Manufacturing Consent?: Socializing Migrant Brides to Korea into Becoming Docile, Obedient ‘Baby-Making Machines’

“Women in South Korea are on Strike Against Being ‘Baby-Making Machines’” headlines a must-read article by Hawon Jung in last week’s New York Times, a role migrant women are expected to perform most of all. Here are two insidious ways in which they are socialized into doing so.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes. Image source: YouTube.

My neighborhood of Gwangalli Beach is one of the most popular and internationally famous tourist spots in Korea. It is also one of Busan’s busiest nightlife areas. It is not, in my general experience, positively teeming with middle-aged, male farmers, the main customers of international marriage brokers. So why do they bother posting their ads here?

I realize the placement has got nothing to do with Gwangalli really—the ads get spammed just about everywhere in Korea. It’s just that whenever I see them a few blocks behind its trendy bars and nightclubs, I can’t help but laugh at the incongruity with their surroundings. Then pause as I remember the frequent abuse of those overseas brides by either the brokers and/or their new spouses and families, and feel guilty. The metaphor for the harmless-sounding, but ultimately racist, sexist, and objectifying “gendered nationalism” and “gendered multiculturalism” that lurks just behind the glitz and glamour of the Korean Wave, almost suggests itself.

That’s not quite why I paused when I saw the ad on the left in October 2021 though. It was because it was the first I’d ever seen that mentioned “Domestic” (국내) and “North Korean (refugees)” (북한) options in addition to the usual “Vietnam(ese)” (베트남) ones. Possibly, I’d stumbled on an ad for a rare international marriage broker which had also arranged marriages between ethnic Koreans before the pandemic (note that over 70 percent of North Korean refugees are women). But it’s much more likely it was a recent development, forced by international travel restrictions.

Then I paused again a few days ago when I saw that new version on the right, for three reasons.

First, because of the “Women” (여성) that had been tacked on to the new, but also quite usual “International” (국제). Not because it was a surprise that international marriage brokers only supplied brides from overseas, but because of what the “Women” being omitted from “Domestic” and “North Korean” implied: that the same brokers were now also in the business of finding North Korean grooms. Which again implied desperation, considering how neglected they’d been up to that point: as of mid-2020, there were 20-30 agencies that specialized in supplying North Korean brides, against none that specialized in supplying their male counterparts.

And I do mean “supply.” Because next, I’d actually already noticed an ad exactly like it back in May 2022. (With a different number; sorry that I don’t know how many brokers are behind these ads.) Only this time, I was seeing it again after just learning of a problematic episode of the documentary program Algorithm (알고e즘) that screened earlier in January, which featured a 34 year-old Korean husband’s (and parents’) relationship with his 21 year-old Vietnamese wife:

As Professor Michael Hurt of the Korea National University of Arts described it, it was “stealthily ideological.” Specifically (quoted with permission):

If this ain’t human trafficking, I don’t know what is. All the cutesy piano music and pizzacato plucking can’t shoehorn this episode into anything looking like a heartwarming narrative. The closer you look and the more questions are asked, the more this looks like outright human trafficking. Of course this “daughter-in-law“ who is 21 married to a man obviously [much older] isn’t adjusting well to life in a poor Korean household. And they keep trying to frame things as normal mom and daughter-in-law friction, but the real answer to every single conflict in the show—especially when they make a quite performative trip to Vietnam, with mom in tow—is the obvious fact that she looks like a human trafficking victim. Because that’s what she is.

Going further, I’d argue that framing is also about putting migrant wives in their place—as docile, obedient ‘baby-making machines’ for the Korean state. Please hear me out. Combating Korea’s world-low birthrate, most acute in rural areas, is precisely why the international marriage agency was encouraged to develop in the first place. Next, recall that Korean women are already well aware that’s how the Korean state regards them themselves; with migrant brides from much poorer countries, there’s even less pussyfooting about their designated role. Indeed, this mentality even pervades government programs designed to help their integration. Consider as evidence the following abstracts to two academic articles on the topic, and their eerie similarity to what was occurring in the documentary (Right: “Women of Childbearing Age Map” briefly released on Korean government website in December 2016, before being withdrawn due to controversy):

This paper focuses on the role of Multicultural Family Support Centers (MFSCs) to explain the gender, race and cultural hierarchies inherent in South Korea’s system of multiculturalism. Since the 1990s the South Korean state has played an active role in facilitating marriage migration and influencing the reproductive and caregiving decisions of female marriage immigrants. This is reflected in immigration and welfare policies that incentivize migrant wives to have children and provide disproportionate power to Korean husbands. Over the past decade the Korean government has invested heavily in MFSCs. These centers cater exclusively to migrant wives with courses focused on the acquisition of the Korean language and culture. The teachers are generally older Korean women while students are migrant wives from developing countries. The version of Korean culture taught to migrant wives emphasizes traditional Confucian family roles and that a wives’ role is to focus on managing the home and supporting her husband and children. I present two case studies of cultural and cooking classes provided by a MFSC where I volunteered. The classes illustrate that multiculturalism in South Korea is focused on assimilation with limited expectation that Korean husbands and in-law families should adapt to migrant wives. Instead, migrant wives are expected to acquire a strong understanding of how to behave and understand their place in a traditional Korean family structure. I provide migrant wives’ perspectives on these classes and explain why they have limited opportunity to influence or respond to the expectations of the Korean state and in-law families.

“Multiculturalism in South Korea: putting migrant wives in their place” by Stella Jang in Social Identities, September 2022 (my emphases).

Next (for a summary article, see the Gender & Society blog):

In this article, I investigate how gendered nationalism is articulated through everyday practices in relation to immigrant integration policy and the intersectional production of inequality in South Korea. By using ethnographic data collected at community centers created to implement national “multicultural” policy, I examine the individual perspectives and experiences of Korean staff and targeted recipients (marriage migrants). To defend their own “native” privileges, the Korean staff stressed the gendered caretaking roles of marriage migrants and their contribution to the nation as justification for state support. The migrants, while critical of the familial responsibilities imposed on them in Korea, underscored their gendered value to the nation (as mothers to “Korean” children) to offset their subjugated position. The diverging perspectives of the two groups are informed by “everyday” nationalism, generated through constantly gendered terms and effects. Bringing together the literature on nationalism and migration through a focus on reproductive labor, I expose how national boundaries are drawn through quotidian practices of gendered nationalism, with significant implications for gender and ethnic hierarchies.

“Gendered Nationalism in Practice: An Intersectional Analysis of Migrant Integration Policy in South Korea” by Sojin Yu in Gender & Society, November 2020 (my emphasis).

Finally, while admittedly only indirectly related to socialization, an interesting third reason I paid attention to the ad was because the Algorithm documentary reminded me of an episode of Marriage Hell (결혼 지옥) on MBC the month before. In that, the show’s producers and hosts were widely criticized for including scenes of domestic abuse as well as the sexual harassment of a minor, and for failing to intervene in either. Their inaction also revealed a gap in legislation regarding the use of minors in the entertainment industry, as whereas child actors are covered by long-standing legislation regarding their mental and physical well-being, those same protections do not extend to non-(child) actors in their brief appearances on reality programs.

Source: MBC.

Frankly, as MBC is notoriously racist and trashy, at first I thought that just like Marriage Hell, Algorithm was also produced by that channel. Actually, it was produced by educational channel EBS, that turns out to not at all be as tied to the government as I first thought: according to Wikipedia, “though nominally a public broadcasting entity, it gets most of its yearly budget from advertisements and sales revenue”—which may explain the tone of that program. Either way, I wonder if a better quality documentary on migrant women’s experiences might have been produced by an actual public/national broadcaster like KBS? One in the which the documentary makers didn’t just sit back and deliberately highlight 21 year-old Jjeonti Huin’s (쩐티후인느) complete isolation, but actively helped her to overcome it?

What do you think?

Why Women Pay More to Join Korean Marriage Agencies
Why is Korea’s Largest Marriage Agency Only Targeting Women?
[Feature] Marriage migrants often at mercy of Korean husbands (The Korea Herald)
A look into S. Korea’s international marriage brokers and “bride buying” (Hankyoreh)
South Korea shocked by abuse of ‘marriage migrants’ (BBC)
Mungyeong City under fire for trying to use Vietnamese women to fight population decline (The Korea Times)
Everyday Gendered Nationalism, The inclusion and exclusion of migrants in South Korea (Gender and Society)
Marriage reality TV turns out to be not so family friendly (Korea JoongAng Daily)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Recent Studies Show it’s Hands-On Fathers That Have More Children, NOT Fictitious Alpha Males. The Implications for Raising Birthrates are Clear.

One recent study demonstrates the more of their fair share of housework and childcare fathers do, the more children they’ll probably have; another, the many entrenched workplace and social welfare practices that prevent Korean men from doing so. Loudly challenging the stereotypes and gender norms that discourage them, however, should be a no-brainer for policymakers.

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes. Photo by Annushka Ahuja from Pexels.

A lot of things have to come together, for a successful dating, sex, or family life.

Sadly, those combinations elude most young South Koreans. Which is not to say you won’t still see plenty of couples out on dates in this warm weather, popping into love hotels, or families out for a stroll. But when you do, as @publiusterence points out in this insightful Twitter thread, notice also their expensive haircuts, clothes, smartphones, handbags, watches, strollers, and cars. Then you realize: some of the very best things about being human, which the vast majority of us deeply, instinctively aspire towards, are simply “becoming a privilege for the middle class and above.”

No wonder everyone else is so angry.

There are a host of familiar, intractable reasons for this increasing bifurcation of Korean life. Too familiar, really. Who amongst you hasn’t already read how the economy in Korea is so polarized for instance, that singles say they simply lack the time and money to go on dates or have sex, let alone ever getting married and owning a home? Or how heavily the importance and costs of education (PDF) weigh on the decision to have children? Which only married people can even ponder really, so daunting remain the stigmatization and legal problems suffered by single mothers, as well as the strong taboos against having children if the parents have no intention to marry?

Is it any surprise that on the day of writing, a poll revealed that over half of 20-somethings don’t plan to have children after marriage?

And so depressingly on.

Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

Yet some of those reasons may also feel familiar, and personally and painfully so, because you’re in a similar position yourself—only you’re not in Korea. Which further begs the questions: to what extent are Korea’s own cultural and gender norms responsible for Korea’s world-low birthrate? Or, are they simply due to late-stage capitalism? How to tease the effects of each apart?

Such inquiries slide easily into a longstanding, ongoing sociological debate known as “convergence vs. divergence,” over whether the demands of capitalism force societies to adapt economically inefficient social, cultural, and gender norms as they develop, thereby making advanced capitalist societies resemble each other more over time, or whether some norms will endure regardless. Which is what makes the following graph, spreading rapidly on Korean Twitter, so interesting:

Source: Figure 16, “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era,” p. 32. Note that “Men” should more accurately say “Fathers.”

From the April 2022 “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era” by Matthias Doepke, Anne Hannusch, Fabian Kindermann, and Mich`ele Tertilt, a manuscript in preparation for the upcoming Handbook of Family Economics, unfortunately Korea is little mentioned specifically in the 129 page (but still fascinating) document. However, one of two potential takeaways is the seeming endurance and overwhelming influence of Korean cultural and gender norms. The dominant narrative projected by English-language commentators on Korean society after all, not least by myself, is that Korea remains a fundamentally sexist society. As BBC journalist Simon Maybin puts it in his August 2018 article, “Why I Never Want Babies,” with an iconic quote on this issue which I’ve often said myself (but am relieved to now have a much more reliable source for!):

A culture of hard work, long hours and dedication to one’s job are often credited for South Korea’s remarkable transformation over the last 50 years, from developing country to one of the world’s biggest economies.

But Yun-hwa says the role women played in this transformation often seems to be overlooked.

“The economic success of Korea also very much depended on the low-wage factory workers, which were mostly female,” she says.

“And also the care service that women had to provide in the family in order for men to go out and just focus on work.”

Now women are increasingly doing jobs previously done by men – in management and the professions. But despite these rapid social and economic changes, attitudes to gender have been slow to shift.

“In this country, women are expected to be the cheerleaders of the men,” says Yun-hwa.

Korean Sociological Image #92: Patriotic Marketing Through Sexual Objectification, Part 1

More than that, she says, there’s a tendency for married women to take the role of care-provider in the families they marry into.

“There’s a lot of instances when even if a woman has a job, when she marries and has children, the child-rearing part is almost completely her responsibility,” she says. “And she’s also asked to take care of her in-laws if they get sick.”

The average South Korean man spends 45 minutes a day on unpaid work like childcare, according to figures from the OECD, while women spend five times that.

“My personality isn’t fit for that sort of supportive role,” says Yun-hwa. “I’m busy with my own life.”

Also, for your interest, and because far more people need to be aware of Kaku Sechiyama’s excellent book, Patriarchy in East Asia: A Comparative Sociology of Gender (2015), here is his summary (p. 164) of Korean surveys from a decade earlier. As a reviewer noted, “it is in Korea (South and North) where motherhood is most pronounced, as is a household division of labor by gender”:

However, @publiusterence’s example also suggests looking beyond the headlines, as well as our preconceived stereotypes. For in addition to demonstrating that even in the progressive, supposed feminist utopias of Scandinavian countries, fathers still only do a third of the housework and childcare as mothers, a second, slightly contradictory potential takeaway is that regardless of the country, having fathers pull their weight more will invariably increase the fertility rate.

Source: Figure 16, “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era,” p. 32. Note that “Men” should more accurately say “Fathers.”

Does that make it also a potential point of convergence between capitalist societies? Admittedly, to posit it as such may seem misguided, as considering childcare and housework to be primarily mothers’ responsibilities is the very definition of a gender norm in itself. But the alternative, writing off all Korean fathers as simply lazy and sexist, is not exactly fair. Nor does it offer much in the way of solutions.

Instead, surely it is more helpful to point out the many structural factors that prevent Korean fathers from doing more work at home (whether they actually want to or not), as well as to point out practical steps that can overcome those.

