How Many Teenage Girls Are Smoking?
(Source)
If you’ve been following my The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Newsflash, Part 4, Korea’s Hidden Smokers), you’ll know that there’s a huge stigma against women smoking here. This leads to chronic under-reporting by female smokers, which in turn leads to the government and media regularly giving female smoking rates as low as 2-4%. In reality though, best estimates put the rate amongst young women at roughly 20%, pointing to a looming health crisis.
Even if the coming presidential election brings more enlightened officials to the Ministry of Health and Welfare (보건복지부) however, which has previously overwhelmingly focused on — and been accused of exaggerating — reductions in the male smoking rate, there’ll still remain the problem of finding out how many young Korean women actually smoke.
Or will there? With my thanks, let me pass on a reader’s partial solution:
My coworker, the assistant haksaengbu (학생부) at my high school, made a list of students caught smoking. This is at a small-town girls high school, with 330 students age 15-18 in western years. So far this year (since 2 March) 14% of the students have been caught smoking, with 9.5% of the academic (moongwha; 문과) students caught and 25% of the vocational (sanggwha; 상과) students caught.
I would think that 14% would be the absolute minimum possible average in Korea, considering that we’re in a fairly conservative area and teachers can still punish students (though it’s pretty inconsistent and haphazard). Considering that those are only the ones who’ve been caught and there’s almost nothing in the way of lunchtime and after-school supervision, I’d guess that the amount who smoke on a daily basis is 50% higher and the ones who’ve tried it on occasion is double that.
In any event, if you wanted some incontrovertible statistics about teenage girls smoking in rural Korea based on a sample size in the hundreds there you go!
Later, they added:
If you’d like the breakdown it was 21 out of 226 moonghwa students and 26 out of 106 sangwha students. I believe a couple of the sangwha students have dropped out/gone awol/transferred.
What do you think? How does this compare to readers’ own schools?
Quick Hit: Advertising a Korean Stewardess School
It’s easy to criticize an industry that – in Korea at least – so needlessly stresses age and appearance, and to consider the young women that aspire to it as hopelessly vain and naive. However, despite these stereotypes, not only do the limited options available to Korean women arguably make stewardessing a rational, adventurous, and even quite rebellious career choice, but Korean airlines even require university degrees from applicants too (and some cabin crew actually have Ph.Ds!).
See the Korea Herald here for more information. Guaranteed, you’ll be much more sympathetic to Korean stewardesses (and hopefuls) after reading it!
Written by me last October, a couple of years after a Qatar Airways-bound student of mine forced me to rethink some of my own assumptions about stewardesses. One of the most intelligent and ambitious 23 year-olds I’ve ever met, I was reminded of her resolution and determination yesterday when I read that Asiana Airlines stewardesses had protested the company’s “sexist guidelines regarding female flight attendants’ appearance”, their union head arguing that:
Flight attendants are not Barbie dolls. We are professionals with diverse characteristics who strive to become successful. We should not be judged by how we appear outside. We cannot be subject to any discrimination at work just because we are women.
If anything, this stress on appearance is confirmed by the following advertisement for a Korea stewardess school, which begins by mentioning the benefits of becoming a stewardess, but then has a promotion about a competition to find the “uniform queen” on the back.
On the other hand, it is just the one ad, so we should be wary of drawing too many conclusions from it. I’m just presenting it here mostly for the sake of readers outside of Korea, who may never have seen a Korean one.
Also, from Korea-based readers, I’d be interested in hearing if any other universities likewise got inundated with other schools’ ads at the end of last semester, how they compare, and how effective you’d think they’d be with students (don’t dismiss the cartoon format though — recall that everything is cute in Korea!):
- If you’re a woman, who doesn’t want to become a stewardess? But there’s probably many women who don’t know what you have to do to prepare to be one (nod nod).
- I thought like that too when I began. I was short, my appearance was just average, my English wasn’t good…could I really do it? I worried a lot about it.
- But now you’re the perfect crew member, despite all that. Unbeliv[able]~!! (I don’t believe you!)
- [Older Sister]!! If you become a crew member, what are the benefits?
- The days off are great
- You get discounts on air travel
- You get global opportunities
- You make lots of money
- You even get support for your children’s tuition
- And lots more…
(Wow!~Amazing~)
- So, older sister, how did you prepare? I too absolutely want that challenge!
- I’ll tell you how I did it.
- Okay then! Seonyeong’s stewardess success story, here we go~!!!
Keen eyes will have noticed that that was just Part 1; alas, I don’t have any more in the series, and can’t seem to find them on the school’s website sorry. But here is the back:
The title and first paragraph say:
- Find the Cosea Uniform Queen!!
- Cosea has a school vacation event for students with the dream of becoming crew members!
Next, there’s the details of that event:
- After having a free consultation and an image test, have your picture taken with an instant camera. The best student will win a free course at the school!!
- 1st prize: a free course
- 2nd prize: a set of interview clothes
- 3rd prize: a voucher for a free interview make-up and hair-styling session
- *Everybody that participates will get a personal color image check [James - ???]
