Author: The Grand Narrative

Sex, Sass, and Sensibility in South Korea: https://thegrandnarrative.com/

Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society, Part 1: Their Neo-Confucian Heritage

Dasepo Naughty Girls 2006(Screen capture from the movie Dasepo Naughty Girls/다세포소녀. Source: martin francisco)

“Koreans are conformist because of their Confucian heritage…yada yada yada”

Even though I’ve chosen to live in Korea a long time, like most expats I often find it to be a frustrating and exasperating place sometimes. That’s not necessarily a criticism, and indeed this love-hate relationship may even be part of its charm—certainly my adopted hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, never aroused such strong emotions in me. On the other hand, it does lead to so many one-liners about the place, endlessly repeated by fresh rotations of expats.

But are they always wrong? Don’t some have a grain of truth? To answer, let me examine one that I and probably most readers have made at some point in our stay here, but which I personally wouldn’t have been able to justify before I did my research for this post. And certainly won’t ever be making again.

What I have in mind is your gut reaction to watching the following commercial, about three years old:

(Update, July 2012: Unfortunately, the video has been taken down, and I didn’t save a spare copy back in 2008. Hopefully, the screenshots will still give you the gist of it!)

According to Marmot’s Hole commentator mins0306, to whom I’m very grateful for finding the video, the message the commercial wanted to convey was “What she selects will become a trend. And since she selected a Prugio apartment, Prugio apartments will also become a trend.” Instead, it has inadvertently become of a symbol of Korean people’s conformism, particularly of women’s attitudes to fashion.

But before writing this post, had I been pressed for why so many Korean women seem to so blindly follow the latest trends, be they mini-skirts in winter or getting double-eyelid surgery, I would have mumbled something about Confucianism and the education system discouraging individuality. That is still technically correct, but—let’s face it—most of us blame so much here on Confucianism, but actually know little more about it than what we read in Lonely Planet Korea in the week before we came. But how,exactly, is it to blame? Why?

On the surface, it may not even have anything to do with Confucianism at all. Consider this statement from the 2003 journal article “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society” by Taeyon Kim (details and abstract here):

“For 500 years, Korea adopted Neo-Confucianism as its official ideology and strove to create a Neo-Confucian state by following its precepts as closely as possible. Neo-Confucians believed the body was sacred. Since it was bequeathed by one’s parents, in accordance with filial piety, the body had to be respected and remain unaltered…The Korean aversion to manipulation of the body seems to have been a long-standing cultural principle – only whole-heartedly abandoned in the last few years of proliferating plastic surgeries and various other manipulations of the body. Why has what appears to have been such a strong cultural value been so suddenly and completely abandoned?” (p. 98)

Like I said, I didn’t know that Joseon Dynasty Korea adopted “Neo-Confucianism” rather than merely “Confucianism” its state ideology either; from now on, I’ll make sure to blame all Korean ills on that instead. But now that she mentions it, yes, I do recall that Confucianism…oops, Neo-Confucianism I mean…did not condone alteration and adornment of the body, which is why it was so dishonourable for men to have their ponytails cut off.

How then, can Korea still be described as “more Confucian than China” when: Korean women adorn fashion and accessories to the point of what Michael Hurt describes as “fetishization;” female friends of mine wear excessive make-up to work upon fear of being fired if they don’t; others think nothing of wearing it to the gym; and Korea leads the world in the number of plastic surgeries made per capita? The notion now sounds absurd.

But Kim goes on to argue that the prescribed Neo-Confucian role of women’s bodies is essentially the same today as it was in the Joseon Dynasty, albeit adapted to and/or warped by democratization and capitalism. I don’t entirely agree with everything she says, but more in degree than in substance, and she certainly does make a decent stab at solving that paradox above.

korean-woman-as-a-mere-vessel.jpg

Because her two-part argument is very long, and I actually have a lot of my own thoughts and ideas to add to her arguments about postwar Korea, I’ve taken the wise (but unusual for me!) decision to split my original 3500 word post on her journal article into two. In the remainder of this first one then, I’ll outline what Kim says about how Neo-Confucianism viewed women’s bodies and their roles, and in the next one I’ll discuss how these adapted and changed to, but ultimately survived, the 20th Century (source, right: natebeaty).

