Manufacturing Outrage Against Korean Feminists: Could it GET any more obvious?

“It was there for literally 0.1 seconds! And drawn by a guy! And…and…WHY THE HELL DO YOU FEEL SO THREATENED BY IT ANYWAY??”

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. Photo by Timur Weber @Pexels.

It’s always heartwarming when a columnist literally calls bullshit on the Korean manosphere.

For that sass alone, in a moment I’ll gladly pass on to you my full translation of Hankyoreh Gender Team Leader Jang Su-gyeong’s accusation, written in December 2023 about the MapleStory controversy of the previous month.

But for all her flair, I think it was a little misdirected.

“I am very interested and concerned about hatred and discrimination, which hang as prevalent and thick in Korean society as air.”

Basically, she criticizes the controversy for being only the latest example of the ‘feminist check’ tactic the Korean manosphere engages in these days. Whereby they: go bananas over any alleged instance of a small penis finger gesture; dig deep to find evidence that those responsible have even the slightest of feminist leanings; then shrilly demand the company responsible fire them and remove the offending gesture.

This is more pernicious and impactful than it may sound to outside observers. Emboldened by the term “feminism/페미니즘/女性主義” more accurately meaning radical feminism in Korean, to most men and women alike, virtually anyone even only indirectly advocating for sexual equality can get tarred with that brush. And when that happens, say, for wearing t-shirts incels don’t like, companies are only too eager to throw those real or alleged “femis/페미” under the bus, all for the sake of appeasing the manosphere.

Source: John Marcotte.

So I share her ire, and don’t want to get too hung up on semantics. It’s just that, precisely because the manosphere can be so loud and proud about what they doing, why they’re doing it, and who they’re hurting, with absolutely no subterfuge necessary, perhaps “bullshitting” isn’t the best way to describe the process.

Or, perhaps I only say that with the benefit of hindsight.

Because as if to prove her point, an even more bullshit controversy, over nonexistent government plans to switch the genders of emergency exit signs, is emerging as I type this a month later.

As you’ll see after her column, it’s a much more blatant example of what she describes. Especially when you contrast it with a real example, which there was a clear need for, made nationwide to the caregiver figures in subway escalator signs in the late-2000s. And which, to the best of my knowledge, did not result in any harm to anyone’s sense of manhood—no matter how deeply the Korean manosphere seems to feel threatened if the same ‘concessions’ were made today.

Left: the offending gesture, which is visible for precisely 0.1 second. Full screenshot source: 원정상 @YouTube. (For the record, I just thought it was too good a screenshot not to steal—I don’t know the YouTuber’s stance on the controversy.)

너 페미니? Are You a Femi?

장수경/Jang Su-gyeong, 2023-12-17 (flying710@hani.co.kr/@jsggija)

“너는 페미니스트야?”

“Are you a feminist?”

몇달 전 대학 때 친하게 지낸 남자 동기를 만나 들은 질문이다. 질문을 받은 뒤 처음 느낀 감정은 당황스러움이었다. 그동안 받아본 적 없는 질문이었기 때문이다. 페미니스트냐 아니냐를 따지는 게 무의미할 정도로, 나는 스스로 페미니스트가 아니라는 생각을 해본 적이 없던 터였다.

This is a question I was asked a few months ago, when I met a male classmate with whom I was close to in university. My first reaction was embarrassment. Because it was a question I’d never been asked before. I’d never thought of myself as *not* a feminist, to the point where it was meaningless to consider whether I was one or not.

“나는 페미니스트지.”

“Yea, I am a feminist.”

“왜 너 자신을 그렇게 규정해? 네가 생각하는 페미니즘이 뭐야?”

“Why do you define yourself like that? What do you think feminism is?”

“여성과 남성은 동등하고, 성별에서 오는 각종 차별을 없애야 한다는 거지.”

“I think it means women and men are equal, and so all kinds of sexual discrimination must be eliminated.”

“그건 인권 차원에서 당연한 거 아니야?”

“Isn’t that only natural from just from a human rights perspective though [So a feminist one isn’t necessary]?”

친구는 페미니즘의 방향에는 동의하면서도 페미니스트에 대해서는 부정적 생각을 가진 듯했다. 친구는 내게 “너의 정체성을 어느 하나로 규정하지 않길 바란다” “역차별당하고 있다고 주장하는 2030 남성들의 이야기도 귀담아들어달라”는 말을 남겼다.

Although my friend agreed with the general direction of feminism, he seemed to harbor negative thoughts about feminists themselves. He continued, “I hope you don’t define your identity as just this one thing,” and “Please listen to the stories of men in their 20s and 30s who claim they are being reverse discriminated.”

최근 게임 업계에서 일하는 여성 작가들을 향해 잇따르고 있는 ‘페미니즘 사상 검증’ 사태를 지켜보면서 당시 대화를 떠올린 건, 페미니스트를 옥죄는 사회 분위기가 전방위적이라는 생각 때문이었다. 친구의 질문 의도가 ‘사상 검증’일 것이라곤 생각하지 않는다. 다만, 이런 질문이 나와 동등한 위치에 선 사람의 ‘순수한 궁금증’에서 비롯된 것이 아니라 누군가를 검열하고, 억누르고, 일자리를 겨냥하고 있다면 말은 달라진다.

While watching the recent ‘feminist check’ [lit., ‘verification of feminist ideology’] that has been taking place against female writers working in the game industry, I remembered the conversation at that time because I thought that the social atmosphere that oppresses feminists is omnipresent. I don’t think the intention of my friend’s question [was malicious], to confirm that I was a feminist [and then target me on that basis]. However, if these questions do not arise from a place of genuine curiosity [and willingness to engage in dialogue] expressed by a person standing on equal footing with me, but instead is a form of sealioning aimed at censoring, suppressing, or targeting someone’s job, the story is different.

지난달 말 남초 사이트와 게임 업체 넥슨이 한 행동은 전형적인 ‘사상 검증’이었다. 남초 커뮤니티는 넥슨의 게임 ‘메이플스토리’ 홍보 영상에 등장하는 캐릭터의 손가락 모양을 두고 ‘남성 혐오’라고 주장했다. 근거는 빈약했다. 해당 영상을 작업한 하청 업체의 한 여성 직원이 자신의 사회관계망서비스 계정에 올린 페미니즘 옹호 발언이 전부였다. 전형적인 확증 편향이었지만 넥슨은 별다른 사실관계 확인 없이 해당 영상을 비공개하고 업체 쪽에 법적 대응을 예고했다.

At the end of last month, the actions taken by the manosphere sites and forums, and then the game company Nexon’s responses, were a typical example of the feminist check process. The manosphere claimed that the shape of the finger of the character appearing in the promotional video for Nexon’s game *MapleStory* was ‘man-hating.’ But the evidence was actually quite weak. A female employee of the subcontractor who worked on the video uploaded it to her social networking service account, and all she said was her defense of feminism. It was a typical confirmation bias, but Nexon made the video private without verifying the facts and announced legal action against the subcontractor she worked for?

이후 해당 작업물을 그린 이는 40대 남성 애니메이터라는 사실이 보도됐다. 주장의 근거가 사라졌으니, 남초 커뮤니티가 사과했을까. 아니다. 애초 사실 여부는 중요하지 않다는 듯, ‘언론의 보도가 거짓’이라거나 ‘남페미는 문제가 아니냐’며 방향을 틀었다. 그사이 해당 여성 직원은 개인 신상 정보가 털리고 온갖 욕설을 듣는 등 사이버불링을 당했다.

However, it was later reported that the person who drew the work was actually a male animator in his 40s. Now that the basis for the claim has disappeared, did the manosphere apologize? Not at all. In the first place, it seemed as if it didn’t matter whether it was true or not. And then they changed direction by saying, “The media’s reports were false,” or “Aren’t male feminists the real problem here?” Meanwhile, the female employee suffered cyberbullying, including having her personal information stolen and receiving all kinds of abusive language.

퓰리처상을 받은 영국의 저널리스트 제임스 볼은 책 ‘개소리는 어떻게 세상을 정복했는가’에서 ‘진실이든 거짓이든 신경 쓰지 않는 사람들이 만들어내는 그럴싸한 허구의 담론’을 ‘개소리’(bullshit)라고 말했다. 개소리꾼의 개소리는 거짓말과 달리 자신이 원하는 결과를 얻기 위해 최소한의 진실조차 중요하지 않기에 거짓말보다 해롭고, 팩트로 대응해도 힘을 잃지 않는다고 했다.

In his book Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World (2021), Pulitzer Prize-winning British journalist James Ball said that ‘bullshit’ is “a specious fictional discourse created by people who do not care whether it is true or false.” He said that unlike lies, this, the most bullshit of bullshits, is more harmful than lies because even the minimum amount of truth is not important to achieve the results one wants, and it does not lose its power even if it is responded to with facts.

“업장에서 왜 사회운동을 하냐”(허은아 국민의힘 의원), “악질적인 점은 실수가 아니라 의도적이라는 데 있다”(이상헌 더불어민주당 의원), “의도를 가지고 넣었다면 조롱”(류호정 정의당 의원)이라는 정치인들의 반응은 ‘개소리’ 기세를 더 강화할 뿐이었다. 정치권의 메시지는 ‘사상 검증을 하지 말라’ ‘페미니스트가 뭐가 문제냐’여야 했다. 기업은 개소리꾼의 개소리를 수용할 것이 아니라 무시해야 했다. 언론은 ‘집게손 논란’이라는 제목으로 개소리를 앞다퉈 보도하지 말아야 했다.

