Korean Sociological Image #3: From Asian to Caucasian
If you weren’t aware of it previously, then learning about the pressure Korean women are under to have cosmetic surgery for the sake of getting jobs certainly makes you less judgmental about it. Here are two quick excerpts on the subject from this excellent article from The Independent, which I found via this article about the cosmetic surgery component to Korea’s recent drive to become a hub for medical tourism.
First, from the introduction:
The patients crowding the waiting rooms of plastic surgeons in upmarket neighbourhoods such as Apgujeong want jobs with industrial conglomerates such as Samsung or LG. They are rushing to clinics for chieop seonghyeong or “employment cosmetics,” surgical procedures designed to improve a job seeker’s chance of being hired.
Ahn Yun-Seon is a typical candidate. A 21-year-old economics student, she has a job interview scheduled for early May. Last week she spent 1 million won (£538) for surgery on her gums and ears. She hopes to get a job in a bank. “Female bank employees must wear their hair tied back,” she said. “It’s important to have nice looking ears and a good smile.”
And then the conclusion:
Parents in Korea, especially in Seoul, spend a fortune on their children’s education and often go deep into debt to secure them a place at a top university. Knowing the sacrifices their parents have made, many young Koreans are prepared to go to extremes in search of a good job.
“People doctor their CVs and the photos they send to employers,” said Lee Ho-Jeong, who graduated from Hanyang University. “Doctoring their faces is the logical next step, especially when people are scared that they won’t get hired.”
But much more curious than the demand, is its manifestations in Korean women’s choices of cosmetic surgery operations, for they tend to plump for (no pun intended) – double-eyelid surgery, the shaving down of high cheekbones, Romanizing of noses, and so forth – all of which have the effect of making one’s face look much more Caucasian than Mongoloid (East Asian). And place those choices in the context of an East Asian mania for light skin also, then when one sees the image above (source: Scoubi), an advertisement for this cosmetic surgery clinic in Busan, then it’s difficult not to conclude that Korean women have Caucasian ideals of beauty, as I argued in this post in April last year.
Naturally that post aroused quite a *cough* heated debate in the comments section, not least from Korean women themselves, and to be fair I now acknowledge the historical role that, for one, light skins have played as a sign of the non-farming, indoor elite (albeit not just in Asia). And also the fact that I was strongly influenced in my original opinions by seeing such things as an abundance of Caucasian models in Korean advertisements, and that so many Korean cartoon characters tended to look Caucasian also, whereas in reality “Caucasian ideals of beauty” are only one of a host of factors responsible for each (see here – scroll down a little – and here respectively).
But as Michael Hurt wrote in 2005, arguments that modern ideals of appearance are merely extensions of historical associations of light skin and so forth, must confront the:
…big, fat, white elephant in the room that is America and the West. You have to consider how having white skin here in Korea is not simply a matter of lightness anymore, of being a sign that one doesn’t have to work outside in a field. The relative pallor of one’s skin is now inevitably linked to notions of civility and class that are also reflected against the very real presence of white people, who are not surprisingly, positively associated with notions of civility and class.
But which has been notably absent from counter-arguments that I’ve heard so far. So although I’m always open to changing my mind, and think I have a pretty good record on this blog for admitting when I’ve been mistaken and/or changing my mind upon hearing new evidence, until someone actually addresses that point at all then I’ll continue to believe that “Caucasianness” is a very strong, albeit usually subconscious and/or indirect, influence on modern Korean women’s cosmetic surgery choices. But by all means, if you disagree then please try and prove me wrong!
Update: Turns out, this post led to some lively discussion on this K-pop blog, even though the first image wasn’t loading properly at the time!
(For all posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)
Korean Women Are Not Alphabets!
It has a cool graphic, but otherwise I’m a little unhappy with the excessive editing of the my article for Saturday’s Korea Times (to put it mildly), so here is my original, with links in each paragraph to my own or others’ posts where the points mentioned are discussed in greater depth:
Well known for donning corsets on stage since her comeback in May last year, few can deny that there is much to find cute in singer Son Dam-bi (손담비) tightening a miniature one around a bottle of ‘Today’s Tea’ in her latest commercial.
But while modern corsets lack the uncomfortable body-shaping functions of their Victorian counterparts, they remain an enduring symbol of the pressures women can be under to conform to often impossible ideals of appearance. And despite its lightheartedness, this commercial provides an excellent illustration of a distinctly Korean spin on this.