Neo-Confucian Women’s Bodies as Mere Vessels

Before reading the following, bear in mind that only Joseon Dynasty elites—possibly as little as 1% of the population—would have subscribed to the Neo-Confucianism edicts described (Kim does acknowledge this). But the vast majority of Korean women worked on their farms, and were integral economic parts of the household; indeed, I’ve won arguments with older male students of mine on this point, who thought that “Korean tradition” justified them in literally forbidding their daughters-in-law from working after marriage. I concede though, that they would have remained an ideal.

“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.” (p.99, italics in original)

For learners of Korean, this “ki” appears to be “기,” which has a hanja character on p.38 of my Korean vocabularly ‘bible’ that, in addition to “spirit,” also means “air,” “atmosphere,” and “energy.” And for everyone, I admit, at the moment it sounds very similar to a mere family name or bloodline, but those are quite vague concepts at best, whereas ki does sound like a well-thought out—albeit sexist and fundamentally flawed—philosophical concept. Elaborating on it further:

“The force of ki constituted one’s sense of the body and self more than the corporeal body. It followed that the family body, within which flows the same ki,was considered the essential self more than one’s own physical body. The emphasis on non-distinction between self and others produced a sense of self that was non-individuated and fluid, with no boundaries to determine a distinction between one’s family and one’s self.” (p.99)

Hence the Hoju System/호주제, a family registry system, rather than one of individual birth certificates like in Western countries, that was not abolished until as late as this year. Under it, upon marriage, women would be transferred from one family’s certificate to her husband’s family, almost like property. In practice, female divorcees suffered greatly from it because:

  • Given that it was often required for job applications, it meant that applicants’ marital status was readily apparent to employers. I’ve read, but am not sure how applicable it is now given the high divorce rate, that female divorcees were often discriminated against by employers as a result, ironically at a time when most would have needed employment more than ever.
  • Custody of children was overwhelmingly awarded to fathers; after all, the women were no longer part of the ki/family.
  • For those women married to fathers that abandoned their families, divorcing them would mean years of adminstrative problems with children in schools and so forth, as it meant that they were no longer their legal guardians. In Japan, with a similar system, these issues came up with ex-prime minister Koizumi after he divorced in 1982.
erotic-hanbok.jpg

Promising to abolish this system was one reason I supported the election of Roh Mu-hyon back in 2002, and while he did prove to be quite a lame duck president, and least this promise was fulfilled. To continue (source, right: theturninggate):

“Neo-Confucian techniques of self-cultivation of the mind and body only applied to men. Women in the Neo-Confucian view were incapable of achieving sagehood and therefore had neither the need nor the ability to strive for transcendence of the self and body. While men produced their selves through the mind (study of the classics) and body (maintenance of the family body through ancestor worship), women were occupied with maintaining and reproducing the family body through the corporeal bodies of the family.” (p. 100)

Koreans are by no means alone in having philosophical or religious beliefs justifying an inferior status of women, but this particular one could lead to some very strange-sounding results. For instance, Kim explains that one study of a villagers in 1990 found that they thought women were inferior to men because they did not carry the ki that men did, meaning that “women were believed to be passive receptacles of the life which men implanted in them; they played no active part in creating life.”

It also meant that beauty and wealth were secondary to possession of the physical traits required to bear sons, and gave rise Korean Folk Villageto an elaborate system of prenatal education known as taegyo/태교 which, rather than the notion of women and child’s health that the word brings to mind today, back then was more the idea of women as bodies rather than subjects or individuals, because “their conduct and thoughts were for the sake of the other abiding in their bodies, and they were valued mostly for the children and labour that their bodies could produce.” Hence, women “were regarded as subjectless bodies.” (pp. 100-101), the consequences, in sum, being that (source, right: InSapphoWeTrust):

“While [men] aimed to transcend the body, women could never do so – their bodies were too valuable. A man’s mind and ki were considered more valuable than his corporeal limbs while a woman was most valued for her body and its reproductive labour. As a result, efforts were made to maintain sole control over women’s bodies, subjecting them to a protection and concealment that practically rendered their bodies invisible.” (p.101)

Indeed, while the hanbok is much more comfortable to wear and walk around in than a kimono (or so I’ve heard), it’s not exactly a celebration of the female form. Also, this protection and concealment literally meant that elite women’s homes became prisons, as they weren’t allowed to leave: those “traditional see-saws,” for instance, were actually so popular because they allowed elite women rare glimpses of life outside of the walls of their courtyards, and I remember reading somewhere of a woman escaping from her village to Busan during the Korean War, despite all the death and destruction around her actually having an exciting time, as it was the first time she’d left her house in decades!

