Korean Gender Reader

Via Hello Korea!, I’ve just learned of Donga TV’s Single Mom Story above, a series that looks at successful single mothers in Korea. Unfortunately, you’ll need to be fluent in Korean to watch it, but just that the series exists at all is very welcome news, especially considering the stereotypes they have to confront on a daily basis (and which in turn have very real effects on social welfare policy).

Meanwhile, I’m much busier than expected with translations this week sorry (see here, here, here, and here if you’d like a preview!), and on top of that I’m preparing to start teaching again from next week too. But as you can see, the stories still just keep coming!

• Not Made Up: Tourists Boost Cosmetics Industry (Korea Real Time)

• White Person + Asian Person = $? (New York, Pew Research Center, MSNBC; hat tip to Robert Koehler)

• Vietnam to ban marriage with Korean men aged 50 years old or over (Korea Times; hat tip to Bobby McGill)

• Korea only second in the world in plastic surgery operations per capita? (Toronto Sun)

• Korean plastic surgeons charge foreign patients almost double that of Koreans (The Korea Herald)

• The great gender divide: lunch time edition (I’m no Picasso)

• Why half-Black, half-Korean Michelle Lee will not win K-Pop Star (Allkpop, SNSD Free for all, Omona!)

• Office worker arrested for producing drug for sex crimes (Korea Times; hat tip to nayaCasey)

• The Korean entertainment business: a statistical analysis of what happens after stars find trouble (Han Cinema)

• Women and young people still underrepresented in National Assembly (The Hankyoreh)

• China — “A wife has become a luxury good” (Global Times; hat tip to @MaraHvistendahl)

• Female students Occupy Male Toilets in Guangzhou (Shanghaiist, Baidu Beat; hat tip to David Willis)

• Border town brothels openly cohabit with military – “a shock to most Korean women, but no secret to their men” (Korea Times; hat tip to @tomcoyner)

• Global Gender Imbalance Poses Critical Problems for Women (Inter Press Service)

• The Hunt for Mr. Swirl – documentary on capture of pedophile that led to changes in Korea’s E-2 visa regulations (Gusts of Popular Feeling)

• Rent a Husband (Korea Times)

• “Be White” (Groove Magazine)

• Education ministry threatening to limit students‘ hair freedom (The Hankyoreh)

• Filipinos: Nannies, maybe; native speakers, no. (Gusts of Popular Feeling, The Dong-a Ilbo)

• Plastic Surgery in the ROK: An Army of Clones (Expat Hell)

• Kdramas, Rape Culture, & Complicity (Idle Revelry)

• Asians Are Stealing Our Boyfriends On This American Life (Racialious; via My First Love Story)

• Japanese rightists angry about Korean men stealin’ their women (The Marmot’s Hole)

• The Bodyguard Drama: When Women Protect Men (Seoulbeats)

(Links are not necessarily endorsements)