(True, that’s actually Kim Ta-hee (김태희) on the right (source), but as she is such an icon for “V-lines” in particular, then any post on the subject would look rather strange without her!)
Beverage producer Lotte Chilsung invented the term ‘bellyline’ for use in this commercial, and it is this that the corset and supposedly the drink help with slimming. In itself, doing so is not at all worthy of any criticism, nor is the term dissimilar to, say, the English equivalent of ‘waistline,’ which would actually have been a much more appropriate choice here. But with that perfectly good term existing already, then why invent a new one?
The reason is that the term is merely the latest in a spate of naming particularly female body parts after English letters in recent years, a very curious fashion that seems unique to Korea so far. Consider the following best known examples of this:
- M-line (abdominals, for men)
- S-line (breasts and buttocks, viewed from the side)
- U-line (exposed lower back)
- V-line (one for face, and another for the line in-between breasts)
- W-line (breasts)
- X-line (long legs and arms, with a narrow waist)
( Source: Dark Roasted Blend )
And so integral to Korean pop culture are S-lines and V-lines in particular, that within five minutes of turning on a television you are likely to see either female celebrities strutting them on talk-shows, or prominent ‘S’s and ‘V’s displayed in commercials. Indeed, such is the current mania surrounding them that you can even come across examples completely unrelated to the original body parts involved, including in commercials for cell-phones, school uniforms, and even gas boilers!
Although this practice seems frivolous on the surface, says blogger Javabeans “it actually belies much more pernicious trends in society at large,” and something is surely seriously amiss when, rather than the media, you have a majority of female celebrities “vocally espousing their alphabet-lines and therefore actually objectifying themselves as a conglomeration of “perfect” body parts rather than as whole, genuine people.” But, why their alacrity in doing so?
(Left: BoA (권보아) enjoying having a V-line just a little too much? Source)
A clue is that this quote was made in the context of a breast cancer fund-raising party in October last year, the producers of which saw absolutely no irony in naming ‘Love Your W.’ And if nothing is viewed as untoward in doing so for an event supposedly about empowering women by encouraging them to respect more and take better care of their bodies, then you can imagine that there are few inhibitions for promoting the use of ‘lines’ to teenagers and young girls either.
Accordingly, there are even educational videos that promote healthy food such as fermented bean paste (dwenjang/된장) to elementary-school children that mention that eating it will be good for their S-lines and V-lines also. And one probably direct effect of this is the fact that many Korean middle-school girls have ‘face rollers,’ the repeated application of which is supposed to flatten one’s face towards a desired, angular, ‘V’ shape.
To be sure, the Korean media is not unique in placing undue emphasis on women’s appearances rather than their intelligence – the American media obsession with Michelle Obama’s fashion choices being a notorious recent example – nor is it in providing often unobtainable and unnatural role models and body ideals for women and girls. But the contexts in which those are received are important, and whereas videos like the above would rapidly be banned in schools in many other developed countries, and/or educators that criticized children because of their appearance rapidly fired, unfortunately both are par for the course in Korea.
( Han Ye-seul (한예슬) demonstrates another meaning of “V-line.” Source )
To an extent, this lack of awareness and/or concern is understandable when a child’s entire life prospects are almost entirely determined by a single exam: parents have other priorities. But on the other hand, when a majority of netizens did not take pride in astronaut Yi Soyeon for being the first Korean to go into space last year, but instead criticized her for her appearance during the flight, then teenage girls will hardly be encouraged to study harder.
And on a wider scale, as Korea again faces an economic crisis, in order to recover it is worth pondering what lies behind Korea long having one of the lowest rates of working women in the OECD. Surely a good start to using this underutilized human resource, one of the best-educated in the world, would be to encourage both sexes to stop judging women, and women expecting to be judged, entirely on their appearance?
Quick Statistics on Child Sexual Abuse in Korea
( Source: unknown )
The Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs can certainly be misguided in the “protection” it provides to youngsters sometimes (see#2 here), but given Korean television’s propensity for highlighting usually dull, vacuous company-endorsed public “campaigns” in commercial breaks, then the Ministry deserves kudos for its simple but effective message in this one:
For those of you that are interested, here is the full text seen in the book (repeated by the voice over):
허루평균 2.7 명 아동성폭력 피해
On average, everyday 2.7 children suffer from sexual abuse.
성폭력 피해 아동 편균 연령 9.4세
The average age of victims is 9.4
2007년 아동 성폭력 1,081건 발생
In 2007, there were 1,081 cases of sexual abuse against children
아동 성폭력 , 당신의 관심만이 사전에 막을 수 있습니다
Only your concern can prevent this
모든아이가 내아이입니다
All children are my children(?)