Addressing the elephant in room first however, that last—let alone this post’s title—is not meant to imply that Korean policymakers aren’t already well aware of those many structural factors. Also, that they defy easy fixing, simply by virtue of not having already been done so. For an excellent summary of them, I recommend the second recent study, “Revisiting the Gender Revolution: Time on Paid Work, Domestic Work, and Total Work in East Asian and Western Societies 1985–2016” by Man-Yee Kan, Muzhi Zhou, Kamila Kolpashnikova, Ekaterina Hertog, Shohei Yoda, and Jiweon Jun in Gender & Society released just a month before that graph. Some highlights (my emphases):

Since the 2010s, the Korean government has introduced a series of family policies such as paid parental leaves, subsidized childcare services, and flexible working to help women and men to balance work and life. Public and social expenditure in Korea increased from five percent in 1990 to ten percent in 2012, but the figures were lower than the OECD average. Yet some scholars have classified the welfare regimes in Korea and Japan as [our “Conservative” type], given the fact that the governments in these countries work closely with businesses and corporations in providing social insurance and pension schemes; the result is a high degree of stratification among occupations and between the employed and the non-employed.

The reason for this was the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, after which Korea underwent a revolutionary shift from having the most job for life, male breadwinner, “salarymen” in the world to having the most part-time and irregular workers in the OECD, as well as having one of the highest rates of self-employment. The important distinction is that those fortunate enough to secure “regular” jobs in large corporations make much more money and have far more fringe benefits than everyone else (hence all that money spent on children’s education; going to the right schools and universities is a must to secure such jobs). Also, as you can imagine, women make up most of the irregular workers.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels.

Continuing:

Our findings suggest that cultural norms interact with institutional contexts to affect the gender convergence in time use, and gender relations might settle at differing levels of egalitarianism. Furthermore, policies relying on family ties and women’s traditional gender responsibility for care provision, as in the case of Japan, Korea, and Southern European countries, will hinder progress in gender equality.

And today I learned:

In Japan and Korea, the gender gaps in paid and unpaid work time are large but the gap in total work time is relatively small; the gender convergence in paid and unpaid work time has been extremely slow and has even stalled.

Source: @BreeNewsome

Finally:

These findings reveal that policies relying on families as a key source of care provision, including those of Southern European countries, Japan, and Korea, prevent women from increasing labor market work and reducing their share of domestic labor. In addition, the persistently long work hours in Japan and Korea have created barriers for men to committing time in domestic work.

And yet, even if you can’t change the long working hours, the universal male military conscription, the general homosociality of Korean life, and so depressingly on overnight, something that can be put in motion is a clear, explicit, widespread government campaign at raising awareness about that graph, following by loud, well-publicized efforts at removing the outdated gender roles and stereotypes from our daily lives that sustain them.

This may sound somewhat naive, and certainly isn’t a magic bullet. Of course, various initiatives of this nature have already been going on for decades too. However, deepening them and enlarging their scope would be still relatively cheap, and uncontroversial. Moreover, given the direct correlation between fathers’ share of housework and childcare to the birthrate, what’s to lose for governments that have already spent billions on trying to raise the latter, to little effect?

Indeed, if as a selection of books recently reviewed in the Atlantic show, “social and political shifts are usually the result of sustained, unseen work,” then there is still far more that needs to be done before those shifts become visible:

Source: Wikitree via Naver.

For instance, when translating foreign language programs and films into Korean subtitles, government-television broadcasters shouldn’t be allowed to depict women usually using honorific speech (존댓말) to men and men usually informal language (반말) to women, an extremely common practice that is done regardless of the status of the characters and despite no such distinctions being made in the original language. (It was even done in The Return of Superman to BBC Dad and his wife here in Busan.) Likewise, private broadcasters who do should also be named and shamed.

In case it’s not immediately clear why, pop culture gatekeepers’ dogged determination in making sure that one sex is always portrayed as higher status than the other, is not exactly a good basis upon which to discuss a more egalitarian division of home responsibilities. A clear commitment by policymakers to do away with this practice then, would surely be helpful. Likewise, and finally, also a commitment to use gender neutral terms concerning childcare and housework standard practice for all government departments’ communications with the public. Because again, what possible harm could it do?

Source: YouTube.

I’ve written about this before, most recently in 2019 about a new term for stroller that removes the notion that it’s a mother that should be pushing it. Sadly however, I’ve yet to encounter that new term personally, as An Hyae-min also laments in their April 24 “Mabu News” column for SBS News. Some excerpts to finish with:

우리나라의 성차별 언어는 얼마나 될까요? 한국어는 독일어와 프랑스어처럼 성별이 박혀있는 언어보다는 상대적으로 성중립적이기 쉬운 언어 구조를 가지고 있습니다. 하지만 그럼에도 불구하고 한국어 곳곳에서 성차별적 언어를 어렵지 않게 발견할 수 있어요. 2018년 여성가족부가 조사한 <일상 속 성차별 언어 표현 현황 연구> 결과를 보면, 성차별 언어 표현을 한 번이라도 접해본 사람의 비율은 응답자의 90%가 넘는 수치를 기록했습니다. 특히 성역할에 관한 차별 표현이 91.1%로 가장 많았어요. 여성을 지칭할 때만 ‘여’ 자를 따로 붙이는 ‘여배우’, ‘여의사’, ‘여경’ 같은 단어들이 그런 예가 되겠죠.

“How sexist is the Korean language? Actually, Korean tends to be relatively gender-neutral compared to gender-studded languages like German and French. Yet despite this, you can easily find many sexist terms in Korean. According to the results of a study conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2018 on the status of sexist language expression in daily life, the proportion of people who have encountered sexist language at least once a day was recorded by more than 90% of the respondents. In particular, the expression of discrimination regarding gender roles was the highest at 91.1%. Examples of such words would be ‘actress’, ‘female doctor’, and ‘female police officer’, where the reference to the person’s sex is used only when referring to women who perform those roles [not the ‘default’ of men who do].” (Source, right: Geoffrey Fairchild; CC BY 2.0)

가족 호칭에서도 남편 쪽의 친척에게는 ‘도련님’, ‘아가씨’로 높여 부르지만 아내 쪽은 ‘처남’, ‘처제’로 부르고 있죠. 남성과 여성을 병렬적으로 배치할 경우에 ‘남녀노소’, ‘아들딸’, ‘남녀공학’ 등 남성이 먼저 위치하지만 비하하는 표현을 사용할 땐 ‘연놈’과 같이 여성을 지칭하는 말이 먼저 오기도 하고요. 심지어 여성이 앞에 와 있는 Ladies and Gentlemen을 ‘신사숙녀 여러분’으로 뒤바꿔 번역하기도 하죠.

“Even in family titles, relatives on the husband’s side are called ‘bachelor’ and ‘agassi/unmarried woman‘, but on the wife’s side they are called ‘brother-in-law’ and ‘sister-in-law’. Also, when men and women are placed in parallel in a neutral term, men are mentioned first, such as in ‘man and woman’, ‘son and daughter’, and ‘co-education’—even the English ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ is reversed in Korean. But when using derogatory combined expressions, words referring to the women come first, such as in ‘Yeonnom.'”

● 유모차 → 유아차
: 여성(母)만 포함되어있는 단어로 평등육아 개념과 맞지 않음. 아이가 중심이 되는 유아차가 성중립 언어라고 할 수 있음.

● 스포츠맨십 → 스포츠정신
: 스포츠를 하는 누구나 가져야 하는 스포츠정신에 남성(man)만 포함되어있는 단어는 성평등에 어긋남.

● 자매결연 → 상호결연
: 상호 간의 관계 형성의 사회적 의미를 ‘자매’라는 여성적 관계로 표현. 여성에 대한 인격적 편향성을 높일 수 있다는 점에서 차별적 표현

● Stroller → Baby Car: A word that contains only women (母) does not fit the concept of equal parenting. A child-centered infant car can be said to be a gender-neutral language.

● Sportsmanship → Sports spirit : A word that contains only men in the spirit of sports that everyone who plays sports should have is against gender equality.

● Sisterhood relationship → Mutual relationship : Expressing the social meaning of mutual relationship formation as a feminine relationship called ‘sister’. Discriminatory expression in that it can increase personal bias toward women

이러한 성차별적 표현을 바꾸기 위한 노력은 곳곳에서 보입니다. 위에 정리해 둔 건 서울시 여성가족재단에서 2018년부터 진행하고 있는 성평등 언어 사전의 일부 내용들이에요. 서울시에선 시민들과 함께 성중립 언어 개선안을 만들어서 공표하고 있죠. 국립국어원에서는 가족 호칭에 대해서 아내 쪽 친척을 남편 쪽 친척의 호칭처럼 ~님으로 부르는 방식을 권고하기도 했어요.

“Efforts to change these sexist expressions are everywhere. Listed above are some of the contents of the Gender Equality Language Dictionary, which the Seoul Gender Equality and Family Foundation has been running since 2018. The Seoul Metropolitan Government is working with citizens to create and announce a gender-neutral language improvement plan. The National Institute of the Korean Language also recommended that relatives on the wife’s side be called with the honorific ‘nim’, just like relatives on the husband’s side.”

가장 보수적인 언어가 통용되는 법령 용어에서도 성차별적 언어 표현을 성중립 언어로 대체하고 있습니다. 법 조문에는 여전히 ‘미망인’과 같이 성차별적 표현이 있거든요. 이를 바꿔보려고 한국법제연구원이 법률을 전수 조사해서 차별 언어를 검토하기도 했습니다. 지난달엔 법무부 디지털 성범죄 전문위원회에서 ‘성적 수치심’이라는 단어를 성 중립적 용어로 변경하라고 권고한 일도 있었고요.

“Even in statutory terminology, which is used in the most conservative languages, sexist language is being replaced by gender-neutral language. There are still sexist expressions such as ‘widow’ in the law. To change this, the Korea Legislative Research Institute conducted a full investigation of the law to examine the language of discrimination. Last month, the Ministry of Justice’s Digital Sex Crimes Committee recommended that the word ‘sexual shame’ be changed to a gender-neutral term.”

Korean Sociological Image #61: Stereotypical Gender Roles in Pororo

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

The Hidden Roots of Korea’s Gender Wars

Universal male conscription and rampant discrimination against working mothers will always grab headlines, but a recent ruling against segregated seating in study rooms is a stark reminder of the pervasive homosociality behind the friction

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo by co ttonbro from Pexels.

After university, Korean men and women have fewer friendships with each other than their counterparts in English-speaking countries do. At least, that’s my own personal experience, and I’d wager good money most of yours too.

Under-30s especially though, will make me want to hold on to my wallet. Koreans that age have known nothing but rapidly declining marriage and birth rates, a staggering rise in the number of single households, and ongoing economic precarity. In their wake, lifestyles and social norms that were centered around marriage and male breadwinner systems are undergoing a paradigm shift.

But change is never easy, nor universally welcomed. In particular, Korea’s ‘gender wars‘ are one troubling symptom of the transistion process. One of their main catalysts, misplaced anger over mandatory military service for men, will continue to buttress homosociality, by disrupting male university student’s relationships with female students who remain, as well as by subtly enabling male, age-based privilege when those men return, and by providing them with old-boy networks they will rely on for the rest of their lives. Not unrelated, long working hours for both sexes and a second shift of domestic and family responsibilities for women reinforce the notion of separate spheres.

17-Year-Old Tzuyu: “A Special Gift for Korean Men [who’ve completed military service].”

Yet these are only the broad swathes of the many roots of the phenomenon. Not so headline-grabbing, but no less impactful for all that, is that most Korean schools are single sex, with only a third of high schools in Seoul being coeducational for instance. Indeed, many schools prevent students from dating or even socializing with the opposite sex too.

A task in which they may have long been aided, it turns out, by a law requiring “study rooms” (독서실) to be segregated by sex, under the eye-rolling rationale that mixing them together is more likely to lead to sex crimes. (And a belief which is still taught in sex-education classes today.) As YTN just reported on Valentine’s Day however, this requirement has now been ruled unconstitutional:

I’ll translate the report in a moment below. But first, study rooms, for those unfamiliar, are like libraries where all the bookshelves have been replaced by rows of separate cubicles. Designed to be equally quiet, and with the sole purpose of studying, I’ve also been told by a friend that they were where teenagers especially “told their parents they were going when they were actually going on dates, since you were expected to be incommunicado while you’re there.” They’re also much cheaper and have been around much longer than “study cafes” (스터디카폐), which range much more widely in price and quality but in which you either have tables and desks to work at and/or can hire a separate room where noise is not a problem, and will likely have a range of snacks, coffees, and soft drinks available to purchase. For obvious reasons, both study rooms and cafes are primarily associated with school and university students, but they’re also commonly used by older adults, especially the half a million Koreans studying for civil service exams at any one time—which just goes to show how ubiquitous and common a part of daily life they are in Korea.

Unfortunately and finally, the report is frustratingly vague. Among the many obvious questions it doesn’t provide an answer to are: if the original law (or 1995 amendment?) covered all private educational intuitions, or if it only applied to study rooms and why; if it had been enforced at all before 2017 or if that was in fact the first and last time; why only 16 regional educational boards (out of how many?) incorporated it into their own ordinances; why the Jeonju Office of Education suddenly decided to enforce it; and so on. If any readers can help fill in any these blanks, I would be very grateful!

“This is a study café, which can easily be found in any neighborhood.”

주변에서 쉽게 볼 수 있는 스터디카페입니다.

남녀 자리를 구분하지 않고, 자유로운 착석이 가능합니다.

공공도서관, 공동주택 열람실도 마찬가지입니다.

하지만 독서실은 다릅니다.

남녀가 한 공간에 섞여서 앉아 있을 경우 행정처분을 받습니다.

This is a study café, which can easily be found in any neighborhood.

You’ll notice there is free seating, with no designated areas for men and women.

The same is true for public libraries and community reading rooms in apartment complexes.