The politicians’ responses—“Why are you engaging in social movements at your workplace?” (People Power Party Rep. Heo Eun-ah), “The malicious point is not that it was a mistake, but that it was intentional” (Democratic Party Rep. Lee Sang-heon), “If it was put in with intention, it would be ridiculed” (Justice Party Rep. Ryu Ho-jeong)—only added to the bullshit’s momentum. Instead, the message from the political world should have been, “Don’t engage in a feminist check,” and “What’s the problem with feminists anyway?” Companies should have ignored this bullshit of bullshits, not blindly accepted it, and the media should not have rushed to report it under the title ‘Claw Hand Controversy.’

‘페미니스트는 남성 혐오론자이기 때문에 그런 집게손가락 모양을 넣었을 것’이라는 ‘개소리 담론’에 기업, 정치인, 언론 등이 동조한 결과는 ‘일터를 잃는 노동자’다. 2016년 ‘소녀에게 왕자는 필요 없다’는 글이 쓰인 티셔츠를 입었다는 이유로 교체된 성우처럼, 과거 에스엔에스에 페미니즘 관련 글을 올렸다는 이유로 2023년에 계약 해지된 게임 ‘림버스 컴퍼니’의 그림작가처럼 말이다.

Source: Twitter/@KNKNOKU via BBC.

The result of companies, politicians, media, and so on agreeing with the bullshit discourse, that “feminists must have put that index finger symbol because they are male haters,” is workers losing their jobs. Just like the voice actor who was replaced in 2016 for wearing a T-shirt with the words “Girls do not need a prince” written on it, the illustrator of the game Limbus Company whose contract was terminated in 2023 for [retweeting tweets that used derogatory terms for men].

개소리를 하며 ‘사상 검증’을 정당화하는 이들에게 말해주자. 너희 주장은 개소리라고. 페미니즘이 뭐가 문제냐고. 너희들이 페미니즘을 알긴 아느냐고.

Let’s tell those who spew bullshit in the name of feminist checks: Your arguments are bullshit. What’s the problem with feminism anyway? Do you guys even know *anything* about feminism? (END)

(For more information, in chronological order over November to December, including the response of the Nexon Union, please see the Korea JoongAng Daily, this Reddit thread, Korea Bizwire, the Korea Times, and again the Korea JoongAng Daily.)

Now fast forward to mid-January 2024, when multiple media outlets reported that in the name of gender equality, the government was immediately replacing the ‘male’ pictogram in some of the emergency exit signs nationwide with more obviously ‘female’ ones. Some outlets added that it was at the behest of women’s groups.

I’m sure I don’t need to outline the absurdities of such a plan. Nor that (most of) the multiple, eminently justifiable criticisms, did not necessarily stem from misogyny.

But more often than not, feminists became the target anyway.

Because at best, the new design was actually just one of many possibilities considered for updating the signs, to replace the existing ones only as per needed (so, no extra cost at all). Whereas at worst—and it’s unclear which applies, frankly—it was a complete fabrication of the media.

As were the supposed women’s groups that were demanding it:

직장인 A씨(29)는 “새 픽토그램을 보니 긴 머리에 치마를 입고 가슴 부분이 튀어나와 있었다”며 “여성 중에 이런 기호를 원하는 사람이 실제로 얼마나 되겠냐. 오히려 여성을 희화화한 듯하다”라고 말했다. 한 누리꾼은 “누군가 일부러 논란을 만들었다고 생각될 정도”라고 했다.

한 여성단체 관계자는 “어떤 기사에선 ‘여성단체 등이 요구해왔기 때문’이란 식으로 설명했던데, 그런 요구를 한 단체가 어디에 있나. 괴담 수준의 터무니없는 얘기”라며 “오히려 성 고정관념을 고착화하는 그림이다”라고 비판했다. (Kyunghyang Shinmun)

Office worker A (29) said, “When I looked at the new pictogram, I saw her with long hair and a skirt and her breasts sticking out,” adding, “How many women actually want this symbol? “In fact, it seems like a caricature of women.” One netizen said, “It almost makes you think someone created controversy on purpose.”

An official from a women’s group said, “In some articles, it was explained as ‘because women’s groups have been making demands,’ but where is the group that made such demands?” “It is an absurd story at the level of a ghost story,” he criticized, adding, “Rather, it is a picture that perpetuates gender stereotypes.”

And from the Dailian:

…”이런 것도 성별 갈라치기 소재로 쓰냐” 라는 등 비판 의견이 쏟아졌다.

…[Netizens] said “Is this just another thing that can be used to divide the sexes?”

Image sources: 스포츠하국, Pixabay (edited).

Now, you could rightfully argue that the media was responsible in that case, not technically the manosphere.

Only, there’s a great deal of synergy between the two.

Crucial context is that the notoriously clickbaity Korean media is one of the least trusted in the (developed) world, and that it is heavily male-dominated. Add that Korea is a deeply patriarchal country, currently in the midst of a polarizing “gender war,” then a constant backlash of ‘journalists’ scapegoating feminists for all Korea’s ills is all too predictable.

The deceit involved can be staggeringly blatant and obvious. I’ve even caught out with one bullshit story myself. When, after ‘reporting’ on a literally non-existent controversy over Berry Good member Johyun‘s cosplay above, then getting the sought-after inflamed response from the manosphere, the media added insult to injury by blaming the entire controversy on the reports of a single female reporter, who criticized Johyun for her overexposure despite praising male nudity in previous articles.

Only, her article on Johyun wasn’t published until several hours after news about about the controversy first appeared. (And ironically, her article wasn’t at all like it was described; in fact, they it was just as clickbaity as everyone else’s, and provided no basis to label her a feminist.)

Sources: MLBPark (1; since deleted); 2)

But still: these three cases alone are insufficient evidence of systematic misogyny by Korean journalists and the media. I do strongly suspect though, that a thorough investigation by academics, media-watchdogs, and/or feminist groups will undoubtedly reveal that such an agenda exists. Likely, many such investigations have already been conducted, so I’ll follow this post up with those at a later date.

In the meantime, Korean or otherwise, I will never, ever trust any news source that makes claims about unnamed women’s and feminist groups.

As part of my own 2024 agenda though, I try to highlight the positive where I can, and can’t end on that note.

So, with my apologies for the crappy quality of my digital camera back in the late-2000s, finally let me remind you of when, in a bid to challenge antiquated gender roles and encourage more equitable childcare between parents, subway-caregiver signs with a female figure were gradually replaced with an androgynous one. They were only replaced as per needed, so they didn’t cost extra money, leaving even the most vitriolic of incels struggling to oppose them without exposing their misogyny. Which is probably why I haven’t actually seen one with a female caregiver ever since.

Only, doing my due diligence, I’m sorry to report that today I learned my experience isn’t at all universal (let alone my nonexistent experience of female spaces). That the initiative stalled, and that as of 2019, many Seoul subway stations still have almost entirely female caregivers in their signs. Most ironically and symbolically perhaps, in Gangnam Station, where 100% of them are of women:

Source: Hankook Ilbo.

So, the fight continues, even over the little things. But it does continue.

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

Today, I Learned That 3x More Korean Women in Their 20s Attempt Suicide Than Men.

For sure, the patriarchy harms men just as much as women, and 3x more Korean men than women attempt suicide overall. But this dramatic reversal among Korean 20-somethings is truly shocking.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo by Brandon Wong on Unsplash.

Not going to lie—when first reading the following tweet, this old Korea book geek felt a frisson of recognition. That warm feeling, and wanting to quickly joke about my overwhelming confirmation bias, is what initially made me want to share. Thinking about the horrifying content only came later:

Source: 나도계란/@aravis12

Its similarity is to the following from Chapter 2, “Women, Mobility, and Desire: Narrating Class and Gender in South Korea” by the late Nancy Abelmann, in Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea, edited by Laurel Kendall (2002):

Feeding into what I would learn from Under Construction and other sources about the strength of egalitarian and democratic ideals in Korea, which the education system promoted even during the height of its various military dictatorships, that point really stuck with me 20 years ago. It’s been in the back of my mind when thinking about Korean workplaces and marriages ever since.

Then I read the tweet again, and it finally hit me what so little change in two decades actually meant—”Women in their 20s are collapsing into dystopian depression.”

Also highly recommended: Patriarchy in East Asia: A Comparative Sociology of Gender by Kaku Sechiyama (2013)

That’s from what the link was to—an interview of Professor Kim Hyeon-ah (김현아) of Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, author of My Daughter Was Quietly Falling Apart (딸이 조용히 무너져 있었다; 2023), about her struggles with her bipolar daughter who self-harmed and attempted suicide.

Through it, I learned that although men still comprise the bulk—three quarters—of Korean suicides overall, as myself and probably everyone reading would expect, the (translation) “number of female suicides has increased by 64.5% since 2015, compared to 19.7% for men. Also, that as of 2020, mood disorders such as depression were twice as common among women as among men, and were especially prevalent among those in their 20s.”

Only, those suicide statistics, by being generalized to all women, annoyed more than clarified.