Next week: Part 2, which will continue the discussion into the postwar period.

Korea’s Convenient Invasion Myths

Source: Wikimedia

Update, August 2010: An excellent article by Andrei Lankov, which deserves to be much more widely read. Unfortunately though, Tom Coyner’s site is the only site I’ve been able to find it on. So, here’s one more copy, to ensure that it remains available:

War of Details

Andrei Lankov, Korea Times, August 31 2006.

Every foreign resident of Korea is exposed to a number of habitual Korean statements, which reflect Korean ideas about themselves and their nation. Many of these beliefs are true, some are not so well founded, while others are strange — like, say, the well-known tendency of Koreans to boast that their country “has four distinct seasons” as if this is something unusual and unknown to most other countries of the globe.

One such oft-repeated statement is that Korea has always suffered invasions and wars. Koreans often say, “Our history has been tragic, for centuries we have been invaded by powerful enemies and suffered in their hands greatly.” Every visitor to Korea is bound to hear such a remark sooner or later, and most people tend to take it at face value. This statement might correctly describe Korean history of the last one hundred years, but it is hardly applicable to earlier eras.

Well, let’s have a look at the Choson Dynasty period, from 1392 to 1910. The last four decades of these five centuries were turbulent indeed, but what about earlier times? Even a cursory look demonstrates that it was hardly a “time of troubles.” Throughout 1392-1865, Korea fought three wars against foreign invaders, not including some minor border skirmishes with nomads in the north, and Japanese pirates on the coasts. In one case, the war with Japan from 1592-1598, known as “Hideyoshi’s invasion” in the West, and as the “Imjin War” in Korea, was disastrous and the entire country was devastated. As you know, the medieval armies, all those “knights in shining armor,” were not too nice when they encountered the civilian population. The two other conflicts, of 1627 and of 1636, were of much smaller scale — essentially, two blitzkriegs brilliantly executed by Manchu generals whose cavalry units broke through Korean defenses, approached Seoul, and forced the Korean government to agree to an unfavorable peace.

Source: totustuusegosum2000

Let’s compare this with the fate of more or less every European country. Throughout the same period of 1392-1865, almost every country in Europe fought a much greater number of conflicts, and suffered much greater casualties. Let’s have a look at German history. The period under consideration is marked by at least four major military conflicts, each lasting for one or several decades, and resulting in mass death and destruction: the Reformation Wars, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the Prussian campaigns of the mid-18th century and the Napoleonic wars. And these are only large-scale wars, each being as significant and bloody as Korea’s war with Japan in 1592-1598 (in all probability, all these conflicts were more destructive than the “Hideyoshi invasion”). Apart from these, there were a number of smaller conflicts, many of which were not small at all– like the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), or the chain of conflicts that accompanied German unification in the 1850s and 1860s. And, of course, there were countless quarrels between the mini-states which formed the Germany of the era, each such quarrel being a military conflict on its own right, far exceeding Korea’s occasional skirmishes with Japanese raiders.

Is Germany an exception? By no means. This is the fairly typical history of any European country, and against such a background Korean history appears rather quiet. Rather than being a country with a uniquely turbulent history, Korea actually was a country, which enjoyed stability undreamed of in most other parts of the world!

The same is true in regard to domestic policy. Of course, old Korea had its own share of court conspiracies, poisoned dignitaries, and scheming royal concubines. But throughout the same period of 470 years, only two Korean kings were actually overthrown (and in one case the life of the ex-sovereign was spared — an almost unthinkable leniency by the standard of medieval Europe or the Middle East!). There were two unsuccessful gentry revolts, each lasting for but a few weeks, one peasant uprising on moderate scale, some local disturbances, a bit of banditry — and that’s all! Once again, in comparison with France (at least a dozen major revolts, revolutions, and civil wars), Germany, or even relatively peaceful England demonstrates that Korea was indeed a very secure and stable place.

Suffice to say that the Korean army for most of the period had about ten thousand soldiers on active duty — a very small army for a country with population of some ten million. The armed forces were increased when the government faced a perceived security threat, but for most of this long period the Korean army was essentially a police force, sufficient to fight bandits, patrol borders, restore order in some villages, and ensure the personal security of the king. So much for the talk of the permanent invasions Korea allegedly faced: a country, which lives under threat, does not have such a small army.

