Korean Gender Reader

Korean Gender Reader
(Source)

On the 27th of September, at 7:45 pm, there is a gay short-film festival taking place at the Seoul Art Cinema in Jongno, with all the films recorded on cell phones. See The Kimchi Queen for further details.

Meanwhile, I’ve rejigged the categories a little to make things easier to find, although of course there is still a lot of overlap: please let me know what you think. Also, with 1/3rd to 1/2 of the stories coming from outside of Korea, and with most not really being about “gender issues” per se (or maybe they are — it’s a very vague term really), I’ve been thinking of renaming these posts for a while now. If anyone has any suggestions for a new name, please let me know!

Update: Please let me know if you have any suggestions for Korean dating and relationship blogs to follow too. Not that Speaking of China isn’t a great site of course, but I would like to include some more Korean links here!

Body Image/Health/Socialization

— Female Restaurant Workers Tell Customers ‘Don’t Call Us Ajumma’ (Korea BANG)

— A Racist Little Outfit: Victoria’s Secret’s “Sexy Little Geisha” Lingerie (Bust)

— Korean Movie: Beautiful/아름답다 (Journey Into the Well)

— Thinking Pink: A History of Products “For Her” (Bitch)

— Fat For an Asian: The pressure to be naturally perfect (Escher Girls)

— Boys Throw Better Than Girls. Good Job? (XX Factor)

— The Omniscient Breasts: The Male Gaze Through Female Eyes (SF Signal)

Censorship

— Sex and Censorship During the Occupation of Japan (The Asia-Pacific Journal)

— More on vice. Eminem, Lady Gaga, and more. (Korea Law Today)

— S. Korea to beef up age-rating system for music videos (10Asia)

China/Taiwan

— Feminism Around the World: Awesome Activists Protest in China (Bust)

— Internal child trafficking in China (International Institute for Asian Studies)

— Surge in demand for British milk from China (The Telegraph)

Crime

— Street harassment in Incheon (I’m No Picasso II)

— Only 1/3 of Child Sex Crime Victims File Charges (The Chosun Ilbo)

— Government to toughen penalty for raping minors (The Korea Times)

— Crackdown alone can’t solve child abuse issue (The Korea Times)

— Amy was Threatened by an Attempted Rapist (ENewsWorld)

— Does the ROK Army Have A Sexual Assault Problem? (ROK Drop)

— Physical and Sexual Absuse in the ROK Military: A conscript’s perspective (Sorry, I was drunk)

— SKorea: Govt moves to expand prosecution of sex offenses (Asian Correspondent)

— How should Korea combat pedophilia? (The Korea Herald)

— Child Rape Survivor Sends Stuffed Toy to Naju Rape Victim (Korea Bang)

— Castration would reduce sex crimes: Saenuri reps (Korea Joongang Daily)

Dating/Relationships/Marriage

— From the Archives: On Finding Courage in Love (Speaking of China)

— Double Happiness: The Volunteer Who Went to China and Found Her True Love (Speaking of China)

Demographics/Multiculturalism

— One-child Policy Encourages Trafficking of NK Women (Mercator Net)

— 10 myths of the UK’s far right (The Guardian)

— Ignorance breeds racism (The Korea Times)

— The Gender Politics of Moving Back Home (The F-word)

— Grown Korean adoptees return to birth country to fill in the missing gap (Alleyways)

Education/Pregnancy/Childbirth/Parenting

— No. of Elementary School Students Hits Record Low (KBS World)

— South Korea will keep evolution in its high school textbooks! (io9)

— Grandmother gives birth to her own grandchild (io9)

— Why do fathers’ testosterone levels drop when sleeping near their children? (io9)

History

— Namsan: Of vanished history and unfulfilled plans (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

LGBT/Sexuality

— Sexually aroused women find everything less disgusting (io9)

— Reading List: En-gendering re-gendered romance of multiple lives: reincarnation in Bungee Jumping of Their Own (The Kimchi Queen)

— 17 Euphemisms for Sex From the 1800s (Mental Floss)

— Getting Tested for HIV/AIDS in Korea (The Kimchi Queen)

— Study Reveals Teens’ Warped Perceptions of Sex (The Chosun Ilbo)

— The problem with Naomi Wolf’s vagina (New Statesman)

— Men Like Heavier Women…Especially When Stressed Out! (Psychology Today)

— First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage: A Night at the Drive-in (Nursing Clio)

— Video: Gay in Korea (ROK On!)