You see, by coincidence I’d read yesterday that the smoking rate for Korean women was now 4.5%. Which was a huge red flag. Because as I demonstrated in my series on that a decade ago, the taboos surrounding female smoking in Korea meant rates varied hugely by age, with the rate for 19-29 year-olds then coming to 23.1%, and rising quickly. So quickly in fact, I’d estimate that their rate is now closer to 33%, and will try to confirm that in a much-needed follow-up to that series for you soon.

With that in mind, while a 64.5% rise in suicide rates for Korean women is of course terrible, as is a 19.7% rise for men, it doesn’t sound so dramatic considering the much, much lower figures for women overall. With not unlimited funds available for suicide prevention measures, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that, put that way, both policymakers and the public might be swayed into downplaying the changing gender dynamics of the problem. That perhaps specific age and sex-based policies aren’t necessarily the best use of resources.

I’m absolutely not blaming the reporter here, or claiming any sort of agenda over a few statistics that should have been presented differently. But it did mean an age-based breakdown of those suicide statistics was absolutely necessary, which I found in The Korea Bizwire:

When analyzed by gender, the highest rate [of self harm and suicide attempts] among males was among those over 80 years old (125.9 per 100,000), followed by those in their twenties (105.4), teenagers (69.1), and those in their thirties (65).

Among females, the highest rate was in those in their twenties (284.8 per 100,000), followed by teenagers (257.8), those in their thirties (119.9), and those in their forties (86.3).

And on that note, my apologies. This was supposed to be a light post, expressing my joy at finding something so similar to something meaningful that I once read 20 years ago. Then, joking at this curmudgeon’s ever-growing confirmation bias, and admonishing him to constantly seek sources that challenge his outdated views. Only now having done precisely that…I simply don’t know what to say.

Most suicide victims worldwide being men, I am just too shocked. Not just that the rate for Korean women in their 20s is higher than than that for men at all, but that also it’s almost triple. For the first time ever, this issue makes me genuinely scared for my daughters, whom I don’t live with any longer and don’t see day to day, and one of whom will be doing the university entrance exam this year.

What do you think needs to be said?

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

“Return to Seoul” (리턴 투 서울, Retour à Séoul) Now Playing in Korean Cinemas

Estimated reading & viewing time: 5 minutes.

Now, the most important thing to take away from this post is to appreciate what good taste I have. For *I* decided I liked this film, and booked a ticket, weeks before it became cool.

Next most important is the secret of how I learned of it: by subscribing to the YouTube channel 문다무비. Focusing on trailers of arthouse films with limited runs, and/or of repeat screenings of popular movies, if you live in Korea then it’s an absolute must.* How else, after all, can you persuade your dates that you’re smart and sophisticated? Other than by showing them selfies of you in empty theaters that is?

Unfortunately for my otherwise carefully-crafted persona, I ~~am an alcoholic, so~~ was much too busy to post about the film while it was still under most people’s radar. Fortunately for you though, it’s only just been released, so there’s still a week or so to see it. Also, in addition to glowing reviews by overseas critics, as well as a surprising amount of coverage in the Korean media, there’s Jia H. Jung’s Korea Times interview of Korean French adoptee Laure Badufle, co-writer and inspiration and inspiration for the film, which will do a much better job of persuading you to watch the film than I ever could have.

Especially when I haven’t actually mentioned the trifling detail of what the film is actually about yet:

Again unfortunately for my persona, I can’t hide how giddy with excitement I am to learn that Laure Badufle was born in the small town of Sacheon in South Gyeongsang Province before she was adopted, where I taught from 2001-2003; that will likely feature in the film, while neighboring Jinju, where I lived, definitely will. Also, because of the mixture of English, French, and Korean used, I’m relieved to see that Korean subtitles will be used, which will frankly make watching it much easier for me (I don’t know of anywhere with English subtitles sorry).

Yet despite all the recent attention, there’s still only 6 CGVs screening the film in Seoul, only 1 in Busan, and, ironically, none at all in Jinju. My fellow sophisticated Busanites at least though, will appreciate the perks that come with their fine tastes—in the form of an exclusive 44-person theater, with luxury armchairs!

*Update: I’ve just discovered artninecinema/아트나인 (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), which is even more focused on arthouse films, and also hosts various related events. Unfortunately most for Return to Seoul are already over, but on Tuesday the 16th there’s a screening with critic Jeong Seong-il in Seoul.

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

Unpopular Opinion: “Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982” Didn’t Hit Hard Enough

Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982 scores points for its raising of numerous feminist issues, but its treatment of them is frequently quite superficial. Here’s how one scene should have been handled differently, shattering stereotypes and suggesting solutions in the process.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes. Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash.

I didn’t like the novel Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982 much at all. There, I said it.

It’s basically a Korean Feminism 101 compendium, which means it didn’t really teach me anything new. Its constant shoehorning of facts and statistics into the narrative ruined it as a work of fiction too. But the biggest flaw was Jiyoung’s constant, infuriating lack of agency, with its flipside that author Cho Nam-joo didn’t really offer any solutions to the numerous hardships she faces either.

That doesn’t mean those hardships aren’t well-described. Like I said in my earlier review, I don’t think it’s a bad book at all. If you personally learned a great deal from it, and/or laughed, cried, and seethed in anger alongside Jiyoung, then I’m hardly going to claim that my own disappointment and frustration mean I’m somehow a much better, more knowledgeable feminist than you.

But Jiyoung’s lack of agency, and Cho’s lack of solutions, are absolutely a hill I’m prepared to die on. One scene in the film set in a subway toilet, albeit not mentioned in the book, illustrates both very well.

In it (55-56:00), Jiyoung (played by Jung Yu-mi) has to get off the subway to change her bawling infant daughter. Once that’s done, she realizes she needs to pee herself, but struggles in the narrow cubicle to hang up her heavy bag with her daughter strapped to her chest. Then, before she attempts again, she eyes the walls and lock nervously, remembering a recent molka (spycam) incident at the place she used to work. The scene then shifts to her home, implying she gave up and went there instead.

At first viewing, it’s difficult to find any fault here at all. Given that the burden of childcare falls overwhelmingly on women, then more men—or, indeed, more unsympathetic childless women—sometimes really do need to be literally shown just how much effort that actually involves. So too, do more men need to realize how stressful it is having to worry about being secretly filmed literally every single time you used any toilets outside of your home, as well as the potential health consequences if you understandably chose to avoid them.

Admittedly, that may seem like a lot to ask of a one-minute scene. Yet with just a little tweaking, it could have achieved those aims very effectively and forcefully. Instead, it largely fails, for three reasons.

The first is because, ironically, guys can relate to the practical difficulties. The indignity of using a cubicle while wearing a suit and carrying a backpack, desperately trying to prevent either from touching all the urine and smokers’ spittle on the floor, is absolutely no joke. As for childcare specifically, my ex-wife would naturally take our daughters with her to the female toilets when they were young, but it’s not like I wasn’t often in just as awkward and uncomfortable situations with them in other cramped locations.

Devoid of any wider context then, which I’ll provide myself in a moment, men’s own issues with using cubicles can mean women’s complaints fall on deaf ears, let alone calls to make women’s toilets bigger than men’s. (In fact, some men even consider the proposal to be reverse-sexism.) This lack of sympathy is misguided, of course, but I can understand it—unless men are flat out told or shown why not, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that more cubicles in place of urinals suffice for women’s need to sit down. That women somehow still have to queue nonetheless, delaying everyone? Pop culture reveals that’s just their own fault, thanks to all the primping, preening, and gossiping that really goes on in there.

Next, the scene doesn’t do enough to convey the visceral fear of spy cameras. This is indeed much harder for men to relate to, because they never have to think about them when using public toilets. So, something much more forceful than Jiyoung’s brief nervous glances was required.

Best would have been a tweak to an earlier scene, which I’ll outline in a moment. But as an emphasis in this one, a more realistic cubicle should have been shown, with every nook, cranny, screw, bolt, and indent jammed with toilet paper and gum. Rather than the toilet the scene was actually shot in, which, complete with a rare heater, was easily the most pristine in Korea, seeing what it’s actually like in women’s toilets would surely have rammed home just how big of a problem spycams are in Korea—in a way that abstract news reports never could.

Image source: The Fact.

That earlier scene (44:30-47:30) is where Jiyoung’s former coworkers discover a spycam had been set up in one of the female toilets, and that their male coworkers had been sharing the videos, followed by meeting Jiyoung in a coffee shop to let her know. In hindsight, it’s all over surprisingly quickly. Whereas in the book, the incident is dealt with over three pages, and among the many grave consequences the coworkers reveal in those is that one victim overdosed on meds—possibly intentionally. This is omitted entirely in the film, but fits with the film’s much more kid-gloves, family-friendly tone overall (In particular, Jiyoung’s husband, played by Gong Yoo, is a vastly more sympathetic and likeable character than in the book. Perhaps a truer portrayal was rejected as harmful to his image?). In its place, the coworkers are not so much in tears as almost laugh off the affair, one joking about borrowing Jiyoung’s daughter’s diapers from now on.

Not only would I have absolutely kept that line about the coworker’s potential suicide instead, I would have devoted a minute to visiting her in hospital too. Was that not worth it to show that spycams have very real, devastating effects on people’s lives?