But study rooms are different.

If men and women sit together in them, the owners will be subject to administrative sanctions and penalties.

“You’ll notice there is free seating, with no designated areas for men and women.”

근거는 지난 1995년에 개정된 학원법 시행령입니다.

성별에 따라 좌석을 구분해야 한다고 규정했고, 이 조항 등을 기초로 16개 시·도 교육청은 조례에 남녀 좌석구분을 못 박았습니다.

지난 2017년 12월 이 조례를 근거로 전주교육지원청은 한 독서실 업체에 열흘간 운영정지처분을 내렸습니다.

현장점검결과 열람실 내 성별 좌석 구분 배열이 준수돼 있지 않고, 한 공간에 남녀가 섞여 앉아 있었다는 겁니다.

이에 대해 독서실 측은 해당 조례가 직업수행의 자유를 침해하는 위헌적 규정이므로, 행정처분 역시 무효라고 주장하며 소송을 냈습니다.

This is due to the Education Academy Act, which was amended in 1995. [But the broadness of the Act is not given, nor why it was only being enforced in study rooms—James.]

It stipulates that seats should be divided according to sex. Based on this provision, 16 metropolitan and provincial offices of education have incorporated it into their own ordinances.

On this basis, in December 2017 the Jeonju Office of Education ordered a study room to suspend operation for ten days.

As a result of an on-site inspection, it had found that men and women were sitting together.

In response, the study room filed a lawsuit arguing that the sexual segregation requirement was invalid, as it infringed upon the constitutional right to freedom to practice one’s profession.

“[However], if men and women sit together in [study rooms], the owners will be subject to administrative sanctions and penalties.”

1심과 2심이 엇갈리는 치열한 법리 다툼 끝에 대법원은 독서실 혼석 금지 조례는 위헌이라고 결론지었습니다.

재판부는 헌법에서 보장하는 직업수행의 자유와 독서실 이용자의 행동 자유권을 지자체가 조례를 통해 과도하게 침범했다고 지적했습니다.

이어, 혼석을 금지해 성범죄를 예방한다는 입법 목적도 남녀가 한 공간에 있으면 성범죄 발생 가능성이 커진다는 불합리한 인식에 기초한 것이므로 정당성을 인정하기 어렵다고 설명했습니다.

대법원이 전북도 조례에 대해 위헌 결정을 내린 만큼 지난 2017년 먼저 관련 조례를 삭제한 충청남도를 제외한 나머지 15개 지자체는 조례개정이 불가피할 전망입니다.

YTN 김우준입니다.

After a fierce legal battle that went to a second trial, the Supreme Court agreed that the sexual segregation requirement was unconstitutional.

The Court pointed out that through the ordinance, the local governments excessively violated the freedom of occupation guaranteed by the Constitution and the freedom of action of users of the study room.

The Court further explained that the original purpose of the ordinance, to prevent sex crimes by reducing the opportunities for men and women to mix, was irrational and could not be used as justification to continue it.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling that ruled that sexual segregation was unconstitutional, the remaining 15 metropolitan and provincial offices of education that incorporated the provision will be forced to revise it. One of the original 16 offices, that of Chungcheongnam-do, already removed the relevant ordinance in 2017.

Kim Woo-jun from YTN reporting. (End.)

Update:

An excellent article by Choi Jae-hee from The Korea Herald entitled “From study cafes to ride-sharing, Koreans seem to prefer same-sex environments. Why?” helped fill in some of those blanks. Specifically (but I highly recommend reading it in full):

[The Supreme Court’s] judgement was in favor of a local operator of a private reading room facility who was slapped with a 10-day business suspension from a local educational authority for breaking a gender segregation rule set by the North Jeolla Province’s education office.

The rule in question is the article 3 of the “Ordinance on the Establishment and Operation of Private Educational Institutes,” which stipulates that seats in studying spaces at private educational facilities should be divided by gender. It was introduced in 2009 largely to deter sex crimes and ensure a better study environment, officials said.

Unlike study cafes, which are categorized as a space leasing businesses or a restaurant/rest area business, reading rooms are regarded as private academies and thus are subject to the ordinance.

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Zoom Talk: Migrant Conversions: Money, Religion, and Global Projects of Peruvians in South Korea (2020) by Erica Vogel, 9am Friday 12 March Korean Time

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

So many of you recently responded to hearing about Erica Vogel’s amazing open-access book, which taught me so much about a community that frankly I didn’t know existed, as well as a great deal about Korean immigration and religion in the process, that I couldn’t not tell you about her upcoming talk about her book (registration link):

TALK SUMMARY

Peruvian migrant workers began arriving in South Korea in large numbers in the mid-1990s, eventually becoming one of the largest groups of non-Asians in the country. Migrant Conversions shows how despite facing unstable income and legal exclusion, migrants have come to see Korea as an ideal destination, sometimes even as part of their divine destiny. Faced with a forced end to their residence in Korea, Peruvians have developed strategies to transform themselves from economic migrants into heads of successful transnational families, influential church leaders, and cosmopolitan travelers. Set against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis, Migrant Conversions explores the intersections of three types of conversions—monetary, religious, and cosmopolitan—to argue that migrants use conversions to negotiate the meaning of their lives in a constantly changing transnational context. As Peruvians carve out social spaces, they create complex and uneven connections between Peru and Korea that challenge a global hierarchy of nations and migrants. Exploring how migrants, churches, and nations change through processes of conversion reveals how globalization continues to impact people’s lives and ideas about their futures and pasts long after they have stopped moving or after a particular global moment has come to an end.

SPEAKER BIO

Erica Vogel is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California. She is a cultural anthropologist who conducts fieldwork in South Korea, Peru, and Mexico looking at issues of globalization, migration, religious conversion, and transnational flows between Asia and Latin America. She is the author of Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections Between Peru and South Korea (UC Press 2020). Her current project is funded by a grant from Mellon/ACLS and is called “K-Pop in Mexico: Creating and Consuming Globalization through La Ola Coreana.”

As personal testament to the book’s quality, this is actually the second talk of hers I’ll happily attend, despite them probably being almost identical. Hope to see you there! :)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

TIL About Eugenics in Singapore in the 1980s. Was This a Thing in Korea too?

Remember that hilarious Singaporean government birthrate campaign ad from the 1980s? Which I mentioned in my look at the demographics of Korean dating agencies?

Twenty-plus years after laughing at that as an undergraduate, last night it suddenly wasn’t so funny:

Source: Page 162 of South East Asia in the World-Economy: A Regional Economy, by Chris Dixon (1991).

Somewhat late to the party, I learned there’s actually a wealth of information about Lee Kuan Yew’s eugenicist streak out there. Which just goes to show it’s also been 20+ years since I studied Singapore in any great depth.

But I wonder now too, if Korean policymakers ever had similar motivations?

However unlikely it may sound, there’s a great deal in Korea’s history to suggest that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Since the 1930s, an ethnically-based, “bloodlines” conception of nationalism and citizenship has been prevalent here, despite being hilariously unscientific. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a “patriotic,” semi-forced female sterilization “mania,” and widespread sex-selective abortion didn’t end until the late-1990s. Just a decade ago, the Lee Myung-bak government (2008-2013) openly acknowledged that it was criminalizing abortion in order to increase the birthrate. And today, Korea has one of the world’s lowest rates of out of wedlock-births, and continues to discriminate against single mothers,

I don’t have the answers, and I’m not saying a concern with Korean brides’ education was necessarily a thing. But it’s going to be interesting finding out ;)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Korean Textbooks for Foreign Brides Teach How to Survive the Patriarchy

It’s difficult to feel much outrage over the inclusion of genuine couple-talk like “I’m having my period” and “Do you want to make love tomorrow?” in Korean textbooks for foreign brides. But “Korean men like women who speak in cutesy aegyo“? “Your spouse’s greater financial power and living standards must be respected”??

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Photo by Yeo Khee on Unsplash.

My translation of the following article, as I’ve yet to see any mention of the news in the English-language media. Unfortunately, Korean libel and defamation laws being so draconian, no source actually provides the titles of the offending books, nor the names of their publishers; this makes it impossible to determine what different language editions were published, or which say what exactly. What some of them do appear to say however, is very telling:

“이주여성용 한국어 교재는 가부장제 가이드북?”

“Migrant woman’s teaching materials for learning Korean are patriarchy guidebooks?”

Yonhap, August 26 2019, by Intern Reporter Kim Min-ho (nowhere@yna.co.kr; Kakaotalk: okjebo)

“한국에 온 지 얼마 되지 않아 친정집을 도와달라 하거나 직업을 갖는다고 하면 안 된다”, “한국에서 결혼하면 바로 자녀를 가져야 한다”(한국어-베트남어 교재), “한국에서 결혼한 여성이 술이나 담배를 하면 절대로 안 된다”(한국어-몽골어 교재)

“You should not ask for help for your parents or get a job as soon as you arrive in Korea,” “If you get married in Korea, you should have children immediately” (Korean-Vietnamese textbook), “Women who get married in Korea should absolutely not drink or smoke” (Korean-Mongolian textbook).

베트남어, 필리핀어, 몽골어 등 사용자에게 기초 한국어를 소개한 회화책에 ‘한국 생활에서 신부가 유의할 점’이라는 제목으로 달린 부록의 내용이다. ‘국제결혼을 한 이주여성과 한국인을 위해 집필됐다’고 소개된 이들 책이 왜곡된 사실과 차별적 시선을 담고 있다는 비판이 나온다.

These suggestions are to be found in a suplementary chapter entitled “Tips about Korean Life for Brides” found in various different language versions of a conversation book that introduces basic Korean to Vietnamese, Filipino, and Mongolian readers. These books, aimed at migrant women and overseas brides of Korean men, have been criticized for containing distorted facts and sexually discriminatory views.

이들 한국어 교재는 한국 남성이 좋아하는 여성상을 ‘부모와 자녀를 잘 부양하는 여성’, ‘애교 있게 말하는 여성’ 등으로 표현하기도 했다.

These Korean textbooks extol the virtues of “women who take good care of their parents [in-law]” and “women who speak in cutesy aegyo,” claiming that those traits are what Korean men prefer. (Right: 필리핀어-한국어 회화책 일부, 촬영 김민호; Part of Filipino-Korean conversation book, shot by Kim Min-ho.)

한국 유학 3년 차인 베트남인 A(23)씨는 베트남어-한국어 회화책 속 내용에 대해 “이주여성은 인형이 아닌데 자신의 행복을 비롯해 많은 걸 포기해야 하는지 모르겠다”며 “이 책대로라면 한국에 오면 인간답게 살지 못할 텐데 책을 읽고 한국에 오고 싶을 외국 여성은 없을 것 같다”고 말했다.

A Vietnamese woman “A” (23), who has been studying in Korea for three years, said, “A migrant woman is not a doll. I’m not sure [living or getting married in Korea] should mean I have to give up a lot of things, including my happiness.” She added, “According to this book, I shouldn’t live like a human being if I come to Korea. I don’t think there will be any foreign women at all who would want to come here after reading such a book.”

부록에 담긴 한국 생활 안내뿐 아니라 본문에 실린 한국어 예시문도 비판 대상이다.

“오늘은 생리 날이에요”, “내일 사랑을 나누면 어떠세요?”(한국어-벵골어 회화책)

인도 일부 지역과 방글라데시에서 사용하는 언어인 벵골어-한국어 회화책에는 남녀의 성적 관계에 대한 직접적인 표현이 등장한다.

In addition to “Tips about Korean Life for Brides” in the supplementary chapter, some Korean sample sentences in the body of the book have been criticized. [In particular], in the book for speakers of Bengali, a language which is widely spoken in Bangladesh and parts of India, there are very blunt and direct expressions about sexual relationships between men and women, such as “I’m having my period today” and “Do you want to make love tomorrow?”.

‘yu_hy****’라는 아이디를 쓰는 트위터 이용자는 “한국 남성은 자존심이 강한 편이다”, “배우자의 현재 경제력과 생활 수준을 존중해야 한다” 등의 표현이 담긴 벵골어 회화책 사진을 올리며 “‘한국 가부장제에서 살아남기’라는 부제가 붙어야 할 것 같다”고 비판했다.

The Twitter user ‘yu_hy ****’ posted a picture of the offending page of the book, which also included such sample sentences as “Korean men tend to have a lot of self-esteem and pride” and “Your spouse’s current financial power and living standards must be respected” [James—I feel that a “greater” is strongly implied at the beginning of that sentence]; they felt a subtitle to the book title “Surviving the Korean patriarchy” should be attached to it. (Left: 벵골어-한국어 회화책 일부[트위터 캡처; Part of Bengali-Korean conversation book, from Twitter capture.)

남녀 성관계에 대한 직접적이고 세부적인 표현은 결혼 이주여성이 주로 보는 동남아권 언어를 다룬 교재에는 종종 등장하는 반면 서구권 언어-한국어 교재에서는 발견하기 쉽지 않다는 점이 대조적이다.

프랑스어나 일본어 사용자를 대상으로 한 한국어 회화책을 보면 사랑과 연애에 관한 표현을 싣더라도 ‘좋아해요’, ‘당신을 사랑해요’ 등으로만 표현됐다.

[Moreover], while such direct sex-related expressions are common in language books for South and Southeast Asian readers [from poor countries], who would primarily be foreign brides, they are not easily found in Korean textbooks [intended for speakers from rich countries.] If you look at Korean conversation books for French or Japanese speakers, the only expressions covering relationships that can be found in those are things like “I like you” or “I love you.”

필리핀 결혼이주여성의 한국 정착 생활을 지원하는 비영리법인 ‘아이다 마을’의 현제인(49) 대표는 “이주여성을 한명의 인간으로 보지 않는 시선이 한국어 교재에도 반영된 것”이라며 개선을 촉구했다.

이들 교재를 펴낸 출판사 관계자는 “수정이 필요한 내용이 담긴 것을 인지하고 있으며 수정을 한 것도 있고 앞으로 할 부분도 있다”면서 “팔려나간 책을 회수하는 것은 어렵겠지만 조금씩 고쳐나가고 있다”고 해명했다.