보건복지가족부
Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs
And for further reading I highly recommend this semi-introduction to the topic by Gord Sellar, prompted by his witnessing a mother pouring water over her son’s head to punish him for not liking his food. Alternatively, for more statistics and analysis then I recommend most of the posts in the “youth” section of Gusts of Popular Feeling here, and Brian in Jeollanam-do has also written a lot about specific cases.
And last but not least, there is also the English section of the Ministry’s website itself, which is actually not all that bad.
Korean Gender Reader
( Source: id-iom )
Sorry for the delay: although I’d like to provide a much more professional-sounding excuse, the reality is that my toddler’s constant temper tantrums over the last two days have completely ruined my blogging plans for this week!
1. Joo Ji-hoon Drug Scandal
My personal choice for the most interesting story last week. In brief:
In the latest drug bust of entertainers, police booked popular film star Ju Ji-hun, 27, on suspicion of drug use and arrest warrants were sought for actress Yun Seol-hee, 28, and model Ye Hak-young, 26, for alleged smuggling ecstasy tablets and ketamine into the country from Japan. Two other residents were booked on similar suspicions.
“Besides the suspects on the list we have secured, there are likely more, given the amount of drugs smuggled. Further investigations are unavoidable,” an officer of the Seoul Metropolitan Policy Agency said (Korea Times).
Why I found it so interesting, and why it’s notable in a feminist sense, is because of how the huge disparities between Western and Korean celebrity culture may play out here. Very broadly speaking, Westerners usually tolerate – nay, encourage - debauchery on the part of their idols, but Koreans are the polar opposite, usually demanding of celebrities standards of behavior and conduct much stricter than they do of themselves. Throw sexual double-standards and many especially young actresses frequently playing “sweet and innocent” roles into the mix too, then many female celebrities in particular have faced heavy public opprobrium once they have been revealed to be, say, merely human.
Hence my first thought that the female celebrities involved in this scandal might get the most flak for it, but as Joo Ji-hoon (주지훈) is so much better known than them then so far most attention has been on him instead. Naturally, this story is all over the K-pop blogs, but DramaBeans provides the best coverage: see here, here and then here for all the details in chronological order, to which I’d add the surprising news that so far he hasn’t given the tearful apology that is de rigueur for these situations, and instead is – shock! horror! – unrepentant.
(Right: Does the blame ultimately lie with Yoon Eun-hye (윤은혜)? Source)
2. I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Previous restrictions on nudity, sex, and swearing in the media are rapidly being lifted in Korea (see #1 here), but that doesn’t mean that all the individuals and institutions involved are liberalizing things at the same speed, nor, indeed, that they’re even on the same page. As I explain in the bottom of this post:
…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!
And blogger Gord Sellar has written an excellent post on the supreme irony of this:
…The idea that a censor who cannot speak English well enough to understand the nuances of what’s being said is interesting.
But then again, there’s also the nuances of what’s being heard. After all, I can say, “Ha, that censor doesn’t know enough English to know that it means, “I’ve got you on my mind,” or, “You’ve affected me emotionally in such a way that I cannot shake this effect you have on me.” But the censor’s grasp of English is…
Well, there’s the question. The Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs certainly doesn’t seem to know what the phrase means in English — though it’s well-documented, is present in popular culture, and absolutely innocuous in an English speaking context. (Even the stuff about “… deep down in the heart of me, so deep inside, that you’re really a part of me…” is tame enough to have been on mainstream TV back when sexual content was not broadcast in the States.)
See here for the rest.
3. More Female Toilets to be Built in Seoul
By coincidence, I heard on the Guardian Daily podcast last year about recent changes to laws in the UK requiring all new buildings to have female toilets double the size of those provided for men, and as a guy I had no idea of just how impractical and inconvenient and still steeped in a Victorian architectural mentality many are there, ultimately with big impacts on women with children in particular (and in turn, families), although as a father now I have much the same problems myself, and can certainly empathize. See here, here, here for more information on that UK case, but most of the problems mentioned would be universal, and so provide some good context for the following news about the Seoul City Government, which will:
…increase the number of women’s toilets to close to that of their male counterparts. Currently, there are 42,348 male toilets compared to only 34,649 toilets for females. It will build 3,100 more this year and 3,800 next year (Korea Times).