But why did such a view develop? There might be few reasons, but I suspect that Korean intellectuals of the 1950s or 1960s were shocked by the turbulent nature of the last hundred years of Korea history (to be more precise, the period between 1865 and 1960). This came as a sharp contrast to the tranquility and predictability of earlier times. This shock made Koreans believe that their history has always been that difficult and hard. And, of course, Korean nationalists used these feelings for their own gains. But this is another story…

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

Paternity Leave in Korea from Next Year?

From page 3 of the September 12, 2007 Busan Focus:Paternity Leave, 1970s Swedish Poster

출산휴가가는男: 내년7월 배우자 3일 부여 ‘남녀고용평등법’등 의결

내년 7월부터 남성근로자도 배우자 출산휴가를 사용할 수 있으며, 육아휴직을 나눠 쓰거나 육아휴직대신 근로시간 단축방법도 사용할 수 있게 된다.

정부는 11일 오전 중앙청사에서 한덕수 총리 주재로 국무회의를 열어 일과 육아의 병행을 위해 이 같은 내용을 핵심으로 하는‘남녀고 용평등법’개정안 등 20여개 안건을 심의, 의결했다. 이 개정안은 그간 사업장별로 임의로 시행해 오던 남성근로자의 출산휴가를 3일간 부여하는 것으로 의무화했으며, 현행 전일제 육아휴직 대신 주 15~30시간 이내의 범위에서 근무하는 육아기 근로시간 단축을 신청할 수있도록 하고, 육아휴직이나 육아기근로시간 단축제를 1회에 한해 분할 사용할 수 있도록 하고 있다.

또 육아기 근로시간 단축을 이유로 해고나 불리한 처우를 하는 사업자의 경우 3년 이하의 징역이나  2천만원 이하의 벌금, 육아기 근로 시간 단축 종료 후 같은 업무에 복귀시키지 아니할 경우 500만원 이하의 벌금, 그리고 배우자 출산휴가를 주지 않을 경우 500만원 이하의 과태료를 부과하도록했다 (image source: On Being; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

또 국제화 시대를 맞아 ▲ 회사의 설립·운영 등에 사적 자치를 폭넓게인정하는 유한책임회사 등 새로운기업형태를 도입하고 ▲무액면주식 제도의 도입과 최저자본금제도의폐지 등 상법 개정안도 심의했다.

Men on Paternity Leave: To fulfill the requirements of the law on gender equality in the workplace, a 3 day paternity leave is to be available from next July

From next July, the spouses of women taking time off work to give birth can also take time off from work, either for the birth itself or by shortening their work hours by an equivalent amount.

On the Morning 11th of September, the prime minister Han Deok-Su, opened a session of Congress focusing on work and childcare. Congress members deliberated on a bills regarding the law on gender equality in the workplace and on 20 other matters, and passed a law that will require all workplaces to provide paternity leave to male employees. They will be given the option of either taking 3 days at the time of the birth of the child, or have their working hours reduced by 15-30 hours at alternate times when it is convenient to them. These 15-30 hours will not have to be taken all at once.

If employers use this reduction of work hours as a pretext to fire an employee or treat him unfairly, then the employer will be liable for a jail sentence of up to 3 years or a fine of 20 million won. Also, if an employee is not allowed to continue in the same position after returning from paternity leave, or if paternity leave isn’t granted at all, then the employer will be liable for a fine of up to 5 million won.

Since we are in a globalized age, Korean companies need to introduce more scope for employee’s personal autonomy in their establishment and operations. Also discussed at the congress was the introduction into commercial law of a no-par stock system and the discarding of a minimum capital stock system.

For the sake of comparison, see here for a table showing different countries’ parental leave provisions.

3 in 10 Korean Dating Sites are Used for Teenage Sex Work?

samaria-korean-teenage-prostitutionMovie poster for Samaritan Girl/Samaria (2004), a Korean movie about teenage prostitution; see here for my review. Source: Naver영화.

애인대행 사이트 10개 중 3개 ‘청소년도 받아요‘ (3 out of every 10 dating sites are being used by teenage prostitutes to find clients)

“전 17세 여. 경제적으로 큰 도움 주실 분 연락주세요”

애인 대행 사이트 10개 중 3개 이상은 청소년 가입이 가능하고 이중 아르바이트생을 구하는 의뢰인 50% 이상이 성매매(불건전 만남)를 요구하고 있는 것으로 나타났다.

