Korean Gender Reader
1. Number of Women Suffering Osteoporotic Fracture Increasing
So short that I may as well give the entire article:
Around 200 out of 100,000 Korean women are suffering from osteoporotic fracture, more than a four-fold increase over the past decade. The estimated annual socio-economic losses from such fractures are around W1.05 trillion (US$1=W1,275).
According to a 2007 survey by the U.S. National Institute of Health, the number of female osteoporotic fracture patients was seven times more than that of breast cancer patients, 2.5 times more than stroke patients, and 1.4 times more than heart attack patients.
Moon Sung-hwan, an orthopedist at Severance Hospital, said, “According to the World Health Organization, one in four women suffers a fracture in her lifetime. The rate increases to over 33 percent among those in their 60s or 70s, and 50 percent among those aged 80 or over.” Hip-joint fractures are particularly dangerous, since approximately 30 percent of patients die within two years.
I accept that a host of factors may be responsible for the dramatic increase, but as I make clear here, here, and here, Korean women go to great lengths to avoid the sun for the sake of light skins (to the extent that they now have among the lowest Vitamin D levels in the world), and as Korean women’s disposable incomes have gone up over the last few decades then so too has the range of whitening creams, lotions, and pills and so forth available to them, one of the most recent of which is that in this recent advertisement with Kim Hye-su (김혜수) for Korean cosmetics company Missha (미샤) above (source). It is not illogical to suppose that with greater spending on such items comes even greater care and attention to avoiding the sun, hence a drop in Vitamin D levels, and in turn a greater risk of osteoporotic fracture.
Naturally, that would be more young women than the middle-aged and older women most at risk, so there is an unresolved issue of timing with the recent increase. Alternative explanations?
2. South Korea Ranks Low In Terms Of Its Mothers’ Quality Of Life
For the details, see here. Again, just like with the UNDP’s 2008 “Human Development Index” and “Gender Empowerment Index” that I discussed here, whereas most countries’ economic indicators are also pretty good guides to the quality of life there, when it comes to Korea anything to do with women’s quality of life trails those economic indicators quite significantly. In this case for instance, its GDP was 15th largest in the world in 2008, but somehow it was only the 50th best place to be a mother (out of 158 countries surveyed).
I haven’t looked at the breakdown of the figures, but I would be very surprised if Korean maternal and infant death rates weren’t indeed the 15th lowest in the world or even lower, but that Korea lost a great deal of marks on its inability and/or unwillingness to reintegrate mothers into the workplace. For stark illustrations of just how bad Korea is in that regard, see here.
3. Jeong Ryeo-won’s Anorexia Problems?
In this interview, Jeong Ryeo-won (정려원) claims that she only lost the weight for a recent movie role, and never went below 40kg, but personally I think that the jury is still out on both. Regardless, in a sense it’s surprising that she’s been getting the attention that she has for it, considering that Biotherm presumably thinks that that caricature of an actual women above would not repel Korean women but be instead what they aspire to look like themselves (source). And if you think that that’s bad, wait till you see how she looked last July, when clothing retailer Giordano thought that pictures of her that scared my two year-old daughter would somehow have women rushing to their stores…
4. “If I Can Grope You, You Pass”
There’s been a great deal more discussion of the case of the student teachers sexually harassed by four teachers at their assigned public school earlier in the month (see #4 here), but probably the best is that at Brian in Jeollanam-do here, who also talks about the pervasiveness of this sort of thing at mandatory drinking parties at Korean workplaces. Here and here are two follow-ups also.
Meanwhile, the medical confinement of sexual predators has begun. According to Korea Beat, it’s a rare positive step, with rehabilitation as the goal.
5. Swearing Increases on Korean Television
A strange inclusion perhaps, but while there are naturally awkward aspects to all societies that its members are aware of but refuse to acknowledge and/or discuss (particularly sexual ones), in this part of world cultural norms of deference to authority, saving face, and not wanting to stand out in the crowd and so on probably mean that pressing social issues tend to get avoided for longer than in most.
So far, so cliched. Sure. But in a general sense, it’s a step in the right direction when popular culture reflects how people actually think, speak, and behave rather than cultural producers’ notions of how they should do so, and can create a feedback loop leading to more of the same
More concretely though, a spate of Korean women swearing on television, which appears to be occurring in the currently playing popular drama Cruel Temptations (아내의유혹) on the right in particular (source), may well challenge the sexist dubbing of foreign films and dramas, reported on by Robert Koehler in 2006:
A women’s group has issued a report on the “sexist” dubbing of foreign films and dramas, reports women’s newspaper Ilda The group took a look at some 27 English-language dramas shown on terrestrial broadcasting in September and October. It found that most of them employed sexist sexist practices when dubbed into Korean. Namely, male characters spoke in banmal, or “low language,” while female characters used jondaenmal, or “high/respectful” language, even though the original English dialogue made no such distinctions.