A curious disparity. Regardless, and even if you’re a guy and/or not interested in such matters, at the very least more and bigger female toilets will mean less waiting for your partner, as someone on the podcast I heard mentioned.
Another, somewhat misguided initiative also mentioned in that report is to provide many slightly larger female-only car-parking spaces, the logic presumably being that women are worse drivers and so need more space to maneuver. Admittedly I don’t drive myself, but I’m pretty confident that any car-insurance salesperson can confirm that that is complete bullshit (women actually have less accidents than men), and so this idea reflects the prejudices of the city councilors more than anything else.
Update: See KoreaBeat here for more details.
(Photo source: unknown)
4. Gwangju Female High School Students Stripped as Punishment
For the details, see Brian in Jeollanam-do here. One minor thing that he forgot to mention in that post is that it occurred at an all-girl high school, but which is not to say that that condones the punishment in any way
Also occurring at a high school, it was reported by the Korea Times that four male teachers are to receive punishment for sexually harassing female interns. Unfortunately, given a history of teachers getting off lightly for far worse offenses, such as one being given only a six-month sentence for sex with an 11 year-old (see #9 here), then…let’s just say I have my doubts as to how effective their ultimate “punishment” will be.
5. Han Chae-young Models Men’s Clothes
As allkpop reports, Rogatis (로가디스), a Korean menswear company, has chosen actress Han Chae-young (한채영), as their next model for their latest line of mens clothing (right, source). Not that significant perhaps, but it immediately brought to mind Danish clothing company JBS’s notorious underwear advertisements from last year, which featured virtually naked (naturally) women in men’s underwear, and which ultimately got…er…pulled (see here and here for more on those, but which are probably NSFW).
Now, I’m not going to feign outrage at those, nor at the notion of using women to model men’s clothes in itself, although personally I found the ones with nurses and so forth actually sniffing the underwear (and savoring the smell) to be very unrealistic more of a turn-off than anything else. But I’m curious as to readers’ opinions on the Rogatis advertisements specifically, as although they’re certainly still quite risqué (see more examples here), most of the complaints against those by JSB focused less on the women’s nudity as their explicit subservience in them, which clearly doesn’t apply here.
So, does it work? It it still objectionable in any way? Why, why not?
6. Korea’s Lost Generation
First becoming involved in Korean sociology via the huge differences in living arrangements for 20-somethings between Korea and Western countries, then I’ve long been interested in the various financial barriers that prevented Korean twenty-somethings from leaving home, and without which it’s no exaggeration to say a veritable revolution in Korean sexuality would occur. Indeed, the situation of today, rife with double-standards and open secrets and all, is not at all dissimilar to that of Western countries before huge expansions in university enrollments in the 1960s and 1970s, but until a similar Korean generation of cohabitants that no longer feels a need to hide things emerges from that, then it will continue to be women especially that suffer the most from sexual matters not being out in the open, either physically or by placing feminine virginity and “modesty” on a pedestal.
( Source: unknown )
In my most recent posts on the subject then (here, here, and here), excessive student loan interest rates and rising univeristy fees have emerged as the biggest of those financial burdens, and in many ways what is occurring in Korea today parallels what occurred when I was a student myself in New Zealand in the mid-1990s. I didn’t, however, have this to contend with also:
As a candidate, President Lee Myung-bak promised to slash school fees by 50 percent and create 600,000 jobs annually. He did neither….
….It’s true President Lee had made these pledges before he knew the world would fall to what he has dubbed the “unprecedented” economic crisis. But there are not many governments trying to get out of this crisis by cutting initial salaries of college graduates, and telling them to remain content with internships, as the Lee administration does now.
President Lee called for the new entrants into labor markets, who probably constitute the best-educated generation of all, to “lower their sights and start humbly.” This could pass as advice among individuals but hardly a sermon coming from a responsible official ― much less the head of state ― to the fresh workforce that will shoulder the nation’s future.
By all means much recent criticism about the Korea Times is deserved (see here and here), but the editorial that that is from may prove remarkably prescient: at the very least, telling a whole swath of young people to STFU and be content with working in Family Mart for what should be the most productive and exciting part of their lives will accentuate their disengagement with the political process.
7. Birth, Death and Divorce in Korea
A swathe of statistics on each have been published recently: for links and analysis on the former two especially, see Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling here, and for the latter see Brian in Jelloanamdo here.
Meanwhile, if you’re futher interested in Korean demographics, particularly similarities and differences in family structures between Korea, the US, and Japan, then you’ll probably like this series of mine on the subject also.