— MBLAQ’s Lee Joon reveals his mom gifted him with birth control for college entrance (Omona They Didn’t)

North Korea

— Jennifer Lind on the DPRK government’s resilience (and women in IR) (Korean Kontext)

— Professor Robert Kelly’s Trip to North Korea (Asian Security Blog; continued in part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5)

Politics/Economics/Workplaces

— For 40-something women, jobs scarce (Korea Joongang Daily)

— Korean women buy large, imported cars to avoid being bullied by male drivers (The Star)

Pop Culture

— Is It Too Soon for T-ara to Come Back? (Seoulbeats)

— Hallyu Tsunami: The Unstoppable (and Terrifying) Rise of K-Pop Fandom (Grantland)

— Roundtable: The Broken Fountain of Youth (Seoulbeats)

— Parade’s End director says sexism is still rife in [UK] drama world (The Guardian)

— Golden Time ponders extension — dude, you have one episode left (Dramabeans; see also “Golden Time confirms three-episode extension“)

— Tough Ladies Report to the Dance Floor (Seoulbeats)

Social Problems

— South Korea’s Blight: Suicide Gets Worse (Korea Real Time)

— Solbi speaks against suicide on World Suicide Prevention Day 2012 (AllKpop)

— Celebrity Suicides: An Unfortunate Trend (Seoulbeats)

— Suicides among Japanese students hit record level in 2011 (The Japan Times)

— Killing Yourself To Make A Living: In Japan Financial Incentives Reward Suicide (Japanese Subculture Research Center)

— 89% of US Army Suicides Are By Soldiers Who Never Saw Combat (ROK Drop)

— Living in a closet, tape a window to the wall (The Hankyoreh)

— Everyday Sexism: It isn’t restricted to adults – even young girls in school uniform share their experiences (The Telegraph)

— Ilyo Sisa denounces the barbarity of white men against Korean women (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

— Chuseok and 차례 and sexist traditions (I’m no Picasso)

— Korea’s new war on vice (Alleyways)

— Seoul adopts rights ordinance (The Korea Times)

(Links don’t necessarily imply endorsements)

Published

10 thoughts on “Korean Gender Reader”

      1. Well that’s up to you of course! (whether to translate, that is, maybe not the ironing). But thousands of retweets from school kids is certainly preferable to another ‘mothers group’ statement about students rights.

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          1. No I know, just joking. But yeah, following random Koreans on twitter I have no connection to sometimes pays off.

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  2. “If anyone has any suggestions for a new name”
    Is it ludicrous to tighten instead the selection of articles to fit the “korean gender” subject?

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    1. I agree. As a new reader, I haven’t really understood the concept of these link posts yet. Some interesting texts, and some that seem really out of topic. I’d mostly appreciate some kind of differing between newspaper articles, blog posts, academic essays, and audio/video (I don’t recognise the titles). Personally, I’m not a big fan of random blogs, and I also seldom have time to read essays while scanning through the web, although I would like to save them for later. Same goes for audio/video.

      Interesting read from today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19570750

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      1. Thanks for your comment (@Dennis), and sorry that you don’t understand the concept of these posts. But I’m not really sure there is a concept as such – it’s just a weekly collection of interesting links related to the themes I usually blog about, just like (off the top my head) The F-Word and Nursing Clio and thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands of other blogs also have. The logic is that I provide all the links here so readers don’t have to spend hours each week looking for them themselves, but have them all in one convenient spot…and for that reason, these posts are much more popular than anything I ever write myself (sigh).

        Practically speaking, I do always point out if something is a video or podcast (but missed writing that about the Korean Kontext link sorry), but I balk at the thought also writing if something is a blog post or newspaper article sorry – not counting the process of collecting and sorting them, putting up all these links is already a several hours-long, frankly extremely tedious process each week, which would seriously take probably over an hour longer if I also had to write what kind of links they were too. (On top of that, there are also many in-between sites like Korea Real Time for instance, which calls itself a blog but is really part of The Wall Street Journal newspaper.)

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    2. Thanks for your comment (@g2), and I hear you about the tightening, but if I stuck faithfully to the “Korean gender” title then I’d just be passing on a very very limited number of articles about…glancing at the contents page of my copy of Amy Wharton’s The Sociology of Gender (2005)…nature vs. nurture; work and family as gendered institutions, gender, childhood, and family life; gendered jobs and gendered workers; and gender differences and inequalities. So really, I think changing the title to something more inclusive would be a better choice!

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  3. Japanese ultra-nationalists have held a jolly little march through a Korean neighbourhood in Tokyo.

    Shukan Kinyobi (Sept 14) reports that on Aug 25, a large demonstration of rightists—who are upset over South Korea’s territorial claims to Takeshima island (referred to as Dokdo in Korean)—marched through the neighborhood. The demonstration, whose organizers had tabbed “The Citizens’ Great March to Subjugate South Korea,” consisted of an estimated 500 demonstrators, many of who waved the militaristic “kyokujitsuki” (rising-sun flag), and who chanted such slogans as “Kankokujin wa kaere” (South Koreans go home) and “Chosenjin wa dete yuke!” (Koreans get out).

    Things got even nastier after the march ended, when the marchers broke off into smaller groups of around 10 and moved from the main drag to the neighborhood’s many small lanes, where they confronted shopkeepers with even more hostile remarks, such as “Chon-ko wa karere” (Go home, you Korean bastard”) or “We’ll kill you.” They also intimidated compatriots they encountered with veiled warnings like “If you’re a Japanese, then don’t come to this area.”

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