“I am a 17 year old girl. If you can help me financially, please contact me.”

More than 3 out of 10 dating sites allow teenagers to register, and more than 50 percent of these registered teenagers are using the site immorally to solicit sexual services.

국가청소년위원회는 최근 대구YWCA에 의뢰, 인터넷 포털을 통해 접근 가능한 69개 애인 대행 사이트를 모니터링 한 결과 이같이 나타났다고 22일 밝혔다. 청소위는 “애인대행 사이트에서 성매매 유인행위가 많이 일어나고 있어 청소년의 접근을 차단할 필요성이 있다”며 “성매매 등 불법ㆍ불건전 만남을 조장하는 애인대행 사이트에 청소년이 접속할 수 없도록 청소년 유해 매체물 지정을 추진하겠다”고 밝혔다.

청소년위의 조사 결과에 따르면 애인대행 사이트의 청소년의 가입이 가능한 경우는 23개로 33.3%를 차지했다. 이어 청소년의 가입은 불가지만 청소년 유해매체물 표시가 없는 경우가 42개(60.9%)였다. 청소년 연령 확인 및 접근 제한 장치가 있는 경우는 4개(5.8%)에 불과했다.

Recently, the Government Youth Comission asked Daegu YWCA to investigate to what extent teenagers were using 69 adult dating sites that can be found through major internet portals, and today they reported their findings. According to the Commission, “Making money through prostitution via these sites is a very alluring and attractive proposition for teenagers,” and that “the government needs to make greater effort to ensure that teenagers are prevented from gaining access to these sites which promote illegal prostitution and ‘unconditional meetings’.”

According to the Commission, 23 sites of the 69 sites (33.3%) allowed teenagers to register. 42 (60.9%) did not allow teenagers to join, but lacked a special warning indicating this; in the end, only 4 (5.8%) both didn’t allow teenagers to join and had the required software to prevent them from doing so (James – does this mean that teenagers could still join those 42 or not?)

애인대행사이트에 게시된 내용은 ‘강남 지금 만나요’ ‘2:1 대행이요’ ‘경제적으로 큰 도움 주실 분’ ‘술 한잔 하실 분’ ‘밤새 놀려고 하는데 50만원 가지고 뭐하나’ 등 성매매 및 불건전 만남을 조장하는 내용이 대부분이었다.

또 대구YWCA가 2시간 동안 대화방을 개설한 결과 48명의 남성 이용자가 접근, 역할 대행을 의뢰했다. 이 중 성매매 요구가 25건(52%)으로 가장 많았고 홍보 및 대화가 19건(40%), 건전 대행 요구가 4건(8%) 등이었다.

Amongst the chat rooms and message boards of the 23 sites that did allow teenagers to register, you come across personal ads of teenagers, and men seeking them, with titles such as “Let’s meet in Gangnam now,” “2 for 1,” (James – your guess is as good as mine) “Seeking a sugar-daddy,” “Someone to have one drink with,” “I have 500,000 won, what am I going to do all night?,” and so forth, of which the vast majority are obviously for prostitution.

In addition, Daegu YWCA opened a chatroom on one site for 2 hours, and of 48 male users that entered, 25 were blatantly looked for teenage prostitutes, 19 chatted about sexual acts, and only 4 chatted about non-sexual subjects.

주요 포털사이트는 ‘애인대행’ 단어를 금칙어로 적용, 성인인증 및 연령확인을 요구하고 있으나 ‘대행 알바’ ‘애인 알바’ 등 변칙적인 방법으로 올라오는 애인 대행 사이트에 대해서는 개별적인 조치를 취하고 있다.

청소년위는 “69개 애인대행사이트에 대해 청소년 유해성 여부를 심의하도록 정보통신윤리위원회에 요청할 것”이라며 “포털사이트에 대해서도 애인대행 등 금칙어 적용 및 성인인증을 요구할 계획”이라고 밝혔다.

Major portal sites do not allow you to type in obvious search terms for teenage prostitutes, and require proof of your age. But both prostitutes and clients are adapting and choosing new terms to direct each other to their various chatrooms and sites instead.

The Commission concluded that they are going to request that the Korea Internet Safety Commission look more closely at these 69 sites for the sake of teenager’s welfare, and they will also ask the owners of the 69 sites studied to not allow the search terms used for prostitution that are already banned on internet portals to be used on their sites also (end).

(See Joins News for the original article, or here for the same at the author’s own site)