Korean Gender Reader
(“Alice {The Devil’s Bride}” by Stephen Fabian; source)
1) Rape and “Blood Money”
In essential reading for all expats, Ask a Korean! clears up misunderstandings about how and why victims of crimes are often offered the choice of quick financial compensation from perpetrators, rather than the latter automatically being prosecuted by the state. With a lot of pros in practice, unfortunately there are also some big cons in relation to sex crimes specifically:
Probably the biggest flaw is that often, a victim of a crime cannot properly assess the extent of her loss through the crime. If a person is beat up, the person might suffer a lingering damage that does not flare up until the settlement amount was computed. Also, sometimes it is not the victim herself who enters into the settlement. This used to lead to an incredibly outrageous situation in case of child molestation. As noted above, rape is a private crime. Since a child does not have the legal decision-making authority, the parents would handle the private crime process. And often, a molested child would come from a broken home, in which the parent would rather take a lump sum of cash right away rather than ensuring that the child rapist would go to jail. (Fortunately, this situation was redressed in 2008 by a new law that made child molestation a public crime.) Also, the inclusion of rape as a private crime is roundly criticized by many legal scholars, as it puts a burden on the victim to pursue what is a very serious crime that significantly threatens the social order. (To be sure, rape with battery, i.e. a violent case of rape, is a public crime. But, for example, a date rape involving drugs is a private crime.)
2) Non-Asians in Korean Music Videos: A Response
(Source)
3) A Place of Refuge: The Sae Gil Shelter
A very welcome follow up to its February article on the Busan performance of the Vagina Monologues (videos below), BusanHaps tells us more about the Sae Gil Shelter for victims of domestic violence, which the show managed to raise 3.4 million won for.
While the funds are desperately needed of course, fortunately great strides have been made in combating domestic violence in recent years, primarily due to a 2007 law change that requires police to forward all cases of domestic violence to a prosecutor (the previous 1998 law just left it up to their own discretion). For more details, see here.
(Via: Koreabridge)
4) South Korea Keeps Its Military Ban On Gay Sex
In a 5-4 decision last month, the Constitutional Court ruled that a 39 year-old military law criminally punishing homosexual soldiers for performing sexual acts in military barracks is constitutional. As the AFP reports:
“The legal code cannot be seen as discrimination against gays because such behavior, if left unchecked, might result in subordinates being harassed by superiors in military barracks,” it said in a statement. The law’s purpose was to ensure discipline within the whole military organization, the court said. The ruling came after an army military court filed a petition with the Constitutional Court. It asked whether the military criminal code, written in 1962, was discriminatory against gay soldiers and thus unconstitutional. Homosexuality is not illegal under the civil legal code.”
A somewhat hollow-sounding defense considering overwhelming evidence of systematic and widespread sexual harassment and abuse already occurring, as outlined here and here. Also, OnTop Magazine adds that “The Military Penal Code further punishes gay troops by lumping together consensual and non-consensual gay sex as sexual harassment”, and the The Korea Times that ‘offenders’ are also given a dishonorable discharge after leaving jail. This effectively punishes them for life in a society where military service is widely regarded as a de facto requirement for “real” citizenship.
Meanwhile, in other LGBT-related news, gay filmmaker Kim Jho Kwang-soo – only the second man in the entertainment industry to come out of the closet – has announced his marriage (alas, not legally recognized). And I’m No Picasso discusses the unfortunate consequences for one her students of Korean society denying and/or marginalizing homosexuality.
(Source: Barry Deutsch)
5) International Comparison of Gender and Unpaid Labor
For a pleasant change, Korea is only slightly worse than the OECD average for the extra unpaid labor women do compared to men.
Also, for a very interesting new book on the subject that I look forward to buying when it’s available at WhatTheBook? (hint hint), see Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality by Rebecca Asher.
6) The Female Writer in Korea
Charles at Korean Modern Literature in Translation on the first two chapters of Ideology, Culture, and Han by Younghee Lee, which are “a brief but quite interesting analysis of women writers in the Joseon and early Modern periods”.
7) Banned Music Video of the Week: Mirror Mirror (거울거울) by 4Minute (포미닛)
Or at least, the consensus is that one particular dance move in it soon will be. If the song itself is not to your liking, then skip ahead to 2:16.
8) Booking Clubs
Perspectives on Korean and Los Angeles Booking Clubs from Blog in a Tea Cup and Hyphen Magazine respectively.