But if I only had an extra minute’s grace, I would use it to shift Jiyoung’s toilet scene to a few years earlier in her life, before she stopped working to have her daughter. She would be in her smart workclothes and high heels at a hweshik, an (effectively mandatory) after-work dinner with her boss and coworkers, and have to go to the toilet as everyone was preparing to leave to go to a second round at a bar. She would take longer than many of the men would like, because—and herein lies that context, as explained by Sora Chemaly in Time. Because, yes, it really does need explaining, as it’s not at all just about sitting vs. standing:

Women need to use bathrooms more often and for longer periods of time because: we sit to urinate (urinals effectively double the space in men’s rooms) [note also, “Women empty their bladders more frequently than men and take longer – an average start-to-finish time of 60 seconds for men, but 90 for women”—James], we menstruate, we are responsible for reproducing the species (which makes us pee more), we continue to have greater responsibility for children (who have to use bathrooms with us), and we breastfeed (frequently in grotty bathroom stalls). Additionally, women tend to wear more binding and cumbersome clothes, whereas men’s clothing provides significantly speedier access. But in a classic example of the difference between surface “equality” and genuine equity, many public restrooms continue to be facilities that are equal in physical space, while favoring men’s bodies, experiences, and needs.

So when Jiyoung did rejoin the group, one of those impatient men could have made an all too common complaint or joke about holding everyone up for the sake of putting on her lipstick. To which she could have angrily pointed out it wasn’t her fault, for any number of the above reasons she could have chosen to highlight (and/or by having to spend time ramming toilet paper into all those potential camera holes, would have killed two birds with one stone). She could have followed that the obvious solution of “potty parity”—mandating 2:1 or 3:1 female to male toilet size ratios in all new building plans, and/or building more shared toilets—wasn’t at all reverse-sexism, but would benefit both women and the men who had to wait for them.

Indeed, this scene would not be unlike the—MILD SPOILER—final scene in the film, in which Jiyoung actually does confront a guy who accuses her of being a “mom roach,” living the high life gossiping in coffee shops, a parasite on her rich husband and the hard workers who pay the taxes for her holiday of maternity leave. Which is a rare credit to the film, and certainly a better alternative to her just slinking away in shame like in the book, then getting gaslighted by her husband when she complains about it. However, as it’s the conclusion to what’s actually an extremely saccharine-feeling film overall as discussed, it’s somewhat underwhelming as a climax—SPOILER ENDS.

With an extra minute still, I would also add a scene of her as a teenager, suffering from bladder and dehydration problems that her much fawned-over brother avoided, because he could obviously better endure Korean schools’ notoriously dirty and outdated toilets. But I digress. The point is, Jiyoung in the subway toilet with her daughter is just one scene of many that could have been dramatically improved. I curse having read the book Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World by Leslie Kern (2020) in particular, which means I can just no longer unsee the flaws in the scenes in either the book or film. Although, given the former’s popularity, now I do appreciate the value of seeing one’s own lived experiences represented in print, even if Cho neither presents Jiyoung as a role model nor offers any potential solutions to what she faces.

Those responsible for the film however, could have and should have responded to the backlash by taking up that mantle, exploiting the potential of the new visual medium to shock and shame. Instead, they wasted the opportunity by making it as saccharine as possible, all for the sake of people who had probably never actually read the book and were even less likely to watch the film.

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

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)

The Korean Word for “Stroller” is Literally “Milk-MOTHER-Vehicle.” Let’s Start Using This New Term That Includes Fathers Too.

Like or loathe political correctness, many everyday Korean terms are ripe for modernization.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Source, all screenshots: YouTube.

Similar to how over 60 percent of English words have Latin and Greek roots, over half of all Korean words are of Chinese origin. Once you realize this, learning Korean vocabulary becomes immeasurably easier. Buy this book in particular, which groups Korean words by their Chinese roots, and it’ll feel like all your Christmases have come at once:

From pages 78 & 102 of Miho Choo and William O’ Grady, Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension, 1996.

You may become so grateful for all these new connections between words suddenly being revealed to you though, that it’s easy to overlook how problematic some of them may be. To many native speakers too, for whom the words are so familiar that they would have little cause to think twice about their origins.

One such Chinese derivative is “모/母“, as shown in my scan above-left. Clearly, it is apt for almost all of those examples of its usage given there, and a much better Korean-speaker than I points out that it even makes some sense for the seeming exception of “모음/vowel” too. Learn that it’s also contained in the absent “유모차” (pron. yoo-mo-cha) however, which means “stroller” (N. Am.) or “pushchair/buggy” (U.K.), and suddenly that ancient Chinese root really begins to feel its age.

This video suggests adopting a much more inclusive alternative:

In the first screenshot below, the top line says “stroller,” followed by the corresponding Chinese characters for “milk,” “mother,” and “vehicle.” (Possibly, “breastmilk” may be more appropriate for the first character?) Below those, a definition: “A wagon for carrying a child after it is born.”

These next two are self-explanatory:

“[Because of this], does ‘stroller’ have a sexually discriminatory meaning?”

“Does the person who pushes the stroller absolutely have to be the mother?”

“Other caregivers can push it, yet the meaning of ‘mother’ is still contained within the word. Does this imply the person responsible for childcare is the mother?”

“Let’s not focus on the person pushing the stroller, and focus on the child instead. Please call it ‘유아차’ (pron. yoo-a-cha).”

And FYI, here’s that Chinese character for “child,” from page 149 of The Handbook:

Anyone reading this far needs no reminding of Korea’s plummeting birthrates, or of the gendered stereotypes surrounding childcare that work against remedying those—a mere new word is no solution. But it is logical, inoffensive, easy to remember, and can’t help but work at least a little against those stereotypes. So why not use it?

Naturally then, the YouTube video has many more dislikes than likes. Its origins are suprisingly opaque for a public campaign too (“공공언이 바꾸기 캠페인,” or the “Campaign to change how we speak to other members of the community”) and for a long time my searches only brought screenshots of that video and of various others’ in the campaign, on sites of the sort where things are generally only posted to be ridiculed. The video does end with a note that the campaign was done in conjunction with the Seoul City Government however (or possibly “by”; “함께” can vary according to context sorry), and eventually I realized I’d be able to find the video and others on non-gendered, but still problematic words in the campaign on their website itself, which indeed were posted there in October and September 2018 respectively. But there was still no news or further information available.

With such abysmal promotion, frankly you have to wonder why the Seoul City Government even bothered making them.

But in the process of looking, I was reminded of the Gender Equality Week conducted by the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family conducted that July:

Which I’m happy to say did receive a lot of press. Quite possibly, the the Seoul City Government’s campaign was actually one of those efforts alluded to at the end of the press release above (but which didn’t get any mention on the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family’s website either!):

Either way, it was added to by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s awareness video in January this year. Possibly that explains the stroller video’s abrupt appearance on the MBC YouTube channel that same month (used in this post):

From my own experience, using gender-neutral words takes minimal effort, once you make the conscious decision to. That said, I do understand the laziness in not doing so, and the resistance against being told what to do. If you meet such a person then, perhaps start by asking them, say, why “uterus” should be “자궁” (pron. ja-goong) which literally means “子宮/house for a son,” instead of the suggested “포궁” (pron. po-goong), which means ” 細宮/house for a cell/baby.” Once they realize how much work defending that absurdity would be, then surely they’ll realize all the other sexist, archaic words aren’t really worth the effort either!

Related posts:

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

The Surprising Reason Koreans Don’t Buy Red Underwear for Valentine’s Day

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes. Image sources, edited: Summer Yolo Shop, KoBiz.

Go clothes shopping in East Asia at the moment, and it seems impossible to avoid all the red underwear. But it’s not because of Valentine’s Day. It’s because red is considered a lucky color by the Chinese, and the Lunar New Year’s celebration is just around the corner.

Unlike loud red clothes, red underwear will suit any wardrobe. Those whose Chinese Zodiac falls in the coming year for instance, when ironically they’ll need extra luck, can don it without revealing their age. So too Mahjong Players in Macau, who hope to leave their opponents seeing a different kind of red.

All these associations explain why “Triumph, the biggest underwear-maker in Asia, says its sales of red items are usually ten times higher than usual in Singapore and Malaysia around the Lunar New Year,” according to the following 2015 BBC report (0:35):

But it’s not just those countries with large Chinese populations that fall for red—Japanese stores also have big promotions. And Valentine’s Day can still be a very big deal: as the then Director of Triumph, Doy Teo above brightly noted, Lunar New Year’s fell very close to Valentine’s Day that year, making red underwear not just a good romantic gift. They will be even closer together this year.

Buying red on such an occasion seems a natural fit for young Korean consumers especially. Consider how Valentine’s Day has already been expanded into 11 other monthly holidays on various romantic themes, each with their own colors. Other non-native holidays, most notably Christmas, are not so much family occasions as rare opportunities to escape parents and spend time with partners or friends. “Couple clothes” are popular, and worn all year-round. Red is the color of the “Red Devils” soccer supporters, who the Korean media already portrays as young women in red, skimpy clothing. And in particular, red has many of the same lucky connotations in Korean culture too. As explained by Jang Jang-sik, Research Institute Director at the National Folklore Museum of Korea, it’s traditionally been worn by soldiers or those doing something dangerous, gifted to students doing exams, and there is a folk belief that it helps women who are finding it difficult to conceive a son:

국립민속박물관 장장식 학예연구관은 “전쟁이나 위험지역으로 떠날 때나 도박판에 갈 때도 붉은 속옷을 입는다”며 ” ‘수험생이 붉은 속옷을 입거나 지니고 있으면 합격한다’ ‘아들을 못 낳는 여자가 아들을 낳은 여자 속옷을 입으면 아들을 낳을 수 있다’는 속설도 있다”고 했다.