Finally, it tells you how to enter the competition. But if you’re interested, then I’m afraid you’re on your own with that!^^
YTN: Sexual Questions and Jokes Common at Job Interviews
A brief report from YTN on Wednesday, which you can see the video of here (I can’t embed it sorry). Unfortunately, it provides no actual sources for its assertion that sexual harassment is common at interviews, but I’m inclined to believe it given how invasive and often needlessly humiliating the job interview process already is in Korea.
Indeed, when even Samsung admits that many Koreans “take it for granted that they have to tolerate anything in return for getting paid”, then it’s difficult not to see such an interview style as an integral and deliberate part of indoctrinating new workers.
Lest you scoff at the ensuing passivity and regular unpaid overtime however, and claim that you would never tolerate that crap from your boss, note that a 2011 OECD report found that “Korean workers [are the] most vulnerable to an economic crisis compared with their counterparts in other OECD countries, due to the country’s extraordinarily low levels of unemployment benefits” (i.e., lose your job in Korea, and you’re screwed). Also, that it’s very common to be interviewed in a group rather than individually, especially at larger companies, and that particularly stressful and demeaning interviews are so common as to have their own special name (abbak-myeonjob/압박면접, or ‘pressure interview’), mentioned at the end of the report.
“면접 때 성적 모욕감 느꼈다면 성희롱” / “If you feel insulted from sexual jokes at a job interview, that’s sexual harassment”
Anchor Comment:
여성 구직자들이 입사 면접을 볼 때 면접관들이 성적인 농담을 던질 때가 종종 있습니다.
구직자가 이런 말을 듣고 모욕감을 느꼈다면 성희롱에 해당된다는 국가인권위원회의 판단이 나왔습니다.
조임정 기자가 보도합니다.
Female job seekers report frequently receiving jokes of a sexual nature from interviewers at job interviews. If they feel insulted as a result, that’s sexual harassment according to a judgment of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Jo Im-jeong reports.
Reporter:
취업을 앞두고 면접에 다녀온 여성들은 종종 무력감에 빠지곤 합니다.
면접 때 던져지는 이상한 질문들 때문입니다.
Prior to getting a job, women feel powerless after having an interview. That’s because they receive such strange questions in them.
Interview — Miss Gomo, a student preparing to start working:
“성적인 수치심을 느끼는 질문을 한다면, 사실 면접자 입장에서는 어떻게 강하게 대응할 수 있는 부분이 아니고…”
“If an interviewee feels a sense of sexual shame [from the questions in an interview], they’re not in a strong position to do anything about that…”
Interview — Son Ji-hee, 4th year university student:
“성품을 보기 위해서 그렇게 자극적으로 얘기하는 것에 대해서, 정말 실효성이 있는지는 두고봐야겠지만, 그렇게까지 상처를 받는 사람이 있다면, 자제될 필요는 있다고 생각합니다.”
“Saying provocative things like that in order to determine one’s personality…it has to be seen if that’s effective. And if it’s done to the extent that people are hurt by it, then it needs reconsidering.”
이처럼 면접을 비롯한 구직 과정에서 성적 굴욕감을 느꼈다는 진정이 잇따라 국가인권위원회에 접수되고 있습니다.
지원자에게 “남자친구 몇 명을 사귀어봤는지”처럼 업무와 관련 없는 질문을 던지거나, 심지어 회사 대표가 면접 과정에서 지원자의 특정 신체 부위를 만지는 경우도 있었고, 채용이 확정된 뒤 회식 자리에서 남자 직장 상사와 블루스를 출 것을 강요한 경우도 있었습니다.
인권위는 입사 면접 과정에서 면접관의 발언 때문에 구직자가 성적 굴욕감을 느꼈다면 성희롱에 해당한다고 판단했습니다.
문제는, 면접에서 결정적인 권한을 가진 회사 관계자가 성희롱을 해도 절대적 약자인 구직자가 제대로 대처하기 힘들다는 겁니다.
People who have felt humiliated like this in interviews have appealed to the NHRC.
Applicants report being asked questions like “How many boyfriends have you had?” that have no relationship to the job, and there have even been cases of company representatives touching certain body parts of theirs during the interview. Or, after they’re hired, of male superiors forcing them to dance the blues with them at company dinners.
Feeling sexual shame because of comments by interviewers has been judged sexual harassment by the NHRC.
The problem is that when the final decision about hiring is by the sexual harassers themselves, interviewees are in a weak position and find it difficult to cope with what has happened.
Interview — Kim Min-jeong, NHRC Discrimination Department Investigator
“압박면접을 시행하더라도 개인의 직무 능력이나 본인의 가치관 등을 알아볼 수 있는 질문을 하는 것이 훨씬 더 중요하다고 생각합니다.”
인권위원회는 해당 기업 관계자에게 인권위가 주최하는 특별 인권교육을 받고 피해자들에게 손해배상금을 지급하라고 권고했습니다.
YTN 조임정[ljcho@ytn.co.kr]입니다.
“Even if people are doing a ‘pressure interview’, we think questions about one’s work ability and the person’s value and so on are far far more important.”
The NHRC recommends that offending employees are given human rights education, while the victims should receive financial compensation.
YTN Reporter Jo Im-jeong reporting (end).
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