9) The Jang Ja-yeon Tragedy: Making it all go away
Committing suicide 2 years ago because of forced prostitution by her managers, alleged letters by Jang Ja-yeon (장자연) detailing the string of VIPs, including directors, media executives and CEOs she was forced to have sex with have (naturally) been getting a lot of attention recently. See The Three Wise Monkeys for the definitive guide to all the latest developments in that case.
10) Cosmetic Surgery on the cheap
GeekinHeels discusses some sort of tape used for creating “V-lines” she was given as a gift, while Martina and Simon of EatYourKimchi are a little braver and try the ones for double-eyelids for themselves:
Reading “The Lolita Effect” in South Korea: Part 1
There are so many issues raised by 18 year-old Kim Hyuna’s (김현아) performance of her infamous “pelvic dance” (골반댄스) on last week’s episode of Quiz That Changes The World (세상을 바꾸는 퀴즈) below, that it’s difficult to know where to start.
Probably most notable however, is the surrealism of having observers explicitly acknowledging the dance’s sexual nature, only then to implicitly deny that nature by their subsequent actions. For while the men whoop and comically feign arousal while watching it, looking more like they’re in a strip club than on a talk-show, actually the heterosexual women display a similar enthusiasm, and later a mixed group goes on stage to parody it. Finally, a 12 year-old girl in the audience is brought on to similarly thrust her crotch at the camera, much to the delight of all.
Naturally, I have already discussed the issue of the media projecting, exploiting, and yet simultaneously denying female sexuality like this many times before, but after recently reading the The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It by M. Durham (2009), I realize now that I was rather naive in ever thinking that that was unique to Korea. Nevertheless, there are some features of the Korean media and social landscape that certainly exaggerate the phenomenon here at least, such as:
- the slave-like contracts musicians have with their entertainment companies (did Hyuna want to dance because it was “empowering” in a sexual and/or feminist way, or because she felt compelled to?)
- “sexy dances” being synonymous with Korean talk shows, and overwhelmingly performed by 20-something women
- stereotypes of married and/or 30-something women as asexual
- a huge prostitution industry
- a reluctance to publicly acknowledge that Korean teens (and even 20-somethings) have both sex and sexuality, both cause and effect of an almost complete lack of sex education and reflected in a huge abortion industry
- extreme ambiguity about the age of consent, with public perceptions that it is 18 at odds with rulings in recent court cases that it is in fact as low as 13
And hence my plan with this series is to demonstrate just how extreme the “lolita effect” really is in Korea by analyzing the episode using Durham’s book, hopefully gaining some new insights into representations of sexuality in Korean popular culture in the process. I’d also like to pay special attention on how her strategies for confronting the lolita effect can be applied to the Korean context.
But first, you need to see the episode for yourself:
And then you need some background, as there may be a few things about Korean talk shows that you are unaware of. In particular, even the conversations in them are by no means as spontaneous as they are made to appear (let alone the dances), and so to both illustrate this point and give you a greater feel for the show, let me devote the rest of this introductory post to yet another “scandal” from as recently as the preceding episode, in which After School (애프터스쿨) leader Park Ga-hee (박가희) said that she doesn’t like dating guys under 183cm tall:
As noted in numerous K-pop blogs and forums (see here, here, here, and here), Korean netizens unfairly compared that to the infamous “Guys under 180cm are losers” comment by a college student last year. Rather more disturbing and bizarre however, but not unexpected in light of the above, is what happened next:
With Ga-hee’s statement, the other male guest appearances on the show had felt embarrassed. So as to not make them feel bad and hurt, Ga-hee presented a set of sexy dance routines on the show, much to the delight of the other star appearances and the TV viewers.
Which in turn has led to a great deal commentary at those above links, which I’m glad to say is overwhelmingly critical. Yet for all the virtual ink spilled on it, unfortunately it’s not actually true, that internet meme starting from a misinterpretation and/or mistranslation at KBites. In reality, she was neither encouraged to dance for that reason nor stated that that was why she was doing so, but rather supposedly did it on a whim because “she hadn’t seen the hosts for such a long time.” Korean speakers, listen for yourself from 1:49 to 2:03 to confirm, but regardless of your ability it’s really quite easy to see that it was preplanned:
In that vein, was it just coincidence that the men on the last show happened to have cushions to hide their erections with while watching Hyuna, or curvaceous cushions to squeeze and fondle?