Hyeon Jae-in (49), president of Aida Village, a non-profit organization that supports Filipino married immigrant women in South Korea, called for improvements in the Korean textbooks.

The publisher responded to the criticisms that, “We are aware of the content that needs to be corrected, and we have made some corrections and minor changes and are in the process of reviewing other parts”, but “It is difficult to recover sold books.”

이 출판사가 차별적 내용을 담았다고 자체 판단해 내용 수정을 한 인도네시아어-한국어 회화책은 성적 관계 묘사를 싣지 않고 전화 사용법, 약국 이용법 등 실생활에 필요한 대화를 중심으로 구성했다. 또 ‘한국 생활 중 신부가 유의할 점’이란 제목의 부록도 삭제했다.

The publisher further noted that it had already removed offending content on its own initiative from the Indonesian-Korean conversation book, and that included Korean necessary for daily life such as phone usage and visits to the pharmacy, without that covering sexual relationships. The “Tips about Korean Life for Brides” in the appendix was also removed. (End)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

한국인이세요? 한국인이랑 데이트 해봤어요? 이 연구가를 도와주세요!

Source: Pakutaso

Grand Narrative 독자분들께,

안녕하세요! 제 이름은 Edward Glayzer입니다. 저는 미시간주립대학교 인류학과의 박사과정생이고, Grand Narrative의 오래된 독자이기도 합니다. James Turnbull씨는 제가 서울에 와서 한국의 성불평등에 대한 학위논문 연구를 시작할 때부터 많은 도움을 주셨고, 또한 이렇게 연구대상자 모집을 공고할 수 있게 해주셨기에 감사하다는 말씀 전하고 싶습니다.

제 연구는 한국 사회의 성불평등에 관한 광범위한 주제들을 더 잘 이해하기 위한 것이며, 이를 위해 한국인들의 데이트와 결혼 의식에서 일어나는 물질적 교환을 살펴봅니다. 제 연구는 또한 남성과 여성의 소득 불평등이 어떻게 상품 소비를 통한 친밀함의 표현에 영향을 미치는지를 다룹니다. 이 연구의 유일한 참여조건은 “다른 한국인과 데이트를 해본 대한민국 국적의 성인”입니다.

독자 여러분의 의향이나 내주실 수 있는 시간에 따라 두 가지 참여방법이 있습니다. 이 중 하나 혹은 둘 다 자원해주신다면 매우 감사할 것입니다.

하나는 보통 10-15분이 걸리는 간단한 온라인 설문을 해주시는 것입니다. 서베이의 링크는 다음과 같습니다: https://msu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_57kvB7gFyJihklD

다른 하나는 1:1 대면 인터뷰이며, 보통 한 시간에서 한 시간 반 정도 걸립니다. 저는 현재 약혼녀와 서울 강남구에서 거주 중이지만, 독자 분을 만나기 위해서 기꺼이 다른 곳도 방문할 의사가 있습니다! 시간 내주시기 어렵다면 스카이프 인터뷰 역시 가능합니다.

혹시 제 연구에 대해 질문이 있으시거나 인터뷰 일정을 잡고 싶으시다면, eglayzer@gmail.com로 메일 주시기 바랍니다. 카카오톡도 가능하며, 아이디는 eglayzer입니다.

♥

Hello Grand Narrative Readers,

My name is Edward Glayzer. I am Doctoral Candidate from the department of Anthropology at Michigan State University and a longtime reader of The Grand Narrative. Since moving to Seoul to begin my dissertation research on Korean gender inequality, James Turnbull has been extremely helpful and kind enough to post this call for research subjects.

My research looks at gift-giving practices that take place during dating and marriage rituals among native South Koreans as a way of better understanding larger issues on gender inequality in South Korean society. My research will also address how the unequal access to income between men and women affects the expression of intimacy through the consumption of commodities. The only requirement for participation in this study is to be an adult of Korean nationality and have spent time dating other Koreans. (To clarify, any sexuality is welcome—James)

There are two possible levels of involvement that you may have depending on your availability and inclination. Volunteering for either one, or both, is extremely helpful to me and I would be in your debt.

The first is to fill out a brief online survey that usually takes between 10 and 15 minutes to complete. This survey can be accessed here: https://msu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_57kvB7gFyJihklD

The second involves a one-on-one interview that usually takes 1 hour to a 1 ½ hours. I am currently living with my fiancé in Gangnam, Seoul, but am more than willing to travel throughout Korea in order to meet with you! If your time is very limited, a Skype interview would also be possible.

If you have any questions about my research or if you would like to schedule an interview, please email me at eglayzer@gmail.com. You can also find me on Kakao by searching for eglayzer.

Thank you for your help,

Edward Glayzer M.A., Doctoral Candidate, Michigan State University, Department of Anthropology.

“An epic battle between feminism and deep-seated misogyny is under way in South Korea”

(Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 10)

(Source: janwillemsen; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Update: See @lookslikechloe’s blog for a Korean translation of the entire article.

Back in August, I was interviewed by reporter Isabella Steger for her article “An epic battle between feminism and deep-seated misogyny is under way in South Korea”, which came out at Quartz today. It’s a good introduction to current trends and conditions, as well as being a great read. So for this post, let me just add a few links and extra context to those segments attributed to me. Starting with:

In the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis upended the stability of the Korean “salaryman.” Many men who lost their jobs started to compete with women for work. “A lot of the negative stereotypes about women, a lot of very gendered labels, started appearing in the early 2000s,” says James Turnbull, a long-time resident in the southern city of Busan who writes about feminism.

To be more precise, a large cohort of men lost their regular, full-time jobs between 2002-2004, and started having to compete for irregular work with women, who’d already lost their own regular, full-time jobs five years earlier in the wake of the Asian financial crisis (under the rationale that they would be provided for by their husbands or fathers). Then another point of friction came in 2013, when the percentage of women in their 20s that were working began to slightly surpass that of men.

Tellingly, the media portrayed achieving equality with men as a “tornado” of female power.

For the exact statistics, and my analysis of their implications, see part 6 of this series in the links below. As for those negative labels and gendered stereotypes, see Parts 3 and 4, or Part 7 for a summary.

While overall crime and homicide rates in Korea remain very low, more women in Korea are murdered than men, which is unusual in a developed country, says Turnbull. The United Nations singles out Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea as places with some of the lowest homicide rates in the world but where the share of male and female victims is near parity, with intimate partner violence also an acute problem in Japan (pdf, p.54-56).

In addition to the extra information on that provided in Isabella’s article, see this Facebook post by a friend of mine (which he generously made public) for a breakdown and analyses of the statistics involved, which was originally prompted by the blog post “Women Are More Likely To Be Murdered In South Korea Than The U.S.” by Matt Pressberg.

Reporter John Power also provides some things to think about:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/651567370247364608 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/651572168346611712

Finally:

While women have gained some power and independence in Korea, a preference for male children in the 1970s and 1980s has resulted in an excess of men–and the disparity in numbers contributes to tensions. In 1990, thanks to the availability of selective abortion, Korea’s sex ratio at birth was 116.5, meaning 116.5 boys were born per 100 girls, a ratio that since has evened out (paywall). Many of those 1990 male babies are now grown men unable to find girlfriends and wives, says Turnbull. At the same time, more Korean women are choosing not to marry at all.

Again, see Part 6 for more detailed information on those statistics and their implications (also see the tweet below, which graphically shows the number of excess men by age group.) By a huge coincidence, the Korean media would only finally begin reporting on the potential consequences of this imbalance in April this year, just a month before the murder in Gangnam.

과거부터 남아선호사상과 인구억제정책이 맞물려 여아낙태(성감별낙태)가 이어져왔고 그 결과가 지금 한국사회의 심각한 성비 불균형인데 한마디 남성잉여세대가 도래한 것임..열명 중 세명은 평생 결혼못함https://t.co/bwzWgR8U5s
— 한잎새 (@han_leaf) June 16, 2016

Thoughts?

Korean Sociological Image #89: On Getting Knocked up in South Korea

As in, how many Korean women are pregnant when they walk down the aisle? How many get married after giving birth? How many mothers don’t get married at all? And how have public attitudes to all those groups changed over time?

I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to find out. It’s been surprisingly difficult, apropos of a subject many couples would prefer to keep under wraps.

It all started with this Arirang news report, thanks to the interesting way it framed Korea’s low birthrate problem:

An aging population and low birthrate — two problems that Korea and Japan have in common and are trying to solve.

And since having children out of wedlock is considered socially unacceptable in either country, the focus is on encouraging people to get married.

So the countries share similar problems, but do the people of Korea and Japan share similar views on marriage?

A report by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs says NO…

(Arirang, December 4, 2014; my emphasis)

My first thought was that a focus on marriage made a lot of sense. From that chart alone, you can guess that there is considerable prejudice against single mothers and their children in South Korea, to the extent that Korea was (and is) notorious for overseas adoption. In 2008, Seoul National University Professor Eun Ki-Soo saw a direct relationship between such attitudes and Korea’s low birthrate problem:

According to the International Social Survey Program (2002) and Korean General Social Survey (2006), Korea “had one of the highest number of respondents who believed ‘people who want children ought to get married.’ The only countries that scored higher than Korea were the Philippines and the United States, but the differences in the scores were not statistically significant….In the face of such strong social norms regarding marriage and reproduction, young people who are unable to marry also may not feel like they can have children. Such a phenomenon is manifested in contemporary Korean society in the form of a low fertility rate”

(Eun, pp 154 & 155; see bibliography)

Likewise, two weeks ago the Park Geun-hye Administration pinpointed the cause of Korea’s low birthrate “to be the social tendency to marry late”, and announced that it aimed “to buck that trend by rectifying the high-cost marriage culture in Korea, increasing the supply of rental housing for newlyweds and expanding medical insurance benefits for couples with fertility problems.” (Note that the number of marriages in 2014 was estimated to be a record low, with 50% of 30-somethings seeing marriage as “dispensable”.) Last week, Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs researcher Cho Sung-ho reaffirmed that “it is necessary to support young people so they can experience dating, marriage and childbirth without too many difficulties”, and that “In order to do that, creating quality jobs and support programs for job seekers must be introduced as part of measures to tackle the country’s low fertility rate” (source, below: The Hankyoreh).

Yet in saying young people need support, surely Cho is is just reiterating Korea’s — and other developed economies’ — biggest social problem of the 2010s (and likely 2020s)? And what use is there in making it easier for young Koreans to get married, when married couples aren’t having enough children in the first place?

Simply put, Park Geun-hye’s announcement feels disingenuous, distracting from the difficult reforms of Korea’s patriarchal work-culture needed.

But my second thought was on the Korean women that do get knocked up. Specifically, those that do so before or without ever getting married, the only two groups I’ve ever heard the term used for (quick question: does anyone use it for married women, except in a humorous sense?). First, because that 2.1% rate of out of wedlock births is actually the highest it’s been in decades, albeit by no means because attitudes have softened over time:

Available statistics [Korea Statistical Yearbook #55, 2008] indicate 6,141 illegitimate child births in 1990 and 8,411 in 2007, representing, respectively, 0.66% and 1.69% of the total child births; a percentage rise that seems mainly due to the general fall in child births from 1990 to 2007 (931,602 in 1990, and 497,188 in 2007).

(Payen p. 72, my emphasis; see bibliography)

(For comparison’s sake, there were 403,500 childbirths in the first 11 months of 2014, while a February 4 estimate put the yearly figure at 430,000. Update: a February 26 report put it at 435,300, the second lowest level ever.)

Second, because despite everything I’ve written above, I was surprised that the the rate wasn’t higher still. Why? Partially, because of personal experience, one of my wife’s cousins having a child before getting married, but no-one in her village treating that as unusual or something to be embarrassed about (she later married and had a second child). And mainly, because that lack of a reaction was already explained by the following comment left by @oranckay on my 2008 post, “Why Korean Girls Don’t Say No: Contraception Commercials, Condom Use, and Double Standards in South Korea.” While the post itself has long since been completely rewritten, and the comments deleted (sorry!) because that meant they no longer made sense, you’ll soon see why I decided to save his one:

(Note that it was written in reaction to my surprise and confusion at public outrage at Korean female celebrities revealed to be having premarital sex — how times have changed!(?) — but the lack of any negative reaction to regular announcements of celebrity pregnancies before marriage, one example mentioned in the post being Kwon Sang-woo’s and Sohn Tae-young’s that September {Source, right: Dramabeans}.)

…I think one needs to take into account that not all pre-marital sex is the same. There is a difference between just having sex and having sex with someone you are going to, or intend to, marry, and traditional/Joseon and even 20th Korea saw this as a big difference. Having sex on the premise of, and as consummation of, commitment, was the normal, socially acceptable way to have pre-marital sex. So valued was a woman’s virginity that a decent man could only sleep with her if he was ready to “take responsibility for her,” as the saying would go, and so on, because that’s what sleeping with her was supposed to imply. Fiction and non-fiction narratives (many known to me personally) are full of this kind of thinking. I know couples that decided not to have sex because they weren’t sure they were getting married, that didn’t have sex because he was going to the military and he wanted to be sure he’d come back alive before permanently “making her his,” as that would be too traumatic for her, and of couples that lived together (and obviously were having sex) before being married and it was acceptable because they were going to marry, had family approval, but couldn’t marry because maybe the girl’s elder sister wasn’t married off yet or they were both still in college but both sets of parents wanted to get them married after graduation, or one of those odd reasons. Maybe no money; whatever.