8. Korea’s Lack of Rape Kits: A Comparison to the U.S.
As someone who gets plagiarized himself on a regular basis, then normally I’d be very reluctant to cut and paste a post by KoreaBeat in its entirety, but in this case I think I can make a rare exception:
Nicholas Kristof wrote in [the] New York Times about the problem of severely backlogged rape kits in the United States, putting me in mind of how they are often never even collected in Korea.
And the latter, a translation of a lengthy article on the subject, should be required reading for everyone reading this blog!
Korean Sociological Image #2: Son Dambi’s Corset
I admit, the choice of an attractive woman again is probably a mere indulgence on my part. But this commercial symbolizes so much about what’s problematic with women’s body images here that it simply proved too good to pass up!
The product advertised is “Today’s Tea” (오늘의 차) produced by Lotte Chilsung (롯데칠성음료), and the commercial features women (and, in a humorous fashion, some men) seeing how closely they resemble body parts of singer Son Dam-bi (손담비) by standing behind pictures of them. In a sense, it’s to be applauded for making the “Drink this and you’ll have a body like her’s” message more explicit than usual, and in a different context I’d actually quite like that concept of using the pictures itself, although I’m a bit nonplussed by Dam-bi replacing the woman with exactly the same body at 0:08 in this one (is the idea that Dam-bi has a more attractive face than her or something? I beg to differ):
Okay, the symbolism in chronological order. First, with these schoolgirls:
( Source for all screenshots: Paranzui )
No, I’m not going to bemoan these girls for wanting to look like Son Dam-bi – what girl wouldn’t – and they may be well aware that those pictures of her navel are likely to have been photoshopped too (see below), although *sigh* I doubt it. But still, place the picture in the context of an education culture that promotes health food to 8 year-old children because it will help with their “S-lines” and “V-lines,” and even if I didn’t have two daughters myself then it would still make me feel a little uncomfortable.
Did her waist really warrant photoshopping in those pictures in the commercial? (source)
And speaking of “lines”…
Yes, that’s Son Dam-bi’s supposed “Belly-line” (벨리라인) being highlighted (although you might be forgiven for confusing it with an S-line), and even infomercials in the guise of news reports about the commercial do not decry the addition of yet another line in addition to the plethora already used to describe (mostly) women’s bodies but play up the funky new term instead.
Again, context is important: seeing the terms as simple equivalents of their (much fewer) English counterparts – say, “hourglass figure” – belies the extent to which they’ve become integral parts of popular culture here, one the one hand still being body types to be aspired to but on the other being used for numerous things very far removed from normal women’s actual bodies…would you, for instance, sell a phone with a name including a term that usually means “Tits and Ass” to most of your target market?
( Yes, it’s the Wondergirls (원더걸스) again…noticing a trend here? )
Which finally brings us to the corset again:
The use of a corset here is undoubtedly because of Son Dam-bi’s notoriety in wearing them recently (see above), and I’m not against that particular one per se, but given their history as a means of molding women into desired hourglass figures, particularly in the Victorian era, then it proves a somewhat ironic indictment of everything done to encourage much the same to Korean women today, as I’ve explained.
Given all that, then it seems almost churlish to also mention the relative lack of legislation over false advertising in Korea also, which means that there is little to stop advertisers claiming that losing weight is easy, simply and painless provided that consumers choose their company’s pills, crèmes and/or lotions…and, indeed drinks. For more on that, see my analysis of the journal article “Content Analysis of Diet Advertisements: A Cross-National Comparison of Korean and U.S. Women’s Magazines” (Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, October 2006) here, and bearing in mind the context of a culture that generally disdains critical thinking also, which in turn discourages Korean women from challenging advertisers’ claims with the appropriate skepticism, then the result is that Korean women overwhelmingly prefer passive methods of losing weight to exercising. I hate to generalize, but there really will be all too many women who think that eating less and drinking this is all that they have to do.
The “34-쏙-34,” by the way, is a play on women’s “vital statistics” (bust/waist/hip measurements), but being a sound that doesn’t really have an equivalent in English, the “쏙,” or “ssok,” in it is difficult to translate (indeed, I can’t find it in any dictionary). Imagine saying “sssok” as you do a slight hand movement to represent a woman’s (hourglass) waist though, and you get the idea.
Update: See here for an interesting alternate marketing campaign of supposed “waistline-reducing” tea drinks to Japanese salarymen!
(For all posts in the “Korean Sociological Image” series, see here)
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