Update 1: Before completely finishing with Ga-hee however, a point to ponder by babochureum, a commenter at allkpop:
…it’s ok to say you like tall guys? What if a guy went on there and said he only likes girls with bra sizes bigger than C? It’s just ridiculous to say that you only like a certain sized person…
Update 2: See here for Part 2.
Korean Sociological Image #30: Exploiting Koreans’ Body Insecurities
Like everywhere else, Korea has a long tradition of celebrities endorsing government campaigns.
Unlike everywhere else, a “huge proportion of Korean ads depend on famous people,” says Bruce Haines, head of Korea’s largest ad agency Cheil Worldwide, a tendency which in its crudest form degenerates Korean advertising into merely “beautiful people holding a bottle.” In turn, that leads to a scramble for and subsequent overexposure of whichever Korean stars are most popular at that moment, regardless of their inappropriateness for the product(s).
Government campaigns are no different, to my mind the most notorious case still being the National Election Commission’s (중앙선거관리위원회) choice of The Wondergirls (원더걸스) to encourage people to vote in local elections in April 2008. Needless to say, I can’t think of anyone more inappropriate than teenagers (two of whom were only 15), and their choice of outfits simply beggars belief:
But again, no different to what they wore in commercials at the time. Which is precisely my point: regardless of their merits, major trends in advertising are bound to be reflected in government campaigns sooner or later.
And as long term readers of this blog will be well aware, one trend is encouraging consumers to associate certain foods and drinks with certain desired body shapes. While it is hardly unique to Korea, it is done to excess here.
Is it any wonder then, that with the decline of the domestic rice industy, and concerns food security as a whole, that the government would do the same when promoting the consumption of domestic foods and drinks?
Last year for instance, I gave the example of how the Korean rice wine Makgeolli (막걸리) was being marketed to women on the basis that it is supposedly good for one’s skin. Now, I’ve found two more examples by the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (농림수산식품부; MIFAFF), using the new group 4Minute (포미닛) and the Olympic medalist Park Tae-hwan (박태환) respectively:
To be clear, I am not saying that either are inappropriate choices. Actually I think they’re rather good: both are very popular, and it turns out that 4minutes’ egg song is a variation of their recent hit “Hot issue” too. I also fully concede that the connections between consumption of the product and obtaining an attractive body are fleeting (4minute) or merely implied (Park Tae-hwan) at best.
But still, they’re there. And given the long-term problems with Korean agriculture as identified above, then I hereby predict that we’re going to be seeing many more public campaigns like these in 2010. In particular, the links made between the products being advertised and obtaining an “S-line” and so on are going to be made more explicit.
Sound like an exaggeration? Well, recall how quickly commercial incentives have transformed decades-old standards for soju advertisements: just three years ago, they overwhelmingly offered virginal images of women, whereas now it’s rather difficult to find ones that don’t present them as eminently sexually available. Moreover, in an effort to appeal more to women, soju companies too are encouraging them to associate new lower-strength brands with maintaining a good body, however implausibly.
But perhaps an even more appropriate example is soy milk. If you’ll bear with me, being allergic to milk means that I follow developments in the soy milk industry here pretty closely, and Starbucks Korea’s belated decision to add soy to its menu in 2005 had a huge impact on my quality of life here! Not unlike the drinks themselves though (anybody know where I can find these flavored ones?) – or, indeed, government campaigns – soy milk commercials tend to be rather bland, so I certainly sat up and took notice when I first saw this one a few days ago:
Soy milk companies too then, seem to be adopting the tactics of their more popular counterparts now. Lest I appear overly critical though, consider the scene 0:03 from 0:06 where 17 year-old Kim Hyun-ah’s says “[S]라인을 유지하려면 어쩔 수 없어,” or “If you want to maintain your S-line, you have no choice but to [drink] this.” Despite my constant criticisms of that sort of thing, and my earnest desire that my daughters don’t grow up to repeat it, I have to admit that I can’t help but find her expression and tone of voice, well, extremely cute…
Yes, I know: very hypocritical of me, and I await your counsel. But on a final, more serious note, consider Garaetteok Day (가래떡데이), MIFAFF’s scheme since 2006 to get people to eat stick-shaped rice cakes instead of Pepero chocolate sticks on November 11 each year. Promoted mostly as a romantic event for couples, as are most imported and/or artificially created holidays (Christmas Day, for instance, is the date the most condoms are sold in Korea), is it really too much of a jump to imagine that concerns about one’s appearances will be added to that too? Watch this space!
Update: An alternative way of exploiting Koreans’ associations with November 11 (source):
(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)
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