Category: Gender Roles

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.

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

BUY THIS BOOK—”Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China’s Global Rise” by Monica Liu (2022)

Don’t let my glorious laser tits deter you from an eye-opening interview, and a must-read!

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

First, a quick update to explain my absence this past month,

Basically, I’ve finally gotten my shit together.

I could count the ways. Instead, suffice to say I’m so enthused and energized that I’ve even started paying attention to my laser tits again.

You read that right. (You’ll thank me for passing on this “꿀팁” later.) Ten random notifications from a reminder app a day, I advise, is the sweet spot for perking you up before starting to get annoying:

Naturally then, life chose to reward my newfound drive by bookending those past four weeks with two debilitating colds. Repetitive strain injury has flared up in my right arm too,* leaving me in agony every time I want to do anything even remotely fun or pleasurable with my hand. Like, say, eating or sleeping (what did you think I meant?), let alone banging away at a keyboard.

With my resolve being so sorely tested, literally, my response is to push even harder through my huge backlog of writing, as well as my new plans to completely overhaul this blog and my social media use. What those plans actually are, I’m going to tend towards doing before explaining. But one I already announced back in October—more geeking out over things that bring me joy, no matter how obscure or academic. The difference now being, I realize life is just too short to worry about losing followers who don’t share my obscure passions, or curious, ribald sense of humor.

On that note, the New Book Network’s (NBN) recent podcast interview of Monica Liu, about her new book Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China’s Global Rise (2022), is conspicuously bereft of laser tits, but is no less jaw-dropping for all that. Primarily, for Liu’s emphasis on the women’s perspectives and their sense of agency, which in hindsight I’ve much neglected in my own coverage of migrant brides to Korea over the years (understandably, given how so many are exploited and abused, but a neglect nonetheless). Moreover, despite the title of the book, and NBN’s synopsis below, it quickly becomes clear while listening to the interview that Chinese seekers of marriage with Western men share many of the same issues and goals with those Chinese, Central Asian, Russian, and Southeast Asian women seeking Korean men.

Her study of China’s email-order bride industry offers stories of Chinese women who are primarily middle-aged, divorced, and proactively seeking spouses to fulfill their material and sexual needs. What they seek in their Western partners is tied to what they believe they’ve lost in the shifting global economy around them. Ranging from multimillionaire entrepreneurs or ex-wives and mistresses of wealthy Chinese businessmen, to contingent sector workers and struggling single mothers, these women, along with their translators and potential husbands from the US, Canada, and Australia, make up the actors in this multifaceted story. Set against the backdrop of China’s global economic ascendance and a relative decline of the West, this book asks: How does this reshape Chinese women’s perception of Western masculinity? Through the unique window of global internet dating, this book reveals the shifting relationships of race, class, gender, sex, and intimacy across borders.

I strongly recommend listening to the interview yourself; at 39 minutes long, it doesn’t at all drag on like, frankly, most other NBN interviews do. To encourage you to do so, here are several eye-opening excerpts, all lovingly, painstakingly transcribed by myself (my apologies for any minor errors).

(Too young, and too well-off?) Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash.

First, from 7:30-8:45, an important difference between Chinese women seeking Western men to migrant brides in Korea: the former tend to be much older and financially well-off. As we’ll see soon, this has big implications for the power dynamics between prospective partners:

Q) Why really did the Chinese women seek Western men?

A) For a couple of different reasons. Across the board, one main reason I saw was that the women felt aged out of their local dating market, because men of similar age and economic standing tended to prefer much younger, never-married women without children, and so women believed Western men were more open to dating women their age. And there’s also some differences based on the women’s socioeconomic class. A lot of women who are financially well-off have previously been married to very wealthy Chinese men that cheated on them and left them for younger women, and so think that Western men are going to be more loyal and more family-orientated—that being the primary reason. While women who struggled financially, have often divorced Chinese ex-husbands that lost their jobs and couldn’t support their families, and so these women are also seeking financial stability in their new marriages. Finally, there’s also a group of women who wish to send their kids to college in the US, to escape the very, very brutal college entrance exam in China, but they couldn’t do that as single moms that were financially struggling.

Next, from 10:20-11:20, on how Chinese dating marriage agencies both respond to and perpetuate Occidental stereotypes:

Q) Tell us about global financial crisis of 2008 when the men lost their jobs. Did this impact the dating scene?

A) Yes, this certainly impacted the dating scene. At the dating agencies, before the crisis there would be this idea that many of the men would possibly be financially well-off, but actually after the crisis a lot of women were actually discovering off-site that those men that they thought were financially well-off were not in that position, and as a result one of the tactics that the agencies used to promote these men to the women was that these men were loyal, devoted, and family-oriented, and thereby worth of marriage, even if they’re not particularly financially well-off.

Photo by Marcelo Matarazzo on Unsplash.