Chosun Ilbo, 7 March 2009.

There’s also a tradition of buying it for good luck from newly-opened stores. It rapidly sold out at the opening of Shinsegae’s Centum City branch in Busan in 2009 for instance, as well as at the opening of the Hyundai Department Store in Pangyo, Seongnam in 2015 (below), and at the re-opening of a Lotte Mall in Busan last July (video below):

Source: Korean Fashion + Tex News

Where then, is all the red underwear for lovers this Valentine’s Day?

To everyone’s relief, I have not done extensive field research in Korean lingerie stores to confirm its absence. The stores’ websites however, display no more red underwear than usual, nor do they have any red-themed promotions. Also, unlike couple outerwear, couple underwear has always been relatively expensive and limited in options in Korea, as I discovered before one frustrating anniversary recently. As friends later pointed out, if something’s only for each other to see, then what on Earth is the point?

But if lingerie stores are not even bothering to offer much in way of red at all, on a combined Lunar New Year’s and Valentine’s when it should sell more than ever, there must be some alternative, non-romantic connotations that the color has in Korea.

A tradition of buying red lingerie for one’s mother would certainly fit the bill.

I first learned about this via an inquiry made to the Korea Studies Mailing List by Ron Lieber, a journalist for the New York Times:

…I write the Your Money column for the New York Times — all about anything and everything that hits you in the wallet. I write often about families and money — how not just dollars but also wisdom and values are taught and passed between generations.

On that note, over the years Korean-American friends of mine have told me about a tradition where new college graduates (or teenagers or college students or even some older adults getting their first paychecks at a new, prestigious workplace) buy a gift for their parents after they start their first full-time jobs. I’ve heard about everything from handing the entire paycheck over in cash to buying red thermal underwear for both parents or lingerie for their mothers.

And I was further intrigued by the answer provided by Dr. Barbara Wall, then Research Assistant in Korean Studies at the Asien-Afrika-Institut in Hamburg:

…if you search for first salary 첫월금+ present 선물 many of the results you get mention red underwear 빨간 내복. I am no underwear expert, but what people say is that the custom of wearing “modern” underwear in Korea started only in the 1960s at which time underwear was a luxury item. Dyeing nylon at that time was not easy and worked best with red. That is said to be the reason for the red underwear as symbol of filial piety. Red is also said to have the ability of blocking everything “evil”…

Stephen Redeker at Gwangju News adds:

There is an old saying that one should buy red “long johns” for one’s parents after receiving the first paycheck from your first job. People tend to give other gifts to show appreciation to their parents, but the red long johns have an explanation. Back in the day, when floor heating was not as prevalent as it is now, people wore long underwear at night. Red-colored underwear was more expensive than the other drab colors offered at the time and therefore more desirable. Anyone who still observes this belief will probably buy red boxers, briefs, bras or panties for their parents.

Numerous Korean sources confirm. In addition to the information provided in the video below (apologies to region-blocked Korean viewers), it’s interesting to note that in 2009, over a quarter of respondents would buy red underwear for their parents upon receiving their first paycheck.

But is this still the case in 2018? Another source argues that it’s outdated, as parents’ memories of freezing winters and 24/7 thermal underwear-wearing in the 1960s and ’70s fade. This association with the middle-aged and elderly is evident in Japan too.

We must address the red elephants in the room too. “Underwear” is a wide-ranging term. Buying red thermal underwear for your parents, or long johns, is a far cry from buying sexy lingerie for them; as the Korean sources suggest, I’d wager children’s gifts are almost entirely the former. Also, even in Hong Kong, where the latter is supposedly all the rage, less than 1% of Chinese female undergraduates actually preferred that bra color:

Source: Sujoung Cha and Kristina Shin, “Hong Kong Chinese Breast Cathexis and Brassiere Design Preferences”, The Research Journal of the Costume Culture. 2011. Aug, 19(4): 780-793.

I also couldn’t help but notice that 60% preferred black. Because in An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality (2007), although author Jill Fields frustratingly doesn’t mention red at all, she does have a groundbreaking (albeit controversial) chapter on the connotations of black lingerie in the US, which she tied to stereotypes of African-Amercian hypersexuality. Not only do those obviously not apply to Hong Kong however, but Chinese lingerie-makers themselves boggle at the differences in consumer preferences between borders. Which suggests it’s misguided to assume Pan-Asian similarities in tastes:

Guanyun workshops operate their own online stores in addition to producing wholesale stock for other brands. They are increasingly looking to sell overseas, which now only accounts for about a tenth of the county’s yearly output. But understanding the preferences of foreign customers remains an obstacle, according to [lingerie manufacturer] Lei. “There’s a huge gap in the aesthetics of different countries,” he explains. Sexy cop costumes are popular in Brazil, which Lei says is because Brazilians don’t like the police; French maid costumes don’t sell well in Poland because, he theorizes, the two countries don’t have a good relationship; and Japanese customers love any and all seductive outfits. The lingerie tastes of most European countries — except France and Italy — are still riddles to him. “Every collection that we deliberately designed has failed in their markets,” Lei says. “Germany borders France, right? But their taste is the most difficult thing for me to figure out.”

“Unzipping China’s Lingerie Capital,” Sixth Tone.

What do you think then, does explain Koreans’ distaste for red underwear this Valentine’s? Lingering unsexy associations with parents? Associations of red with the psuedo-communist North? Or some other reasons? Please let me know in the comments!

Related Posts:

Underwear a secret gift between lovers? Meet the traditional Chinese dudou (Speaking of China)
Free The Nipple in Korea? Why Not? Uncovering the history of a taboo
How Slut-Shaming and Victim-Blaming Begin in Korean Schools
Teaching Public Safety Through Objectifying AND Slut-Shaming Women Was a Bizarre Low, Even for Korea
Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 7: Keeping abreast of Korean bodylines
Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 4: Girls are different from boys
Korean Sociological Image #82: Pink it and shrink it!

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

Feminazi Killjoys Target Cute Children’s Song

And I’m one of them:

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(Source: Instiz)

Here’s a transcript:

‘아빠 힘내세요’라는 동요 아시죠.

Anchor: You know the song Cheer Up Father, yes?

어깨 축 쳐진 아빠에게 아이들이 용기를 줬던 노래인데 이 노래가 양성평등을 저해한다는 판정이 나와 문화관광부가 해명자료까지 내는 소동이 벌어졌습니다.

This is the song which gives encouragement to exhausted, depressed fathers, but it has been recently criticized for hindering gender equality. In response, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism issued a statement clarifying what the song is really about.

무슨일인지, 박철현 기자가 보도합니다.

Park Cheol-hyon reports:

“아빠 힘내세요, 우리가 있잖아요”

1997년 발표된 동요 ‘아빠 힘내세요’입니다.

“Dad, cheer up/be strong, you have us”: this is the children’s song released in 1997.

“IMF때 굉장히 많이 들어봤고요. 아이들이 보자마자 불러줬을 때 저절로 힘도 났고..”

Cho Hong-joon, Person on the street #1:

“I heard this song a lot during the IMF Crisis. It cheered me up when my kids sang it to me”.

그런데 문화관광부는 이 노래가 우리 사회 양성 평등 의식을 해치는 대표적인 사례 중 하나라는 연구 결과를 발표했습니다.

However, in a statement of research results released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, this song was given as an example of something hindering gender equality awareness.

이 노래가 경제활동을 하는 것은 남성이라는 고정 관념을 키워준다는 겁니다.

This song encourages the notion that it is only men that should partake in economic activity.

특히 엄마가 요리하면서 아빠를 기다리는 만화 동영상은 여성은 가사 노동만 한다는 선입견을 심어줄 수 있다고 지적했습니다.

In particular, a popular accompanying video for the song depicts women cooking while waiting for their husbands, perpetuating traditional gender roles.

[James: Actually, only one of videos shown in the report does that; it can be viewed here.]

“여자들도 많이 일을 하고 더 힘들어요. 여자가 들어봤을 때는 별로인 것 같아요.”

Park Hyeon-joo, Person on the street #2:

“Women work a lot, and it’s harder for us. When they hear it, women don’t care for this song.”

하지만 황당하다는 반응이 많습니다.

But many people replied that the criticisms were nonsense.

“노래는 노래일 뿐이지, 거기에 그런 의미를 부여한다면 그게 더 문제..”

Jeon Byeong-rok, person on the street #3:

“This song is just a song, it only becomes problematic if you read too much into it.”

노래를 만든 현직 초등학교 교사 한수성씨는 가사는 아내가 썼고 이 노래로 국무총리 표창까지 받았다며 황당해했습니다.

The song writer Han Soo-seong, who is an elementary school teacher, said that the lyrics were written by his wife, and pointed out that he received an award from the Prime Minister for it.

“가사가 그렇게 깊은 뜻을 담고 있는 지 몰랐습니다. 말도 안되는 거죠”

“I don’t think that the lyrics have that deeper [sexist] meaning. It’s ridiculous to say so.”

논란이 커지자 문화관광부는 양성 평등 교육에 참고하라고 진행된 연구 결과일 뿐 유해 가요로 지정한 건 아니라고 해명했습니다.

In response to the controversy, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism clarified that the research was only conducted to further the cause of gender equality, not naming and shaming. (End.)