Anyway, the best example I can think of all this is classical Korean prose fiction (since that’s all I ever think about). There is plenty of premarital sex in traditional Korean prose fiction (“novels”), graphic in only a few exceptions I’m afraid, but we are at least told that it is happening. The reason this fiction wasn’t thrown into the flames at Confucian book burning parties (and there were Joseon poets who did indeed call for novels to be burned for their bad influence) was because whenever there is pre-marital sex the parties always end up married. In fact you know they’re going to marry before you get to the end because they slept together. The most readily available example would be “the most classic, all time” story Chunhyang Jeon. The most “대표적” Korean story of all time and it involves “happily ever after” pre-marital sex. So it’s one thing for a celebrity to have a bulging waistline at her wedding and another for a video to surface of her having a romp with one of her producers, for example, or even to shoot a fully nude bed scene in a feature film.

Update: Via KLawGuru, comes news that there used to be a law that was very much in the same vein, and which was only very recently repealed:

In 2009, a crime called “Sexual Intercourse under Pretense of Marriage” was ruled “unconstitutional.” It used to be a crime for a man to have sex with a woman by deliberately deceiving her into believing that he would later marry her. To learn more, click here.

But to reiterate, just how common are those bulging waistlines at weddings? And (how) have people’s attitudes changed over time? After seven years, it was high time to do a proper follow-up on oranckay’s comment. I hit the books.

(Sources: left, 나는 수풀 우거진 산에 갔더니; right, Opeloverz)

Unfortunately, I was unable to find much at all about premarital pregnancy and childbirth specifically. Instead, I spent much of the next two weeks collecting and typing up a lot of fascinating, related information about attitudes towards virginity, premarital sex, sexual experience, cohabitation, and contraceptive use, forced as I was to deconstruct and think about all aspects of the phenomenon (read: desperately search for any related topics whatsoever in indexes). Then I realized that I was going about things entirely the wrong way, and should: a) devote a separate post to those next month; and b) rely on someone who’s already done all the hard work for me instead. Sure enough, just a couple of pages of the right book would literally speak volumes:

…In the mid-1980s, cohabitation was not rare. [Yoon Hyungsook, pp. 18-24] writes that three out of ten marriages concerned cohabitating couples, and that all these couples even had children at the time of their wedding. Although these couples were not officially married, it was “only” legally, not in the eyes of the villagers. The important point to mention is the fact that all these cohabitations were approved by both spouses’ in-laws, with the wife fulfilling her role of daughter-in-law as if she was legally married. When the wedding ceremony comes later, delayed because of financial difficulties, it confirms a relationship, ascertains the position of the woman in her husband’s family, and makes the couple fully adults in the eyes of society.

So, cohabitation did exist, was not rare, and was often a living arrangement used by people of poorer classes for whom marrying meant heavy expenses. Kendall (p. 123) writes that “by the 1970s cohabitation before marriage was common among village children who worked off the land and among rural migrants to the cities. It remains a common practice among urban workers.”

Spencer and Kim Eun-shil also delve on cohabitation in their studies about female migrant factory workers. But, while for women of Spencer’s research, this living arrangement was not the norm, it was most common in Kim’s research; a difference possibly related to the 20 years that have passed between the two studies and changes of attitudes and practices in relation to marriage and cohabitation (1970-1990).

(Payen, pp. 87-88. Kendall and Spencer books mentioned are below; see bibliography for Kim.)

(Source, left: Google Books; right, Amazon)

Of course, I acknowledge that the above is just a indirect confirmation of oranckay’s comment really (although that is still valuable), and I can’t possibly do justice to Payen’s thesis on cohabitation in Korea here, nor on how and why it’s actually become less common since the 1990s. In the comments section below though, Gomushin Girl provides a good summary of one of the most important factors behind that shift:

[One] important aspect here is the socioeconomics of it all . . . earlier research like Kendall’s and Spencer is looking at a Korea that was either still relatively poor or just emerging as a major economy. They’re already reporting a very class-based variance in attitudes towards premarital sex and pregnancy [and cohabitation—James], with higher socioeconomic status associated with lower acceptance. I’m not surprised to see that as Korean wealth increased, people increasingly adopted attitudes associated with wealth.

Also, we shouldn’t be left with an overly sanguine, no nonsense image of attitudes to premarital pregnancy in the past either, as the opening to a Korea Herald article about adoption linked earlier attests:

In 1976, a 17-year-old Korean girl gave birth to her first child. A few months before the delivery, she had been forced to marry the man who raped and impregnated her.

“That was the norm at the time,” Noh Geum-ju told The Korea Herald.

“When you get pregnant as an unmarried woman, you have to marry the father of your baby. Other options were unthinkable.”

(The Korea Herald, 28 January, 2014)

Update: Here’s another example from a celebrity couple, currently involved in a domestic violence case:

Seo Jung-hee [a former model and actress] said her husband [comedian-turned-clergyman Seo Se-won] sexually assaulted her at the age of 19, so she had to marry him, and she had been his virtual prisoner for 32 years. She said she was too afraid of him to seek a divorce and had to endure because of the children.

(The Chosun Ilbo, 13 March 2015)

I also read that, traditionally, if a suitor was spurned by his intended bride, he could consider raping her to secure her family’s consent. Mostly, due to the shame involved, but of course the imperative was all the greater if she became pregnant. I can’t remember the exact reference sorry (I will add it if I do), but I did find the following:

…The “proper” women must remain chaste, and the requirements of being chaste are utterly crazy. As a rule, a traditional Korean woman carried a small silver knife. The knife is for self-defense, but not the kind of self-defense that you are thinking. The knife is there to kill yourself with if you are about to be “disgraced”. Realistically, “disgraced” means “raped”. However, technically “disgraced” meant any man other than your husband touching you.

One story during the Joseon Dynasty speaks of a virtuous woman who, because a boatman held her hand while helping her into the boat, either jumped out of the boat and drowned herself or cut off her own hand, depending on the version. It is unlikely that this story is true, but this was the moral code to which traditional Korean women were supposed to aspire. In a similar horrifying vein, rape-marriages – forced marriage to a man who raped you – happened regularly until late 1970s, since living with the rapist as a proper woman is better than living as a fallen woman.

(Ask a Korean!, December 3, 2008)

But we were talking about attitudes towards and rates of premarital pregnancy in the 2010s. Which, to conclude this post, naturally I would end up learning more about from the following Korea Times article than from my entire 20-year collection of Korean books(!). Some excerpts (my emphasis):

…premarital pregnancy is now humdrum, even among people who are not stars.

In a survey that consultancy Duo Wed conducted between June 1 and June 14, one-third of 374 newlyweds questioned said the bride was pregnant when they married.

Of these couples, 92.1 percent said their babies were unexpected…

…Changing perceptions on premarital pregnancy are also affecting other related industries: wedding dress rentals and tourism businesses.

A wedding dress shop director says she has recently noticed more pregnant brides-to-be.

“They look for dresses depending on the number of months they are pregnant,” says Seo Jung-wook, director of Pertelei, in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul.

“Women who are three to five months pregnant fit well into a bell-line dress, while those further into their pregnancy often look good in an empire-lined dress.”

Other dress shops have their own selections of “D-line dresses” in stock because of increased demand [which no longer have to be custom made and bought].

Sigh. I’d always assumed that D-lines were just a joke sideline (no pun intended) to Korea’s body-labeling and shaming craze. I should have known better.

Continuing:

…The tourism industry is also catching up with the trend. Instead of honeymoons, travel operators promote “babymoon” programs for pregnant newlyweds.

These programs avoid placing any burden or stress on the baby or the mother.

Kim Jin-hak, representative director of Honey Island, a tourism agency specializing in services for newlyweds, says the agency’s “babymoon” program is popular with brides…

(The Korea Times, July 23, 2013. Source, above: WStar News)

(Source: Lotte Tour)

As always, this is just a start. For many follow-up posts, I plan to look at journal articles (which will probably be more fruitful), Korean-language sources, plus blogs about or often covering marriage and pregnancy in Korea, such as the sadly now defunct On Becoming a Good Korean (Feminist) Wife. Plus, of course, any readers’ suggestions (for books also!), which will be much appreciated.

Please pass them on, and/or tell me in the comments about any of your own experiences and observations about premarital pregnancy (and so on) in Korea. Do you personally know any women who were pregnant at their weddings? (Or were you or your partner yourself/herself? By all means, please feel free to comment or email me anonymously!) What were their family’s and friends’ feelings and reactions? Was the couple effectively forced to get married, in a case of “사고 쳐서 결혼” (lit., “marriage by accident,” or a shotgun wedding)? How about those of you with Korean partners? Did your foreignness make a difference? Thanks!

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image Series, see here.)

Bibliography

— Ki-soo, Eun “Family values changing—but still conservative”. In Social Change in Korea, edited by Kim Kyong-dong and The Korea Herald, 146-156. Korea: Jimoondang, 2008.

— Kim, Eun-shil “The Making of the Modern Female Gender: the Politics of Gender in Reproductive Practices in Korea”, (PhD dissertation, University of California, 1993) [Referenced by Payen]

— Payen, Bruno “Cohabitation and Social Pressure in Urban Korea: Examining Korean Cohabitants’ Behavior from a Comparative Perspective with France” (MA thesis, The Academy of Korean Studies, Seongnam, 2009).

Korean Sociological Image #86: Sex and the Single Korean (Household)

As of last year, one in four Korean households had just one person. That was the same as Australia, and just shy of the US.

Yet just four years earlier, only Seoul was remotely close to that figure, with one in five. That wasn’t expected to rise to one in four until 2030, let alone the rest of country.

It’s a remarkable rise (one of the fastest in the world), and companies have been responding with such things as smaller food portions, more home-delivery services, and smaller appliances. And then there’s the start-up Zigbang (pron. jeekbang) founded in early-2012, which takes the hassle, legwork, and pitfalls (ㅋㅋㅋ) out of finding studio apartments through real estate agents by arranging everything online instead. If you’ve taken the subway recently, probably you’ve seen their ad above, featuring comedian Kim Ji-min (source: Platum).

Much more interesting though, are the ads you probably haven’t seen. Covering everything from the hassles of long commutes and living with one’s parents in your 20s and 30s, to gaining independence and sexual liberation, they provide an interesting look at some of the push and pull factors behind this singles trend. Most are amusing, and some are very, very Korean too. Here’s a small selection from Zigbang’s Facebook page:

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

Title: “I’m sick of this bloody nagging! I want the independence of my own place!”

Parents:

“When on Earth are you going to…”
“Because of you, your younger sister can’t get married…[she can’t get married before you do]…”
“Look at Mi-sun next door, she’s already had two children…”

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

“Even if I finish exactly on time, I only ever get to see the 9pm news.”

In reality though, that’s not necessarily because of long commutes:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/517229353529118720

Continuing:

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

“Is she my sister or is she a thief? I have to get my independence before people find out…[how I live]!”

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

“I’m 30! A curfew is too much!”

By coincidence, Kim Ji-min is 30 in Korea, or 29 in “Western age.” Apropos of that, these next two ads have a much more adult slant…

(Source: Zigbang Facebook; alternative version here)

“I have a 100% success rate on blind dates.” Presumably, because she has her own place to take them home to.

(Source: Zikgbang Facebook; alternative version here)

I think the text is badly chosen: literally, it says,”Do you want to eat noodles and go?”, which would mean the object of her affections is already at her place, whereas “Do you want to go eat noodles at my place?” would make much more sense (update: actually, the line is from a movie—see below). But either way, the double-entendre is obvious, and if not then a helpful Korean “R18” symbol makes it clear.

Which is interesting in its own right, and a good counterexample to my recent post on Sookmyung Women’s University students being given a dresscode. Because whereas our natural reaction to such news may be to label Korean society as sexually conservative, or to shoehorn narratives of progression onto to it because of these ads, really there’s abundant evidence of both. Also, even if one does find some definitive, profoundly conservative aspect of Korean sexuality, it can be very modern in others—just like everywhere else.

Even more remarkable though, is that those last two yahan ads made it from the confines of Facebook to Seoul subway stations, all the better to corrupt Korean youth. Here’s two photos of them by reader Thibault Deckers, whom I have to thank for inspiring this post:

Ads don’t necessarily reflect a change in social attitudes of course, nor necessarily spark one, but I think the sheer numbers of single households are surely having effects. One recent article found that 70% of 30-somethings prefer their own company for instance, and I too have noticed that my students will no longer react in horror upon learning that I always go to the cinema alone (I prefer sitting in the front row).

What changes have readers noticed? I’d be especially interested to hear about knock-on changes in attitudes towards cohabitation, given how difficult it was to find a reader to find interviewees for his MA thesis on that just a few years ago (as in so scared of being found out that they would frequently cancel, not that they didn’t exist). Or do you think this is all exaggerated, not least by companies like Zigbang?

Update 1) I forget to mention that despite Zigbang’s focus on 20-30 somethings, most people living alone in Korea remain middle-aged professional men, and elderly women living in poverty. Likely, the latter don’t use Zigbang at all, but it would be interesting to know how much of its business comes from the former, despite being ignored in its marketing.

Update 2) With thanks, a clarification to that confusing line about noodles. It’s from the 2001 movie One Fine Spring Day:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/520760948961734657 https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/520766843053555712

Here’s a video with the scene, and an explanation:

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image Series, see here)

Korean Sociological Image #84: What’s that old, fat, bald, white guy doing here?

(Sources, edited: Interpark, Miscellaneous Maddness)

GLASGOW (n.): The feeling of infinite sadness engendered when walking through a place filled with happy people fifteen years younger than yourself.

The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd (1983)

Ever been tempted to watch S Diary, because of its eye-catching posters? Don’t. It’s decidedly less raunchy than it looks, even by 2004 standards, and it’s strangely serious for a romantic comedy. Instead, watch it for what it is: “a simple exploration of a woman’s past romantic relationships and how they influenced her,” and for the insights — and confidence in future relationships — that can be gained from doing so. (Also, for Kim Sun-a‘s suburb acting.)

As my first Korean play then, and the first night out my wife and I will have had together since we had kids, we could do much worse. But we noticed something strange when we went to check the dates and times: scroll down the page on the ticketing site, and you’ll notice an age and sex breakdown of those customers who’ve already bought tickets online, as seen on the right.

