basically, well, laughed at Japanese women for doing so. Moreover, although it is not making too much of events to characterize all this as unmarried women taking rapid advantage of an outlet for their frustrations, none of it would have been possible without married women taking part in equal if nor more numbers.
It is certainly true that after the World Cup is when the flower men “wave” really started, spearheaded by attractive soccer player An Jung-hwan who sent Korean women’s hearts aflutter ever time he kissed his wedding ring upon scoring a goal and so on, but as I outline in that earlier post I mention (and which I go into these aspects of the World Cup in much more detail), he’d already been appearing in male cosmetics commercials, for instance, years earlier. So the ground for the wave was paved, so to speak, by married women in the half-decade earlier, and that is why “in just a few short weeks” the World Cup ”forever chang[ed] standards of dress, discourses of sexuality…cementing these new ideals of the Korean man.”
( Source 2nd from above: unknown. Source above: Louis Theran )
To sum up then, if the AFC has not occurred then we probably still would have flower men today: like I say in the article, the tastes of teenage readers of manga in the late-1990s are now having a strong impact on popular culture. But it did, and without five years of angry, frustrated, and disappointed married women expressing their displeasure in the only (indirect) ways that were permissible in Korea’s deeply patriarchal society to precede it, then flower men ideals for Korean men would not be as entrenched as they are now. And in particular, the 2002 World Cup would not have had the revolutionizing effect on expressions of women’s sexuality that it did, and today Korea as a whole would be a much less liberal place than it is.
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