This report is actually a few years old. But the topic still regularly pops up in my Google Keyword Alerts and on Twitter, albeit usually only leading to Ilbe and DC Inside users having a good laugh at the feminazis. Emboldened perhaps, by the Ministry’s criticisms falling on such deaf ears.

Because it’s still taught to just about every Korean child, even those too young to understand it:

Demanding it of guests is still part of the repertoire of the variety-show hosts, used to elicit infantilized gender performances from girl-group members. For instance, from 20 year-old Yoo-a of Oh My Girl below (which is not to say her tears aren’t genuine):

It’s still such an ingrained part of Korean culture, that even insurance company employees will name their project teams after it, and the media will raise it in reports about the dutiful daughters of male politicians (as well as commenting on their beauty):

(Source: Asiae)

And finally, because Korean fathers still work among the longest hours in the world, and wish they could be home in time to see their families. As this recent feel-good advertisement makes clear:

Who else but a feminazi would deprive Korean fathers of such a small source of joy?

But wait. Most of those examples above aren’t exactly compelling reasons to continue teaching the song to children. What’s more, even if you still don’t find the song problematic, or how it’s used, there remains the inconvenient fact that MOTHERS WORK TOO:

(“Women work a lot, and it’s harder for us. When they hear it, women don’t care for this song.”)

Is Park Hyeon-ju referring to work inside the house, outside, or both? A song about the former would hardly challenge traditional gender roles. Yet even that would be an improvement on something that only acknowledges the work of men. Twenty years after Cheer Up Father was written, it’s high time to acknowledge its flaws, and to begin teaching children something much more inclusive.

My suggestion is for the government to arrange a national songwriting competition. It should be determined by popular vote (the public tends to be better judges of what’s catchy), with the winning entry to replace Cheer Up Father in kindergartens and elementary schools.

Do any readers know of any examples like that from other countries? How did they go?

Update: A friend mentioned it would be a pity to lose such a catchy song, and jokingly suggested replacing appa “아빠” (father) with eomppa “엄빠,” a combination of appa and eomma “엄마” (mother) which is actually a word already, although one of those ones everyone knows but has never actually used. But I’d be all for that, especially if the videos and songbook illustrations were changed accordingly. While using the word would be awkward at first, much of this blog is about Korean companies’ and the media’s proclivity for inventing new labels and buzzwords, many—most—of which were also very awkward at first, but some of which have definitely stuck. So why not?

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What role do Neo-Confucian notions of the “life force” (ki) play in buttressing modern Korean patriarchy?

(Warm Nest by Eugenia Loli; CC BY-NC 2.0)

Many years ago,Taeyeon Kim’s “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society” was my Communist Manifesto of Korean gender relations. It was short, to the point, and instantly melded everything I knew about the subject into a simple, coherent narrative. It didn’t galvanize me into taking up arms against the bourgeoisie exactly, but it did encourage me to study more, ultimately leading to this blog. Take these quick excerpts to see why:

First, from page 99 (references removed; italics in original):

“To understand the Neo-Confucian body, it is essential to understand the concept of ki. A material force which links the body and mind into one system, ki flows through all things, giving them form and vitality….There is no distinction between the self and the universe. Neo-Confucian men were encouraged to let go of ego and become selfless, that is to have no consciousness of an individual and separate self apart from others….Ki was passed from parent to child throughout the generations, acting as a material link between ancestors and descendants….The family composed a unified body through ki, and the identity of the family and self and family was continuous and undifferentiated.”

Then, from page 100 (ditto):

Neo-Confucian scholars considered women to have inferior ki to that of men. This notion continues to be held today. One study of a village in Korea found that women were believed to be inferior to men because they did not carry the life-giving force (ki) that men did. Women were believed to be passive receptacles of the life which men implanted in them; they played no active part in creating life. Such incubation was perhaps the most important role of a woman’s body in Korea. Her body was a vessel through which the male line and ki could be perpetuated. As such, the most important physical traits for a woman were features that revealed her potential to bear children—particularly boys. “During the Yi [Choson] Dynasty, the attribute valued above all others in a prospective bride was her potential capacity to bear sons. Compared to this, her beauty and wealth were secondary.”

Upon reading that, suddenly I saw a Matrix-like ki (기) pervading everything, providing the ideological bedrock to the many, blatantly patriarchal aspects of Korean society. For instance: Koreans’ preference for sons and consequent sex ratio problem (resolved, but with a legacy of an excess of increasingly misogynistic 20-something men); the hoju system (호주제), only abolished in 2008, under which only fathers or husbands could be heads and/or legal representatives of a family; the traditional (and still prevailing) custom of only having men perform jesa (제사), or ancestor worship rights, and usually only at the eldest son’s home; and Korea’s extremely low adoption rates, with 70% of those that are adopted domestically are girls. Indeed, as The Economist explains of that last:

Traditional Confucian notions of the bloodline family still hold sway, as do aspects of primogeniture. Women who cannot bear children face strong social stigma, as do orphans and adoptees, whose chances of getting a job and marrying are limited. Many adoptions in South Korea are concealed from family and friends—and, in many cases, the adopted child. Parents ensure that the baby’s blood type matches their own; some mothers even fake pregnancy. All this sends the message that adoption is shameful, in turn discouraging more of it. The secrecy also explains why 95% of infants adopted within South Korea are less than one-month old: young enough to be passed off as biological children. A majority of adopted babies are girls so as to avoid difficulties over inheritance and at ancestral family rites, which are normally carried out by bloodline sons.

(Source: Netizenbuzz)

Of course, ultimately I did realize that ki didn’t explain all that much actually. That, alas, Korean gender relations remained a messy subject, and that I still have a lifetime of learning about it ahead of me. But I hadn’t come across anything to challenge Taeyeon Kim’s characterization of the concept either, so I retained my lingering affection for it.

Then I listened to an episode about eunuchs on the BBC Radio 4 podcast In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg. That week, it featured Michael Hoeckelmann talking about eunuchs in China, Karen Radner about them in the Assyrian Empire, and Shaun Tougher in the Roman one. Jumping ahead to the sections which made do a double-take (several, in fact, as I’m sure they will to you too):

11:20

Michael Hoeckelmann) Most eunuchs came from the lower strata of society. So, if not the eunuch himself had decided to undergo castration—there are some cases in Chinese history where some eunuchs are known to have castrated themselves—then the decision rested with the family. So families that could not afford the Confucian education that was necessary and required for [a career in officialdom], they would decide to have one of their sons castrated, and to send him into the palace, in the hope that once he rose to a considerable position of power he would help his own family, his own kin.

26:36

Karen Radner) [The eunuchs, unlike] all the other people in Assyria, did not identify themselves with reference to their father’s name. Everyone else was such and such son of such and such, they were not. That’s very important. Also, as we’ve already discussed, a key attraction [for the royal family] is that they cannot father children; that’s hugely important in a society where the existence of the family across generations is one of the key incentives of human life…you achieved eternal life by having children who would invoke your name in regular rituals. Obviously that couldn’t happen with a eunuch…the royal family instead took on that responsibility. One can describe the eunuchs almost as adopted children of the royal family.

Melvyn Bragg)…But then what happened in China, as you began to say Michael, the eunuchs began to adopt children in order that these children would do exactly as Karen was saying—have prayers or whatever…ceremonies after their death to keep them alive as their ancestors.

Michael Hoeckelmann) Yes, indeed. And just as Karen was saying, like in ancient Assyria, kinship and family was all important in China…and when eunuchs were castrated they even kept what was formerly attached to their bodies in order to be buried with them (the so-called “Three Treasures”) kept in a jar because they had to show them to regulators at the imperial court. Anyway, so the eunuchs start to adopt children at a very early stage in order to bequeath their property and in order to continue the family line. Because what they had done, or what had been done to them—the castration—was actually a breach of filial piety; they were not able to continue the family line…at least not biologically.

I know what you’re thinking: Ancient China is not Korea. Also, if Taeyeon Kim’s definition of ki has substance to it (and, my youthful naivety aside, there’s still no reason to suppose otherwise), then it’s difficult to believe that it hasn’t very much provided an ideological buttress to various aspects of Korean patriarchy today. And probably in China also, where, among other things, boys command a price twice that of girls in the lucrative trade in kidnapped children.

But, if it turns out that in Korea too, jesa was and/or is more important than continuing ki—indeed, really quite separate and distinct from it—then I’m still left feeling a little chastised that I came to accept something so readily without examining it properly, simply because it provided a handy, scholarly confirmation of my pre-existing views.

But what you’ve also probably thinking is that Taeyeon Kim is just one source. And, although I’ve read more about Neo-Confucianism since then, most recently The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender edited by Li Chenyang (2000), I have to admit I’ve read nothing about ki specifically. So, on that note, let me end this post with not a revelation sorry, but a), if nothing else, a link to a very interesting podcast for you to take away from it; and b), my again posing the question provided in the introduction: what role, if any, do Neo-Confucian notions of ki play in modern Korean patriarchy?

Thanks in advance to any more learned readers than I who can provide any clarification, and/or suggest links or books for further reading. Also, please feel free to raise just about anything (Neo)-Confucianism-related in the comments, including any interesting stories about what your Korean family and/or friends do during Chuseok or Seolnal, and their attitudes towards the notion of women performing jesa. Thanks!

Related Posts:

Calling all Korean-Western Couples!