This one is for the Busan play; interestingly, the sex ratio is reversed for the Seoul one (click here if you are reading this after its run has ended). Also, the data may not be entirely accurate: when my wife does buy two tickets, will those be counted as two 35 year-old women in the data (which would make no sense), or will she be asked to—possibly even required to—provide more information about the other attendee?

We’ll let you know, once my sister-in-law tells us when she’s available to babysit(!). (Update: All booked. My wife wasn’t asked for information about the second ticket holder.) Either way, it turns out that providing these statistics may be standard for online booking sites in Korea, as indicated by a similar breakdown for online tickets to the The Fault in Our Stars movie on the CGV website. It gives the same results regardless of the cinema chosen, so I presume that they’re nationwide figures (again interestingly, the male to female ratio is the exact opposite of what you’d expect for a romance movie):

(Source: CGV)

I’d appreciate it if readers can send any more examples, and/or let me know if they’re also available when booking tickets online in other countries. If not, and they turn out to be unique to Korea and/or (I suspect) the East Asian region, what significance do you think that has? Does it speak to any wider feature of Korean society or culture?

Of course, Koreans are not alone in tending to avoid events where they’re likely to be significantly older or younger than the majority of other participants or audience members. The main question is, why do Korean companies make this information available to them? Is it simply testament to the importance of age in Korean relationships? Is it because more people would go if they felt the audience matched their own demographic, than be dissuaded because it didn’t? Or it is just useful extra information given on a whim, which shouldn’t be overanalyzed? Please let me know your thoughts.

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image series, see here.)

Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 6: What is the REAL reason for the backlash?

(Source: Unknown)

Whenever one group suddenly starts competing with another for jobs, there’s going to be a backlash. That’s just human nature.

Especially if one group has any real or perceived advantages in that competition.

In Korea, the targets are young women, who are exempt from doing two years of military service. They are often made scapegoats for young men’s inability to get work, rather than blaming the government which just reaffirmed that it’s only men that must spend so much time out of the workforce, and/or lose opportunities for further education and gaining extra qualifications. Previously, former conscripts were compensated with extra points when applying for jobs with the government or public organizations, but that policy was ruled unconstitutional in 1999, on the grounds that it was discriminatory. Repeated attempts to reintroduce it have failed.

(To clarify, I’d prefer an end to conscription and the creation of professional armed forces instead, despite the difficulties Taiwan is currently having with that.)

Ironically though, the backlash in much of the 2000s was not due to women taking over “men’s jobs”. In fact, it was the other way round, with a significant number of men losing better paid, advancing, more secure, regular work and being forced to compete for the irregular jobs that were—and still are—primarily done by women. You can see this in following slides I used in my last presentation (see here for the source and a more detailed explanation).

First, here are graphs showing the percentage rates and numbers of all workers (both men and women) doing regular and irregular work over time:

To be clear, the above graphs give no indication that it was primarily men that lost those regular jobs, and were forced to take up irregular ones instead. However, unstated is the fact that women with regular work were already targeted for layoffs in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, with the result that they took up irregular work in droves before 2002. So it’s a safe assumption.

What’s more, there’s the next graph, which shows the the percentage rates and numbers of men and women doing irregular work. As women’s rates barely changed, the implication is that the regular jobs men lost weren’t taken over by women:

With rates settling in 2004 though, it’s a bit of a stretch to blame the ongoing backlash in 2014 on the shift (although it certainly echoes in popular culture, with today’s freshmen—of both sexes—espousing the negative stereotypes). Today’s generation of young, job-seeking men are much more used to the difficulties of finding regular work, and certainly have no objective reason to fear or resent working women.

Or do they? See my next slide, a screenshot from this Arirang news video:

What’s more, Yonhap just reported that the gap has continued to widen—in fact, that the crossover occurred as early as 2010. As translated by koreaBANG (my emphases):

The trend in the employment rate of female to male workers in their twenties over the last 4 years has made a historic reversal. Due to so-called ‘female power’, the gap is getting larger.

According to the National Statistics Office’s statements on the 19th, the employment rate of 20-something female workers last year was 57.8%. This is 2.1 percentage points higher than their male counterparts(56.8%)…

…Since 2010, the employment rate of female workers in their twenties has been higher than their male counterparts.

In 2010, the employment rate of female 20-something workers, at 58.3%, surpassed the rate of males by 0.1%. In 2011, the lead increased to 0.4%, and in 2012, as women lead by 1.5%, the gap continues to widen.

The rate of economic participation of female 20-somethings was 62.5% in 2011, then rose to 62.9% in 2012. Conversely, the men went from 64% down to 62.6%, being surpassed by the women for the first time by 0.3%.

The labor market is changing little by little as women obtain higher levels of education and more positions in the workplace.

In every part of society, the female tornado is blowing strong even in specialized careers, and women are making considerable advances.

A gap of 2.1% hardly sounds like a “tornado” of “female power” to me, and much more like natural variation. But I can understand how news of women’s “considerable advances” might rankle, especially in the context of Korea’s lowest twenty-something employment rates since 2000, and the numbers of students deferring graduation nearly doubling in the last two years. It’s not at all difficult to empathize with a male graduate stuck working at (say) a convenience store, frustrated at how some women he went to university have regular jobs because they gained skills and qualifications during the two years he was stuck in the military.

Still, likely that’s not the only reason he’s angry:

(Source: Cinnamon Ginger Tea; reprinted with permission)

Put simply, most of Korea’s extra boys are now men, and many of them can’t find girlfriends and wives. Most likely, precisely those who lack the steady jobs and money to be considered good partners.

Yes, I know what you’re all thinking, so let’s not mince words. I mean they can’t get laid.

That may sound facetious, and/or that I’m laughing at them. I’m not. Because fourteen years ago, frankly I was in a very similar situation myself. After graduating, I too couldn’t find a good job, and had to work three part-time ones just to scrape by (when my Doc Martins got holes in them, I had to put cardboard in them every day until I could afford new ones; yes, really). Needless to say, I didn’t have much time for dating, and wouldn’t have been very successful if I did.

I felt trapped.

Fortunately, I had the privilege of being able to take up a well-paying job (for a 24 year-old) in Korea, and, desperate in more ways than one, I took advantage of that just six months after graduating. So, while I can definitely empathize with how my students must feel today, on the other hand I can only imagine what it must feel like to never have the option to escape that I had, with no prospect of a partner or steady job for your entire twenties or beyond.

Still, I wasn’t spewing hatred about New Zealand women back in 2000, and likewise most of Korea’s angry young men (or indeed, China and India’s) aren’t destined to be misogynists in 2014 either. Most do direct their anger at the government and chaebol that deserve it.

Unfortunately though, all too many seem to firmly believe in such charming stereotypes as ‘kimchi bitches‘ instead. Moreover, China and India’s own “angry young males” are already considered huge sources of instability, crime, and sexual violence in those countries. Why would Korea’s be any different?

Also, the data raises a simple but important question: do the statistics about twenty-something men and women’s economic participation rates take into account the fact that there’s actually far more twenty-something men than women out there? That while a greater proportion of women than men are working now, that more men than women may still be working overall?

If not, then that “tornado” of “female power” may prove to be nothing more than hot air. Which makes you wonder why the media seems so full of it…

(Source: GR × HERMARK, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Either way, of course I’m grossly overgeneralizing in this post, so please feel free to call me out on that, and add any important information I’ve overlooked (I acknowledge I’m no great statistician too, and would appreciate any additional sources of data). But I think these demographic realities do significantly add to the many, often quite legitimate reasons for many young Korean men’s sense of anxiety in post-crisis Korea (which is not to say that things are any rosier for young Korean women), and it’s also fair to say that anxiety seems to be manifesting itself in excessive, distorted, and/or caricatured critiques and stereotypes of women. So at the very least, I hope knowing about all the extra men out there provides some much-needed context to current employment statistics and women-blaming. In hindsight, it’s extraordinary that any discussions of either wouldn’t take them into account.

What have I missed?

Update: Meanwhile, note that Korean women’s overall employment rate remains one of the lowest in the OECD, and that this is one of the main reasons for its equally dismal birthrate. However, as reported by Asian Correspondent yesterday, the Korean government is not about to upset gender norms by making life any easier for working parents. Lest that sound like an exaggeration, recall that the previous Lee Myung-bak Administration also (re)criminalized abortion in order to raise the birthrate, a policy continued by Park Geun-hye (my emphases):

In a nationwide survey conducted by the Federation of Korean Industries in 2010, marriage was the leading cause for South Korean women to quit their jobs – not childrearing. According to the poll, females in general have a 37.8 percent higher chance to give up work after getting married than if they were single – a percentage that shoots up to 58.2 for those in their 20s. The likelihood, however, of married mothers to leave their jobs was only 2.9 percent higher than married women without children. The federation explains these statistics by saying it is due to the foundational social belief that females should be full-time homemakers…

…Despite these numbers, measures to change cultural expectations – that it is not only the woman’s responsibility to care for children – are being opposed. In January, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance rejected one of President Park’s campaign promises: mandatory paid paternity leave, or “Father’s Month.” Ministry officials quoted potential financial problems such as the depletion of employment reserve funding for the opposition against the bill. They added that they will work towards a resolution but are unsure how they will initiate it.

The Revealing the Korean Body Politic Series:

Reader Request: Looking for people to share stories about relationships in Korea

I’ve been asked to pass on the following:

Looking for people to share stories about relationships in Korea

*********Have you fallen in love in South Korea? Battled cultural differences and other pressures to be with someone you never would have met anywhere else? Found the freedom to do things, meet people, or be someone you wouldn’t have dared to at home? Kept things going long-term and long-distance? Decided that dating in Korea is just too daunting and put that side of your life on hold while you’re here? Worn a couple shirt?

If you have a great story you’d like to share about dating, relationships and sex in Korea, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m making a documentary about how living in Korea can affect relationships, and I’d like to interview people with experiences that been delightful and difficult, wonderful and weird, sour and sweet.

It would be great to speak to partnered and single, cis- and trans-gender people, from a variety of backgrounds, and with a range of preferences and interests, including:

Korean people with experiences with other Korean people and people from other countries;
Non-Korean people with experiences with people from Korea and other countries;
People in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships with one or more partners;
People happy or unhappy not to be in a relationship;
People who have made their homes in Korea;
People who are in Korea on a temporary basis.

The film will be inclusive, non-judgemental and sex-positive, allowing the stories to act as an honest look at the unique experience of looking for, holding onto and losing companionship in Korea. To this end, and because I intend it for gallery screenings, the film probably won’t be a traditional talking-heads documentary. Instead, I’ll try to respond creatively to the themes of the stories people tell me, especially when the storytellers wish to remain anonymous. If you’re happy to appear on camera, that’s great, but if you’d like to share your story and would rather not have your face, voice or name be part of the film, I’ll find ways to accommodate those wishes.

I hope to collect stories in December and January, and am happy to travel anywhere in Korea to conduct interviews.

If you’d like to know more, or if you’re interested in taking part, please get in touch at relationshipsinkorea@gmail.com

Ben

Korean Sociological Image #78: Multicultural Families in Korean Textbooks

Over at Korean Circle and Squares, Emanuel Pastreich has scanned some pages of the Korean ethics textbook currently used in Korean elementary schools. He comments that the very existence of such an old-fashioned class is remarkable (as part of the daily program no less), and was especially struck by the efforts to address multicultural issues and the children of “multicultural families.” For example, the page above-right:

…relates a diary entry by Jeonghyeon, an elementary school student whose mother is Vietnamese. Jeonghyeon says she has no memories of her Vietnamese grandmother and grandfather and seems not to actually live in that complex multicultural family. Nevertheless, it is a tremendous improvement to create this space in which multicultural kids can exist within the official textbooks.

Click on the image for more examples. Also remarkable about them is how, just 5 years ago, textbooks stressed how important it was that Korea remain ethnically homogenous instead. As described by Matt of Gusts of Popular Feeling in December 2008:

Korea’s ethics textbooks are to change, however — in part due to Hines Ward’s first visit to Korea after being named MVP in the Superbowl in 2006 — and North Korea, which has taken these ideas to frightening extremes, was not happy:

The words themselves take a knife to the feeling of our people, but even more serious is that this anti-national theory of “multiethnic, multiracial society” has already gone beyond the stage of discussion. Already, they’ve decided that from 2009, content related to “multiracial, multiethnic culture” would be included in elementary, middle and high school textbooks that have until now stressed that Koreans are the “descendents of Dangun,” “of one blood line” and “one race,” and to change the terms “families of international marriage” and “families of foreign laborers” to “multicultural families.” This is an outrage that makes it impossible to repress the rage of the people/race.

More recently, these issues again gained prominence with the election of Ms. Lee (born Jasmine Bacurnay in the Philippines) to South Korea’s National Assembly in April last year, the first naturalized citizen — and the first nonethnic Korean — to do so. As Choe Sang-hun wrote in The New York Times, public opinion is still is still far behind official policy:

And this year, for the first time, South Korea began accepting multiethnic Korean citizens into its armed forces. Before, the military had maintained that a different skin color would make them stand out and hurt unity.

But if government support has improved, Ms. Lee says, popular sentiment seems to have cooled. Korean men who sponsored foreign women as brides, only to find themselves abandoned by women who exploited them to immigrate to and work in South Korea, have organized against the government’s multicultural policy. Meanwhile, low-income Koreans accuse migrant workers of stealing their jobs.

The government itself stands accused of fostering xenophobia by requiring foreigners who come to South Korea to teach English to undergo H.I.V. tests, but not requiring the same of South Koreans in the same jobs. Last year, an Uzbek-born Korean made news when she was denied entry to a public bath whose proprietor cited fear of H.I.V. among foreigners.

The Korean media also has some way to go, Matt noticing (in 2010) the headline “Korean Women’s DNA is Different” for instance:

Well now, I guess that may explain why Roboseyo “personally was told “foreign blood and Korean blood together has problems” [by] one of the nurses at a blood clinic[.]” It all makes sense now – Koreans’ DNA is different. What a simple, obvious explanation.