I don’t watch enough Korean television to know how prevalent this practice still is (can any readers fill me in?), but if it does still occur then it can only look more ridiculous in light of these new developments.
And I say “ridiculous” because a) it is, and b) I’m not so sure that any Korean couples even speak like that anymore, but then if any of my own limited circle of Korean friends used such a sexist division of language with their spouses and partners then we probably wouldn’t be friends in the first place! Can anyone without kids who gets to leave the house more than do I confirm that that is indeed out of date now (or not)?
6. Love and Marriage
( Source: Unknown )
First up, the Korea Times reports that there’s a recent trend for employers to set up events for their single employees to meet:
Here’s what they do ― First, companies offer their single staff to register for a large dating event offsite at a hotel or theme mark. Matchmaking companies then kick in with games and events to help the crowd get to know each other better. At the end of the session, participants pick ― through a secret ballot ― who they want to be with.
Duo says about 50 people are accepted for one session and 30 percent of them go home as a couple. Some companies host the event as much as four times a year.
Considering Koreans are physically at work for some of the longest hours in the world, albeit not actually working for much of them (see here), then these events certainly make sense, although I doubt that they’re so efficient and no-nonsense that 30 percent of participants “go home as a couple”(!). Which makes me wonder whether: the long hours and culture of the salaryman system is primarily responsible for the idea (or rather, the vestiges of it), and if so if it is mirrored in Japan especially; or the fact that most Koreans were raised in single-sex middle and high-schools until recently, and thus much prefer arranged, usually group meetings rather than being so bold as to ask the opposite sex for a date directly; or, most likely, a combination of the two?
Regardless, Korean companies clearly seem unlikely to go down the Western path of banning the practice anytime soon, but on a more grass-roots level Koreans I have spoken to about this personally have invariably been surprised to hear about what occurs – or rather, what doesn’t occur – in Western workplaces, and have taken a surprising amount of time to get their heads around notions such as “Don’t screw the crew.” But naturally my friends and students don’t speak for all Koreans, so I’d be interested in hearing what others have (had) to say.
Before I forget, Michael Hurt has written an excellent guide for (primarily) men on the positives and pitfalls of dating Korean women because of having such different backgrounds, including the effects of that single-sex schooling as mentioned. But don’t get the wrong impression: this is not a “How to screw Korean women” kind of Korean guide, but rather something I could very much relate to after being in a relationship with a Korean woman for the last 9 years, and that I wish had been available much earlier!
( Source: Jay Lee Photographer)
Also, Koreans are continuing to get married at later and later ages, compounded by the recent financial crisis:
The latest statistics compound the frustrations felt by baby boomer parents. Last year, the average marrying age was 31.4 for men and 28.3 for women. More and more Koreans are choosing to marry later in life. In 1981, Korean men got married at an average age of 26.4 and women when they were 23.2. This means in 27 years, the average marrying age has been pushed back five years. Three out of 10 Koreans between the ages of 25 and 34, which are considered prime marrying years, are single.
In addition, the crisis is also having an effect on the kind of ceremonies couples that actually do get married actually have, practicalities and strained finances forcing a rethink in the previous norm of the groom’s family paying for the couple’s apartment, and the bride’s for the contents.
A more equitable, more Feminist arrangement because it’s the cheapest? God moves in mysterious ways!
And finally, here is a story about a matchmaker that is setting up North Korean defectors with eligible South Korean men.
7. Quick Links
- A follow-up on the Joo Ji-hoon drug scandal, which I discussed last week.
- KoreaBeat briefly discusses a TV program about a 23 year-old that leads a double life as a university student and a prostitute, and also about the military opening up to girlfriends, sisters and mothers by encouraging conscripts to blog about their experiences. Considering the huge socialization effect of military conscription on Korean men, then this may ultimately prove much more significant than it probably first appears.
- And last but not least, more information on the cost of studying in Korea at Extra! Korea here, and part and parcel of the primarily financial and not cultural reasons that Koreans adults live with their parents until marriage.
How to Get Ahead in Korea…
While I wouldn’t go so far as to include it in my “Creative Korean Advertising” series, this advertisement certainly did get my attention when it was in the form of the entire back page of today’s Korea Times, and not just because I have a shaved head myself! Click on it for a full-size image, and you’ll soon see what I mean.
Meanwhile, apologies for the lack of posts recently, but my father-in-law literally fell off a cliff last weekend, and had to be taken by helicopter to the closest hospital. He’s okay (ish), but he’ll be in hospital for a long time, and with my wife going back and forth to her hometown to see him, my looking after the children while she does, and all my other work and paid writing commitments, then my blogging plans for this week have lost out to my getting a whole 5 hours of sleep a night I’m afraid(!). But blogging-wise at least, things should be back to normal within a couple of days.
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?
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