(Source, edited: ufunk)

I’ve been asked to pass on the following by Dr. Daniel Nehring, a British sociology lecturer:

My project looks at the experiences of Korean-Western couples currently living in Korea, of any sexual orientation. It involves conversational interviews of approximately one hour, covering various aspects of everyday life in a transnational relationship; I interview the Western participants in English, while my Korean (female) colleague interviews the Korean participants in Korean. I work according to the code of ethical conduct of the British Sociological Association, so participation is confidential and anonymous, which includes not divulging one partner’s responses to the other(!). I am looking for participants aged 25 to 45 who are settled in Korea and currently live in a long-term transnational relationships. I could meet participants in a place of their choice; alternatively, the interview(s) could take place on Skype. I would be happy to answer any further questions about my research; my e-mail address is d.nehring@worc.ac.uk.

I’d add that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Daniel several times, and that he has conducted similar projects in Mexico and China; see here for one of his journal articles on the latter, which is still ongoing, while the Mexican interviews ultimately became part of a book.

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).

Book Giveaway: Labyrinth of the Past by Zhang Yiwei (2014)

(Source: Tuttle)

Sorry that I haven’t posted for so long everyone. I was very busy with offline work for two weeks, then I caught a terrible cold which lasted another two weeks…which means now I’m busier than ever. But, I would like to get writing here again, and I can think of no better way to start than by offering a book giveaway!

For this first one, I’ve selected Labyrinth of the Past by Zhang Yiwei. It’s a good book, but frankly it was a frustrating read for me personally, because the publisher’s website gave me the wrong impression of what to expect. Know what it’s really about though, and you’ll enjoy it from the get-go.

Here’s the offending description, which has two big problems:

Labyrinth of the Past is a collection of short stories that explore the lives of young women raised by single mothers in China, a country that is unforgiving to unmarried women and their children.

A dark, yet engrossing look at the lives of these girls, each story examines their personal struggles with family and the greater world around them. Coping with the stigma of being the daughter of a single mother, most of these women can’t seem to form anything but dysfunctional relationships, from mothers to friends to lovers.

While often frank and terribly bleak, these stories provide a vivid and real view of the women who struggle against a history they can’t change, in a culture that has difficulty accepting them.

That stigma surrounding unwed mothers is very real in Korea, so I partially chose the book to gain some insights into what it was like living with it. You can imagine my surprise and disappointment then, when it never even came up. Primarily, because none of the mothers are “unmarried” in the sense of never having married, but are all divorcees or widows instead. Which, given China’s skyrocketing divorce rates since Deng’s reforms, probably doesn’t carry any stigma at all:

The number of divorces has risen steadily in the new millennium, with one in five marriages now ending in separation. In 2006, the divorce rate was about 1.4 per one thousand people—twice what it was in 1990, and more than three times what it was in 1982….The number of divorces in the first three months of 2011 increased 17.1% year-on-year….Beijing leads the country with nearly 40 per cent of marriages ending in divorce, followed closely by Shanghai.

Behind the Red Door: Sex in China, Richard Burger (2012), p. 59

I’m happy to be corrected by any readers raised by female divorcees or widows, and/or with more knowledge of China, who may be able to read between the lines and see the influence of a stigma on the characters where I can’t. But if so, it’s still a very peripheral theme at best, and should really be removed from the description on the website (fortunately, it’s not mentioned on the back cover, which I wish I’d read instead).

(Source: Matthijs Koster. CC BY 2.0)

The second problem is that the book is about the lives of young women, yet two of the seven stories—”Scab Addiction” and “No Choosing Today”—are entirely about the characters’ childhoods. In particular, in the former the character-narrator is revealed to be still in high school, making it a terrible choice for an opening story. Had I picked up the book in a store, expecting it to delve straight into the lives of adult Chinese women, I would have rejected it on the spot.

Again, this is not a criticism of the book per se, and of course all the remaining stories are indeed from women’s perspectives, with “A Good Year”, “Love,” and “Summer Days” all covering dating, marriage, and/or sex. “I Really Don’t Want to Come” too, covering the narrator’s increasing disdain for kowtowing to ancestors as she grows older, and frustration with what the ceremony means for her split family, is something many Koreans (and their foreign partners) will surely relate to. (“Memory is the Slowest” though, I just found confusing—I’m still not really sure what it’s about). But it’s also a real pity, because, once I got over the disappointment of reading something very different to what I’d been sold, and was able to take a fresh look at the book, ironically I came to find Zhang Yiwei’s depictions of childhood to be one of its biggest strengths. Her ability to evoke its timelessness, the sense of children’s whole worlds confined to just a few streets and fields, and our fuzzy, malleable memories of that phase of our lives is really quite remarkable (frankly, it immediately reminded me of the magic realism of 100 Years of Solitude), and that should be highlighted in its marketing.

Another strong point is showing how profoundly the issue of housing impacts ordinary Chinese citizens’ lives. That may sound rather boring at first, but it looms large in a country with such breakneck development, huge internal migration, and consequent vast urban/rural and home-owning/renting divides, and accordingly it’s a constant concern for many of the characters in the book, some of whom are stuck in limbo because their property is in an absentee husband or father’s name. Indeed, as if to rub that in, recently the government manipulated the ownership laws in a bid to thwart the divorce rate, taking a great leap backward for women’s rights in the process:

…the Chinese government has expressed alarm at the soaring number of divorces and its threat to the traditional Chinese family. In 2011, China took controversial steps to discourage divorce, reinterpreting the marriage law so that residential property is no longer regarded as jointly owned and divided equally after a divorce. Instead, it will belong exclusively to the spouse who bought it or whose name is on the deed, which is usually the husband, even if the wife helped pay for the property. This means that upon divorce many women might find themselves homeless.

At a time of soaring property prices, real estate is often a couple’s most valuable possession, and the revised law has caused many women to consider more carefully whether they really want to get married. Chinese media reported that marriage registrants plummeted as much as 30 percent in some cities weeks after the revised law was announced in 2011.

Behind the Red Door: Sex in China, Richard Burger (2012), p. 61

Update, August 2015: For more details, I highly recommend listening to this Office Hours podcast interview of journalist Leta Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2014).

(Source: Anita. CC BY 2.0)

The verdict? I can’t lie—despite its strengths, the cover price of $13.95 is a little steep for such a slim book (160 pages), especially with some of the stories being so frustratingly short. But it’s definitely worth the $10-ish or even cheaper on various websites it’s selling for at the moment, especially if you know what you’re in for.

But first, remember I have two free copies to give away! Please just leave a comment below, and a week from now I’ll ~~pretend to~~ select two of you at random to receive them (make sure your email address is correct!). ~~Really though, if you’d like to get to the head of the queue, please do bribe me with interesting comments about single mothers and/or something China-related!~~

What are you waiting for? ;)

Sunday Fun: Bottoms!

My 8 year-old daughter Alice is really into comics these days, often hiding our home phone under her pillow to keep reading when she’s supposed to be asleep. To my chagrin, she couldn’t care less if the female characters have huge eyes though, and/or no noses. But yesterday, I noticed the above while she was watching the opening to the anime adaptation of Hidamari Sketch. It was a great opportunity to start teaching her about female characters’ typical poses too.

Cue 20 minutes of giggling at the bottoms in the Escher Girls blog, which ultimately had the whole family trying—and failing—to imitate some of the pictures ~~(although I was pretty good myself actually)~~. Naturally, we quickly skipped past some of the more inappropriate ones, and Alice still has no idea why female characters are so often drawn in a “boobs and butt” style. But at least she’s aware of the phenomenon now, and, with gentle prodding from me, will hopefully think more about it herself as she gets older.

For now though, she’s still very much a 8 year-old girl, and I can hardly fault her for that. Much of those 20 minutes were also spent by her and her 6 year-old sister Elizabeth saying “와! 예쁘다…” (Wow! They’re so pretty…), and today this post took a long time to write because she kept on stopping me to tell me all about the characters in Hidamari Sketch. Including Yoshinoya above, who’s supposedly a high school teacher (sigh)…

I Read a Book: Susan Blumberg-Kason’s Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong (2014)

Let me be honest: Good Chinese Wife is not something I would normally read.

Susan’s ex-husband was Chinese; my wife is Korean. Susan’s relationship goes from friends to engaged in less than two minutes; we lived together for years, and had lots of wild sex before I proposed. Their marriage rapidly turned sour; we just celebrated our tenth anniversary. They married, had a child, and divorced way back in the 1990s; I’m really only interested in Chinese attitudes towards dating, sex, and marriage in the 2010s. And so on.

I’m still grateful for receiving a reviewer’s copy, organized by Jocelyn Eikenburg of the Speaking of China blog (see here for many more bloggers’ reviews). But first impressions? I expected it to be very outdated, and that it would have little to offer readers with Korean partners.

I was dead wrong, on both counts.

Good Chinese Wife begins in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, where Susan is doing a graduate degree (she previously spent a year there as an exchange student in 1990). Then in her early-twenties, she soon becomes smitten with Cai, an older mainlander from Wuhan. She starts tutoring him English in her dorm room; unbeknownst to her, other students consider them already dating. This prompts him to open up and explain he’s already been married and has a child, revealing all as a prelude to showing he is now interested in dating Susan. Because in China, Cai explains, “couples traditionally only date if they plan to marry.”