Actually, while the article tells us that “Questions arise each time Korean female athletes accomplish great things on the world stage,” it (sadly) does not follow up on the promise of the headline, instead dwelling on more mundane cultural and social influences. Mind you, the fact that “Korean women’s DNA is different” was a headline on the front page of a newspaper should go to show that the idea of genes and bloodlines was dominating the writer (or editor)’s thinking, and that they figured others would agree.

Fortunately, my Korean wife and I have met very few Koreans (openly) expressing that idea of pure genes and bloodlines, and fewer still that harassed us for mixing them. Also, as one of those “muliticultural families,” we’ve benefited from our youngest daughter jumping ahead in the waiting list for a place in a state-run kindergarten (albeit something which “ordinary” Korean parents may justifiably resent), and both our daughters receive a great deal of friendly attention when we’re out with them (not so much when they’re just with me — you’d never guess they had a Korean mother). Part of that is likely because half-Korean celebrities were very much in vogue a few years ago, but this popularity may now be waning.

How about any readers in interracial relationships or multicultural families? What positive or negative experiences have you had specifically because of this bloodlines-based view of nationalism, and/or related government policies?

Update: If you’ve come this far, I recommend following-up with The Culture Muncher’s “A Multicultural Korea: Inevitable or Impossible?” also.

Update 2: Thanks to @dacfrazer, who passed on the must-read “There is more to my son than the fact he’s a ‘half’” at The Japan Times.

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image series, see here)

Going Solo in Korea

(Sources, edited: left, right)

Family may be everything in Korea, but by last year more than 1 in 4 Koreans were living alone, beating rates in (supposedly) more individualistic societies like the US and Australia.

While this provides a lot of opportunities for companies, there’s also a dearth of suitable accommodation. And most of those singles are not carefree youth, but either middle-class 30 and 40-something men, or women in their 60s and above living in poverty. With rates set to become 1 in 3 by 2020, this is set to become a huge political, economic, social, and cultural issue in Korea’s near-future.

For a heads-up, see my latest article for Busan Haps, which includes entirely too much information on why I split up with my first Korean girlfriend…

Update: Also see Sorry, I was drunk for a deconstruction — and demolition — of the oft-cited claim that Korean society is more communal than Western societies.

Announcement: Red Maria (레드마리아) Screening Saturday, December 8

I’ve been asked to pass on the following:

★ YOU MUST RSVP via Email: womens.global.solidarity@gmail.com ★

In Korea, Japan and The Philippines, there are many women with diverse jobs and her stories. Among them, this film focuses on women who are called housewives, sex workers, dispatched workers, migrant workers, comfort women, homeless and so on. The camera tracks them as they go about their everyday lives. These women have never met one another, and their lives look quite different from one another. However, their lives are connected across national borders by the one thing they have in common. That’s their bodies and labor. How can such different forms of labor be linked to the women’s bodies in such a similar way? As we search for answers to this question, we are forced to confront another question: ‘the meaning of labor’ as an ideology that is reproduced in society.

* Entrance Fee: by donation at the door

* Languages: Korean, Japanese, Tagalog and English with English subtitles

* Naver map: http://me2.do/GDOEbSP

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/370272919729052/

The screening will be held at the Colombian Mission Center.
Please note the center is very close to exit 4, and not on the University’s campus.

To get to the center:
1) Take line 4 to the Sungshin Women’s University Entrance 성신여자대학교입구) stop.
2) Go out exit 4 and a building with a traditional Korean roof (hanok) will be in front of you.
3) Go into the building and up to the second floor.

★ Due to a limited number of seats, you must RSVP to womens.global.solidarity@gmail.com and you will receive confirmation when your seat has been reserved.

From the Archives: Bagel Girls, Banking, and Babies!

(Source)

…[the character of] Chi-Yong’s mother sees marriage as a way to achieve social advancement and material prosperity, as it was in the Victorian era. These ambitions have come to the forefront in Korea since the 1970s, due to rapid economic development and consequent aspirations to class mobility and consolidation during the last thirty years. This novel [Marriage/결혼 by Kim Su-hyeon, 1993] is a good illustration of how, given the pace of change of change in Korea, everybody has a different point of view on marriage, depending on their gender, class, and generation. The issue of communication across generations has become a serious matter. Generation is an important attribute of identity in Korea, like race in the United States. (My emphases.)

(So-hee Lee, “The Concept of Female Sexuality in Popular Culture” in Under Construction: The gendering of modernity, class, and consumption in the Republic of Korea, ed. by Laurel Kendell, 2002; page 146 of 141-164)

With apologies to So-hee Lee for variously attributing that quote to either her editor, to Hyun-Mee Kim, or to Nancy Abelmann over the years, it still very much applies 10 years later. It’s also why studying and living in Korean society can be so exciting sometimes.

For someone who’s been writing about the place for over 5 years though, it means that many of my posts need updating. Let alone mercifully deleted as reader feedback, further research, and greater use of Korean sources have exposed gaping holes in my knowledge and confident preconceptions. And from a practical standpoint too, links will die, embedded videos will get deleted, and my theme will always highlight recent posts at the expense of older ones, no matter how good they may be after going through my culling process.

With all that in mind, once a month I’ll be highlighting posts from the corresponding month in previous years. Not all of them of course (hey, I’ll still like some material to work with in September 2013 and 2014), and to some there’s no new news to add; I include them just to draw attention to for new and old readers, especially as they’ve since been slightly edited for this post with the benefit of several year’s of hindsight. Others though, I’m adding a great deal of new news and commentary below, as you’ll see.

Please let me know what you think!

2011

Bust Magazine on “Bagel Girls” (베이글녀)

Alas, not really my own article, but about Grace Duggan’s for Bust Magazine. While I’d often criticized the body-labeling craze in South Korea previously, I didn’t realize just how offensive this particular term was until she pointed it out (source, right):

Sexualizing young women for having childlike features sets off all kinds of alarms, regardless of whether or not they are over 18. The “bagel girl” label does more than infantilize women. It compartmentalizes them by applying two irreconcilable ideals: looking like a baby and a full-grown woman at the same time.

Granted, that may make it sound no more harmful than any other “line.” But, as I explain in a later comment, in the context of how it’s actually used it ends up sounding almost pedophilic:

…there’s nothing wrong with looking young per se.

But consider who the label is applied to: not, say, women in their 30s and 40s and older, for whom – let’s be real – wanting to look younger than they are is understandable (hell, for a 35 year-old guy like me too), but rather it’s women barely on the threshold of adulthood that are being praised for looking like children. And, not to put too fine a point on it, what the FUCK is great about a 21 year-old looking younger than she is? And when her body is simultaneously praised for being developed? That is a seriously flawed ideal to aspire to, and, moreover – as I hint at in the post – it’s no coincidence that it occurs in an environment with strong expectations of childish behavior from women too. Indeed, the end result strongly reminds me of child and teenage female manga characters, with personalities appropriate for their age, but somehow the sex drives and physiological development to act on them of women 10-15 years older.

(Source)

Meanwhile, by coincidence just yesterday I finished the excellent An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality by Jill Fields (2007), which explains how the word “glamour” — where the “gul/글” in Bagel Girl comes from — came to be closely associated with large breasts by Hollywood in the 1930s to 1950s. Something I’d previously chalked up to a Japanese and then Korean mistranslation of the word, see the above pages for more on that, or all of Chapter 3 on brassieres at Google Books here.

Syndrome (신드롬) by ChoColat (쇼콜라): Lyrics, Translation, and Explanation / Reading The Lolita Effect in Korea, Part 5

If I do say so myself, I’m very proud of the way I describe my feelings when child singers do aegyo:

…cutesy aegyo is bad enough coming from a 21 year-old singer, but simply surreal when you see it done by a 14 year-old.

Yes, surreal, not merely awkward and inexperienced: essentially, you’re watching a child pretending to be an adult pretending to be a child.

Thank you very much.

Getting an Abortion in Korea

Thanks again to the (necessarily anonymous) reader who wrote about her experiences, and I’ve had dozens of inquires about the Seoul clinic she used since. Please just email me if you ever need to know the details yourself.

(Source)

2010

Women’s Typical Poses in Advertisements: A Pain in the Neck?

Once someone points out the “head cant” to you, it just can’t be unseen. Usually inoffensive in itself though, and frequently done simply for photographic and stylistic reasons (which I’ve under-acknowledged in the past), it’s the fact that it’s overwhelmingly women it that makes it problematic. Just one of a number of typical poses for women in ads, ultimately it serves to reinforce gender stereotypes.

Probably, that’s why these recent Giordano ads stood out to me: in the example above for instance, Shin Min-a (신민아) is the one in control, staring at the viewer, while So Ji-sub (소지섭) is distracted (it’s usually the guys that are presented as more focused). And, desperately seeking examples of pro-feminist advertisements for a TED presentation I may be giving next month, in which I have to — grrr — conclude with a positive message rather than just criticize, this made me realize that feminists and advertisers don’t necessarily have to be at odds with each other. Just a sense of balance by the latter would be a huge step forward.

“Want to Sleep With a Foreign Girlfriend?”

Really about “lewd” advertisements, 2 years later (this June) I translated another article about how their numbers had surged 3 times over the previous 12 months. With no apparent sense of irony, just about every news site that reported on that had so many examples themselves that the text was difficult to read.

Groping in Korea: Just How Bad Is It?

One of my most popular posts, anybody (especially men) who thinks street harassment isn’t a problem should just reflect on the opening cartoon, let alone female readers’ comments about their own negative experiences.

(Source: unknown)

2009

Korean Sociological Image #19: Gee, Gee, Gee…Using Girls’ Generation to Study Gender Roles in Korean Advertising

A short, harmless commercial for Shinhan Bank at first glance. But, once you take the time to analyze it, it has a clear message that men do the thinking at Shinhan while the women simply look good. Indeed, it’s such a classic example of gender stereotyping that I’m still using it in presentations today.

Here’s the slide I would present after providing that analysis:

But in the next presentation, I’ll be updating it with the recent news that the banking industry still has the largest gender pay gap in Korea, with women making an average of only 57% of what men make.

No Skin Required: Healthy Images of Couples in the Korean Media

Not that I’m against skin by any means. But these remain very sweet ads!

Korean Sociological Image #18: Sexualizing Caucasian Women

Again one of my most popular posts, ironically soon after writing it trends in the Korean entertainment and music industries meant that Koreans would replace Caucasians in many of the modelling roles that sustained those Occidentalist stereotypes. Also, in my own (admittedly limited) experience, there’s far fewer Korean male – Western (invariably Caucasian) female pairings in popular culture now, after a spate of them in the years after Misuda first appeared. (There were never very many of the opposite.)

However, of course many of the stereotypes still do remain.

(Sources: left, right)

2008

Pregnancy, Caesareans and Body Image in Korea

When I read on Yahoo! Korea this week about pregnant Hollywood star’s “D-lines”, for a moment I did try to hold my tongue about seeing the label.

After all, this, for example, is just an advertisement for an event for expecting mothers (albeit one where likely body-shaping products are promoted); these D-line fashion shows were surely perfectly harmless; many of those Hollywood stars were indeed glowing, as was pregnant Moon So-ri (문소리) in Cosmopolitan last year; and finally, yes, I can see the humorous side — it is often applied to extremely obese men.

But although the Western media too promotes pampered celebrity mothers-to-be as ideals to follow, and I can certainly accept that pregnant women overseas may likewise feel under some indirect pressure to watch their weight, that post is about how pregnant Korean women were dieting as early as the late-1990s. One can only shudder at what things are probably like now.

Suddenly, talk of D-lines sounds a lot less funny.

Resources on Evolving Korean Ideals of Male Beauty

One of my first attempts to grapple with the origins of the kkotminam phenomenon (꽃미남; lit. flower-beauty-man), which culminated in this piece by friend and ANU professor Roald Maliangkay 2 years later.

By coincidence, both of us will be quoted in a related news article to be published next week. Watch this space! (Update: and here it is!)

2007

Paternity Leave in Korea from Next Year?

And indeed there was. Unfortunately however, attitudes didn’t change with it, so fathers feel compelled by management to either ignore it entirely or to come back to work early, despite it only being 3 days (source right: unknown).

Note though, that the “paternity leave” in the original article I translated was a bit of a misnomer, it really meaning time off for a child’s birth. “Real,” paid paternity leave has been available since 2001 (or possibly 1995), but sources vary on specifics. Sung So-young in the Korean Joongang Daily, for instance, wrote in April 2011 that:

According to Korean law, all employees with a child under the age of 3 are eligible to take a year off to care for their children. Up to 1 million won ($919) in salary is provided monthly.”

But that is contradicted by a slightly later report in the Chosun Ilbo, which states that:

…those on leave can get up to 40 percent of their salary, or a minimum of W500,000 and a maximum of W1 million, and parents can take leave until the child is 6 years old.

And both in turn are contradicted by Lee Hyo-sik’s earlier report in the March 4 2011 Korea Times, which says:

Regardless of income levels, both male and female salaried workers are currently given 500,000 won per month during parental leave. This is expected to go up to one million won next year.

As for the maximum age of the children in order to be eligible, the same article states that it was 6 rather than 3. This is confirmed by an earlier February 2010 article by Kwon Mee-yoo, again in the Korea Times, which stated:

The Ministry of Labor passed a revision on Wednesday to the Act on Equal Employment and Support for Work-Family Reconciliation, or the Employment Equity Act for short, which will expand the range of workers eligible for parental leave. Now parents with preschoolers under six years old can benefit.

The leave allows employees to take a certain number of paid days off from work to care for their children. The parents can also take unpaid leave if they use up all of their paid days. This includes maternity, paternity and adoption leave. Currently, at private firms only workers with children 3 years old or less qualify for the leave.

Surprisingly, parents with adopted children weren’t eligible before this revision, and still, “only those who gave birth to or adopted children after Jan. 1, 2008 [were to be allowed] parental leave,” despite those (then) 2 to 6 year-olds obviously being of age. Which all sounds very tight-fisted, although logical during the worst of the financial crisis.

Kwon Mee-yoo also notes that it was in 2008 that the government increased the age restriction for (only) public servants, allowing them “to take time off for parental purposes if their children were under 6 years old.” I’ll assume that it previously only applied if their children were under 3 years old, like Kwon notes was the case for employees at private firms.

Finally, quibbles over details aside, Sung So-young’s and Lee Hyo-sik’s articles in particular remain excellent discussions of why Korean fathers are forced to avoid taking paternity leave, despite wanting to spend much more time with their kids. Against that though, just like in most other countries there’s still a pervasive attitude that childcare is primarily women’s work, with insidious manifestations in our daily lives.

And on that note, have a good weekend, and the Korean Gender Reader post will be up on Sunday!

What’s Wrong With Marrying First-born Sons?

(Source; edited)

As every Korean woman looking for a husband knows, hapless first-born sons are best avoided. After all, customarily moving in with — or very close to — his parents, she would just have too many responsibilities for their care, let alone arguments with his overbearing mother:

The old lady often follows her daughter-in-law around, criticizing every bit of housework. They compete for the attention of their son/husband. In addition, because the old lady went through the same process when younger, she feels entitled to make her daughter-in-law’s life miserable. (Here is an old post touching upon this subject.)

Of course, not all eldest sons’ households would be so bad, let alone that of Ask a Korean’s who wrote that. Or would they? In Japan at least, with very similar living arrangements to Korea, they’re so stressful that married Japanese women living with in-laws are three times more likely to suffer a heart attack than those just living with their husbands.

(Source; edited)

Perhaps it’s no wonder then, that “not a first-born son” was one of the common “specs” (스펙) for a husband in this recent list I translated?

But, despite everything I’ve written above, I’d always thought that their extra responsibilities were simply a cultural preference, and one rapidly eroding at that. So, it came as a real surprise to learn they were so formalized as to be enshrined in the government’s social welfare policy, as explained in passing in this recent Hankyoreh article about an elderly woman who committed suicide after losing her eligibility for benefits (my emphasis):

…According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Geoje City Hall in South Gyeongsang province, Lee was stripped of her National Basic Living Security assistance qualification because a confirmation study of recipients conducted in June revealed that her son-in-law’s income had increased.

This is to say, the “sustenance allowance” in accordance with support obligation standards (lineal blood relatives or spouse) had been exceeded [James – by a grand total of 7000 won (US$6.18)]. The recently increased income of her daughter and son-in-law, who work for a subcontractor of a major corporation, was about 8 million won a month.

The “mandatory sustenance allowance” is computed by taking the income of the lineal blood relative or spouse, removing a total equal to 130% of the minimum cost of living for a family obligated to support a relative, and multiplying that by 15% in the case of a daughter (30% in the case of a son)…

…When beneficiaries lose their qualification, they also lose their housing assistance, stipend and medical benefits. The standards determining family members who must provide support is tied to a contrived system that dumps the state’s responsibility onto the family.

(Source)

If any readers familiar with the Korean social welfare system could elaborate on this, or any other gendered aspects of it, I would be very grateful. Unfortunately, all I can further bring to the discussion is my copy of The Politics of Social Welfare Policy in South Korea: Growth and Citizenship by Myungsook Woo (2004), a very top-down and theoretical overview that lacks mention of anything at the grass-roots level, let alone of gender. But of course it does still have some insights though, which I’ll pass on in a later post!

Quick Hit: “The Empowerment of the Pill in Korea”

Thanks very much for the comments on my earlier post on Korean OBGYN clinics, which I incorporated into a brief edit of my latest BusanHaps article. Just click on the picture to read.

Here’s hoping the KDFA makes the correct decision at the end of August!

Korean Sociological Image #71: “Specs” for the perfect Korean wife or husband

(Source: Slutwalk Korea)

When I lived abroad in Korea, I spent a lot of time doing work in cafes. Probably a 100 or more during my 2 years there. As such, I eavesdropped on thousands of conversations. And nearly every one of those conversations was about two topics: complaints re studying English and complaints re losing weight.

(Patricia Park, Korean Bodega, June 15)

Maybe I’m just nostalgic for my bachelor days, but it’s conversations about “specs” (스펙) that I’ve really noticed myself. A Korean term for the criteria used to evaluate a potential spouse on, it’s also my experience that it’s almost exclusively used by women, although that may just be because there’s usually more women than men at my local Starbucks.

Either way, in February Kim Da-ye at the Korea Times argued that looking at marriage this way is a relatively new phenomenon, and that it’s “matchmaking companies that rate spouse seekers by specs [that] have fueled [such] materialism.” And, as if to bolster that point, Donga-Reuters would report on exactly the same phenomenon emerging in China after I’d already begun writing this post.

But as discussed below, matchmakers have been encouraging such pragmatism for decades, so they can hardly be described as driving that change in outlook. Rather, it’s economic factors that are responsible, as Kim later acknowledges in her article:

…today’s buzzword “Sampo” generation (삼포세대) …indicates a 30-something who has given up dating, marrying and giving birth because of the lack of financial means…

Contrast the “880,000 won generation”, which generally refers to 20-somethings. Continuing:

….What’s interesting about such preferences for the partner’s economic qualification is that they don’t come from conservative parents or rigid social structure but independent, young individuals….

….The near obsession with fine lifestyle is a contrast to the attitude of the baby boomer generation, many of whom used to say that they can start from a small rented room….

When asked why the younger generation isn’t willing make such a humble start, Lee, a single woman in her mid-30s working at a media firm, said, “Back then, amid fast economic growth, people had hoped that they would be able to climb up the social ladder and afford a bigger place in the future. Nowadays, people feel that if they start in a small room, they will be stuck there for the rest of their lives.”

The high cost of getting married naturally leads to some couples to be heavily indebted after the honeymoon ends. In addition to the Sampo generation, another phrase linked to both the economy and marriage has emerged — “honeymoon poor.”

And Kim — whose article is still very informative overall — gives several examples of engaged couples’ fights over money, some of whom ultimately break up. Yet those would not be out of place in popular discourses of marriage in, for example, the 1980s, when women’s magazines were similarly promoting the virtues of arranged ones. Presumably, at the behest of their advertisers:

(Source: Google Books)

Passage Rites Made Easy [A 1982 Korean book by Ko Chonggi] describes marriage through an arranged meeting as more “rational” behavior than simply falling in love because the candidates for romance and matrimony have already been carefully scrutinized by parents and matchmakers. Korean women’s magazines also emphasize the value of prior screening in choosing a mate, suggesting by the frequency with which they address this topic that their youthful readership is by no means convinced of the merits of matchmade matrimony:

Today, with the trend towards frankness in sexual matters, talk of “arranged meetings” or “matchmade marriage” might sound excessively stale. Even so, in marriage the conditions of both sides enter into things. Matchmade marriage, where you can dispassionately investigate these considerations beforehand, has some advantages that cannot be ignored (“The Secrets of a Successful Arranged Meeting,” Yong Reidi, 3 March 1985: 347).

From pages 89-90 of Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (1996), by Laurel Kendall, the next page sounds a little ironic 18 years later:

The evolution of Korean courtship practices provides one excellent example of how notions of progress, of an enlightened “now” versus a repressive “then”, mask the particular disadvantages for women in new forms of matrimonial negotiations, be they “matchmade” or “for love” — a mask which sometimes slips in angry conversation or social satire. Through courtship and through all of the talk about getting married, notions of ideal “man” and “woman”, “husband” and “wife”, “son-in-law” and “daughter-in-law” are constructed, reinforced, and resisted….

….In Korean popular discourse, the evils of old-fashioned matrimony, in which near-children were forced by the will of their elders to marry total strangers, have been replaced by more enlightened practices. The “old days” are still on the horizon of living memory, but are recalled as from an utterly vanished time. In confessing that he never saw his wife’s face until his wedding night, the writer Cho P’ungyon states [in 1983] with a touch of hyperbole that “Today’s young people would consider this laughable and the faint-hearted might swoon away, but in my day these procedures were considered natural.”

(Source: Korea Portal)

The difference being that in 2012, financially-strapped singles can no longer afford to be so dismissive (nor Japanese ones either). Moreover, while they’re not marrying complete strangers perhaps, many Koreans do marry people they’ve only known a few weeks, as discussed in an earlier post. Also, some mild social coercion can indeed be involved, as Gomushin Girl explained:

It’s important to differentiate between different kinds of matchmaking arrangements…lots of Koreans use services that are similar to eHarmony, It’s Just Dinner, and other similar paid and unpaid services. Just like in the US, there’s free and paid computer matching sites, and more expensive and comprehensive personalized dating services. These offer a great deal of flexibility, and allow you to reject partners at many stages of the process – the worst consequence being that the agent in charge of finding you matches will decide you’re too picky, and start sending you “lower quality” matches. You’re free to meet multiple people at once, and they’re basically meant to facilitate dating.

However, 선 (Seon) matches are pretty different. Most of the time the people proposing the arrangement are close family or friends (of your parents), and parties are expected to make up their minds pretty quickly. Delaying too long or changing your mind after the first few dates is strongly frowned upon, and may even cause major social riftts. This means that women especially are pressured to marry people before they’re comfortable with them, and even if they’re not really what they’re looking for. Seon is serious, and you’re expected to commit yourself pretty quickly.

It’s also expected to override existing social relationships. My Korean host mother once called me up to ask if I’d go down to Busan to meet a friend’s son, who was interested in a seon meeting with me. I told her I’d just started dating someone, and her response was essentially, “That’s wonderful! When can you come to Busan?”

(Source: Sinbustory)

And on that note, let me leave you with a translation of the image that prompted this post, a poster for last week’s Slutwalk in Seoul. The slogan reads, roughly, “Let’s stop these fantasy gender roles now. Let’s play at being ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, 2012 Slutwalk Korea.” Many of the specs it mentions would be shared by people the world over, but there are also some quintessentially Korean ones:

For the “man” (literally, it says “manliness”):

키180이상 Over 180cm in height
전문직 A professional
대기업정규직 Regular worker at a big company
인서울4년제 Went to a 4-year university in Seoul
자차소유 Owns a car
장남아닐것 Not a first-born son
데이트비용 Pays for everything on a date
신혼집구입 Buys a home after marriage
사회생활잘함 Good social skills
성격좋음 Good personality
술잘마심 A good drinker
정력왕 Good sexual stamina

For the woman (“womanliness”):

키170미만 Under 170cm tall
몸무게50미만 Under 50 kg
가슴C컵이상 A C-cup or over
30살이하 30 or under
날신한몸매 Thin body
작고하얀얼굴 Small and white face
화장은기본 Always wears make-up
제모는상식 Shaves legs and underarms
명품백하나쯤 Have at least one brand-name handbag
애교있는성격 Have aegyo
시댁을부모처럼 Treats parents-in-law like her own parents
섹스경험없음 Be a virgin

Are there any others readers would add? Especially Korean ones?

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image series, see here)

“Women in South Korea are on Strike Against Being ‘Baby-Making Machines’” headlines a must-read article by Hawon Jung in last week’s New York Times, a role migrant women are expected to perform most of all. Here are two insidious ways in which they are socialized into doing so.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes. Image source: YouTube.

“Multiculturalism in South Korea: putting migrant wives in their place” by Stella Jang in Social Identities, September 2022 (my emphases).

“Gendered Nationalism in Practice: An Intersectional Analysis of Migrant Integration Policy in South Korea” by Sojin Yu in Gender & Society, November 2020 (my emphasis).

Source: MBC.

Related Posts:

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Estimated reading time: 11 minutes. Photo by Annushka Ahuja from Pexels.

Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

Source: Figure 16, “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era,” p. 32. Note that “Men” should more accurately say “Fathers.”

Source: Figure 16, “The Economics of Fertility: A New Era,” p. 32. Note that “Men” should more accurately say “Fathers.”

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels.

Source: @BreeNewsome

Source: Wikitree via Naver.

Source: YouTube.

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Universal male conscription and rampant discrimination against working mothers will always grab headlines, but a recent ruling against segregated seating in study rooms is a stark reminder of the pervasive homosociality behind the friction

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.

“This is a study café, which can easily be found in any neighborhood.”

“You’ll notice there is free seating, with no designated areas for men and women.”

“[However], if men and women sit together in [study rooms], the owners will be subject to administrative sanctions and penalties.”

Update:

Related Posts:

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

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Source: Page 162 of South East Asia in the World-Economy: A Regional Economy, by Chris Dixon (1991).

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Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Photo by Yeo Khee on Unsplash.

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Source: Pakutaso

♥

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(Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 10)

(Source: janwillemsen; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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(Arirang, December 4, 2014; my emphasis)

(Eun, pp 154 & 155; see bibliography)

(Payen p. 72, my emphasis; see bibliography)

(Sources: left, 나는 수풀 우거진 산에 갔더니; right, Opeloverz)

(Payen, pp. 87-88. Kendall and Spencer books mentioned are below; see bibliography for Kim.)

(Source, left: Google Books; right, Amazon)

(The Korea Herald, 28 January, 2014)

(The Chosun Ilbo, 13 March 2015)

(Ask a Korean!, December 3, 2008)

(The Korea Times, July 23, 2013. Source, above: WStar News)

(Source: Lotte Tour)

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(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

(Source: Zigbang Facebook)

(Source: Zigbang Facebook; alternative version here)

(Source: Zikgbang Facebook; alternative version here)

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(Sources, edited: Interpark, Miscellaneous Maddness)

The Meaning of Liff, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd (1983)

(Source: CGV)

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(Source: Unknown)

(Source: Cinnamon Ginger Tea; reprinted with permission)

(Source: GR × HERMARK, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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(Sources, edited: left, right)

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(Source)

2011

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2010

(Source: unknown)

2009

(Sources: left, right)

2008

2007

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo by co ttonbro from Pexels.