This sounded very antiquated. But as it turns out, dating in China is still not at all like in the West, nor even Korea. In Behind the Red Door: Sex in China (2012), Richard Burger explains that even in the big cities, “serial dating” is frowned upon as immoral or promiscuous. Instead, “most Chinese women still believe it is best to date only man and to marry him. Once the man invites her on a second or third date, he is indicating that he’s serious, that he is hoping for an exclusive Behind the Red Door Sex in China relationship, and that marriage might be on the cards.” Whereas for women, inviting her to meet her parents “means she expects to marry him, and Chinese men understand this arrangement.” What’s more, the average age of marriage for Chinese men was only 24 in 2010; for women, 22 (in Korea, 31.8 and 28.9 respectively).

So, I understood Cai. And, being head-over-heels ever since they’d met, why Susan quickly accepted his proposal, before so much as a kiss—it sounded sweet. Her frankness about her feelings and mistakes is also a definite charm, especially for someone who likewise fell very easily in love at that age.

But that’s only 36 pages into the book. For the remaining 300, sympathy turns to constant frustration and exasperation with Susan’s rushing into marriage, then her frequent acquiescence towards her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. These feelings are only amplified by knowing that she’s doomed to fail.

In an interview, Susan says her problems were more because “He told me from the get-go that he had certain conditions for our marriage. Those are things I ignored or thought I could eventually get him to change. That should have been my red flag, not the [6 months] in which we became engaged and married.” (Likewise many happily-married Koreans, for whom such whirlwind courtships are also common, would surely bristle at the suggestion that they should have taken things slower.)

I disagree. From Cai’s belief that women are especially “dirty” in the summer, once all but physically forcing an exhausted Susan to bathe in a rat-infested bathroom, to his bizarre, surprisingly submissive relationship with eccentric professor friend ‘Japanese Father’ (“He thinks it’s not good [for us] to have sex relations more than once a week”), most of Susan’s later issues with Cai could have been discovered if they’d spent (much) more time together before the wedding day—and/or resolved if an expensive wedding wasn’t already looming over them.

Still, it does make for a good page turner. There is also merit in studying a bad relationship to learn what to avoid, and much about this one that will already be familiar to those with Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese partners. New and expecting parents in Korea, for example, will sympathize with Susan’s expectations to conform to man yue, the belief that mothers shouldn’t bathe or go outdoors in their first month—it mirrors the Korean one of sanhoojori. Also, for those couples planning to move to a Western country, her discussion of Cai’s difficulties with adjusting to life in San Francisco will be very beneficial. Her avoidance of tiresome Orientalist stereotypes is especially welcome, with her ex-parents-in-law coming across as old-fashioned but lovely, and Chinese men portrayed no better or worse than Western ones.

That said, I am reminded of a book for couples I once flicked through, which encouraged them to discuss their expectations of marriage in great detail before committing. With checklists ranging from beliefs about circumcision and determining which cities were best for both partners’ careers, to dividing the housework and setting dating policies for potential teenage children, that approach would be much too calculating for most couples. Marriage, after all, is ultimately about making a scary but exciting leap of faith with someone. But when partners come from such wildly different backgrounds, and bring such different expectations into marriage? Susan’s experience teaches readers that for international couples in particular, perhaps they really should learn the answers to those questions sooner rather than later.

Good Chinese Wife back cover

One minor quibble was all the hyperbole. Not to diminish Susan’s genuine fears for herself and her son at times, but did it lead me to expect a story involving forged passports and bribed border guards(!). Also, I disliked the format of numerous short chapters, with so little happening in some that they felt like diary entries. But that is just a personal preference.

The verdict? Good Chinese Wife is well worth the US$14.99 cover price (16,410 won at What the Book), and a definite eye-opener about the value of reading more about relationships in this part of the world, especially with such limited options for reading about Korean ones specifically. Please do leave your suggestions (and reviewer copies!) for more like it, and/or for blogs.

Finding a place to call your own – My Place

I’ve been asked to pass on the following:

[Press statement]

Finding a place to call your own – My Place

Foreigners in Korea often find themselves caught between cultures. Whether you are adjusting to your new English teaching job, working with Korean colleagues, in a relationship with a Korean partner, or even just travelling as a tourist, you are sometimes baffled, at times intrigued, and certainly trying to navigate through the differences you encounter. For people who find themselves in a transnational context, the documentary <My Place> will speak volumes.

The heart-felt film, <My Place>, depicts an intimate portrait of the director’s own family struggling to overcome past wounds of reverse migration from Canada to Korea. Family members, each in a different way, had to deal with the hurdles of societal norms, a repressive education system, and gender inequality dealt to them by the Korean society. This illuminating film explores clashes between Western and Eastern cultures, traditional values versus the contemporary, and broader themes of societal normalcy, identity, and belonging.

The film begins when the director’s little sister decides to become an unwed single mom. The little sister decides to raise the child in Canada as she never felt welcome in her parent’s homeland, South Korea. As the film progresses, the lives of parents, intertwined with Korea’s modern history is discovered, while family members try to come together to face the challenges of raising a new baby outside of the traditional family form. While following the trajectories of family members, constantly on the move in search of their own place, the film seemingly concludes that ‘My place’ isn’t so much a spot on the map, but a place that lies in the relationships that one holds close to their heart.

After touring the film festival circuit, while winning numerous awards on its way (among others, Jeonju International Film Festival – Audience Critics’ Prize, Seoul Independent Film Festival – Jury Prize) the film is now preparing for its theatrical release on January 30^th. The film has also won the Audience Award, at last year’s Chewsock Film Festival – as the name implies, a film festival for expats bored during the Chuseok holiday in Korea – proving that the honesty of this deeply personal documentary and universal theme of yearning for a place in this world, transcends language barriers and cultural differences, while its subtle commentary on the differences between Eastern and Western cultures seem to speak to the experiences of expats in Korea.

To cater to the needs of foreigners, English subtitles will be provided for all screenings at the KT&G Sangsang Madang Theater in Hongdae district, and Indieplus near Sinsa Station. One other theater in Seoul ― IndieSpace near Gwanghwamun Station ― will also provide English subs for screenings from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, during the Lunar New Year Holiday(Sulnal).

*KT&G SangsangMadang Cinema (Hongdae) : 02-330-6200 http://www.sangsangmadang.com/cinema/

*INDIEPLUS (Sinsa) : 02-3447-0650 http://www.indieplus.or.kr/jsp2/index.jsp

*INDIESPACE (Gwangwhamoon) : 02-738-0366 http://indiespace.tistory.com/1715

*For more info on Screenings with English subtitles : https://www.facebook.com/AllInKoreanWithEnglishSubsPlease

*More info on film:

https://www.facebook.com/DocumentaryMyPlace (Korean with some English)

https://www.facebook.com/ssmadangcinema (Korean)

https://twitter.com/sangsangfilm (Korean)

“It was there for literally 0.1 seconds! And drawn by a guy! And…and…WHY THE HELL DO YOU FEEL SO THREATENED BY IT ANYWAY??”

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. Photo by Timur Weber @Pexels.

“I am very interested and concerned about hatred and discrimination, which hang as prevalent and thick in Korean society as air.”

Source: John Marcotte.

Left: the offending gesture, which is visible for precisely 0.1 second. Full screenshot source: 원정상 @YouTube. (For the record, I just thought it was too good a screenshot not to steal—I don’t know the YouTuber’s stance on the controversy.)

너 페미니? Are You a Femi?

Source: Twitter/@KNKNOKU via BBC.

Image sources: 스포츠하국, Pixabay (edited).

Sources: MLBPark (1; since deleted); 2)

Source: Hankook Ilbo.

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For sure, the patriarchy harms men just as much as women, and 3x more Korean men than women attempt suicide overall. But this dramatic reversal among Korean 20-somethings is truly shocking.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo by Brandon Wong on Unsplash.

Source: 나도계란/@aravis12

Also highly recommended: Patriarchy in East Asia: A Comparative Sociology of Gender by Kaku Sechiyama (2013)

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Estimated reading & viewing time: 5 minutes.

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Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982 scores points for its raising of numerous feminist issues, but its treatment of them is frequently quite superficial. Here’s how one scene should have been handled differently, shattering stereotypes and suggesting solutions in the process.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes. Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash.

Image source: The Fact.

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“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.

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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:

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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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Like or loathe political correctness, many everyday Korean terms are ripe for modernization.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Source, all screenshots: YouTube.

From pages 78 & 102 of Miho Choo and William O’ Grady, Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension, 1996.

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Estimated reading time: 8 minutes. Image sources, edited: Summer Yolo Shop, KoBiz.

Chosun Ilbo, 7 March 2009.

Source: Korean Fashion + Tex News

Source: Sujoung Cha and Kristina Shin, “Hong Kong Chinese Breast Cathexis and Brassiere Design Preferences”, The Research Journal of the Costume Culture. 2011. Aug, 19(4): 780-793.

“Unzipping China’s Lingerie Capital,” Sixth Tone.

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(Source: Instiz)

(Source: Asiae)

(“Women work a lot, and it’s harder for us. When they hear it, women don’t care for this song.”)

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What role do Neo-Confucian notions of the “life force” (ki) play in buttressing modern Korean patriarchy?

(Warm Nest by Eugenia Loli; CC BY-NC 2.0)

(Source: Netizenbuzz)

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(Source, edited: ufunk)

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(Arirang, December 4, 2014; my emphasis)

(Eun, pp 154 & 155; see bibliography)

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

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