Then from 13:28-15:11, on the racial hierarchies contained within those Occidental stereotypes. But already, Chinese women’s agency is evident in their readiness to reject or subvert these:

Q) You talked about the discrimination against Black men with the Chinese women, but not other racial groups. Tell us more.

A) When I stepped into the dating agency, I found that Chinese women were very reluctant to date Black men. And for that reason, the agencies actually had a policy to not entertain emails from Black men unless given special permission from the women, in order not to “offend” the women. I’m not exactly sure what their personal reasons were…but I do know China has a long-standing history of anti-Black prejudice where Blacks are stereotyped as savage, hypersexual, and violent.

However, the women didn’t seem to discriminate against other racial groups, and to them, interestingly, the term “Westerner” included not only Caucasians but also Latinos and Native Americans. And occasionally some women would actually refer to Western men of Northern- or Central-European ancestry as “pure white,” and Latin-American men, or men of South-European ancestry, for example Italian men, or Native American men, as “non-pure white.” However, being pure white didn’t seem to actually boost the men’s desirability in the women’s eyes, and in fact I saw that some women in fact preferred the non-pure white look and they found the darker hair and eye color to be more Asian-looking, and more familiar and more pleasing to their eye than someone who is, say, blond-haired and blue-eyed.

Photo by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash.

From 18:24-19:52, on the traditional, patriarchal values the Western men using international dating agencies often bring to their anticipated relationships with Chinese women. Obviously, by no means all (or even a majority) do. But just as obviously, it’s surely no coincidence that many Korean men do the same:

Q) Now give us the profile of the Western male seeking a Chinese woman.

A) The majority of the men enrolled tended to be older, divorced, and tend to come from lower-middle class or working class backgrounds, although some were middle class. I’ve seen a lot of truck drivers, lots of small business owners, and these men tend to feel left behind by globalization as agriculture, manufacturing, and small businesses started declining. So these men actually viewed this changing economic landscape as a threat to their masculinity.

Now a lot of sociologists’ studies show that marriage rates have declined among working class men, and poor men, because women within their own class find them to be too poor to be marriage worthy. So for these men, having slipped down the socioeconomic ladder, they really struggle to hold on to what privilege they have left by pursuing so-called “traditional” marriages, possibly with foreign brides, because they think this will allow them to exert some kind of dominance and control at home. And there’s also some middle class men who, despite being financially stable, they still feel left out of place within the new gender norms that have emerged in Western societies, [supposedly] dominated by feminists who they see as destroying the family and nation through their spoiled behavior and materialism.

Photo by Conikal on Unsplash.

And, reluctantly, a final excerpt from 23:21-25:10 (there were so many I wanted to highlight!), on the upending of global masculinity and racial ideals when women are empowered to reject those marriages:

Q) Let’s look now at some of the theories about Western masculinity. What did you find concerning race, class, gender, globalization, and migration?

A) First, I challenge readers to rethink the relationship between race and class…the question I ask is, does Western masculinity still command some degree of hegemonic power in China, despite China’s global rise—and I confirm that it does, by showing how Chinese dating agencies market their Western male clients as morally superior to Chinese men despite their lack or wealth. So the fact is that this portrayal still sells in China, and this reflects this continued superiority of Western culture within the Chinese women’s imagination.

However, in this book I also show a lot of moments when Western masculinity is starting to lose its hegemonic power, and this typically happens in the latter stages of the courtship process, when couples go offline and start meeting face-to-face. And in this book, I show how some of these women quickly rejected their working class, Western suitors, once they realized these men didn’t embody the type of elite masculinity that they were seeking in a partner, and instead these women would choose to continue having affairs with their local Chinese lovers, even if those men were married and not willing to leave their wives. And this is because [they] had these refined tastes, lifestyles, and sexual know-hows that a lot of their foreign suitors lacked.

Two final points of interest to round off. First, by coincidence, shortly after listening to this interview I got an alert that Kelsey the Korean was busy dismantling Western masculinity’s hegemonic power in Korea too:

Next, another well-timed coincidence: the latest issue of the Korean Anthropology Review just dropped, with an article by Han Seung-mi—”Critique of Korean Multiculturalism as Viewed through Gendered Transnational Migration in Asia: The Case of Vietnamese Returnee Marriage Migrants“—that sounds perfectly placed to challenge my own image of migrant brides in Korea as passive victims (my emphasis):

This article analyzes “returnees from marriage migration” by focusing on Vietnamese women from Cần Thơ and Hai Phong who have been to South Korea for marriage migration. In contrast to prevalent concerns in South Korea about the possibility of “child abduction” by Vietnamese mothers/divorcees, the author found many “deserted” Korean Vietnamese children and their mothers in Vietnam through this research. There is also a growing number of Vietnamese “return marriage migrants,” women who came back to South Korea after their first divorce and return to Vietnam. The article emphasizes the complexities and multidirectional trajectories of marriage migration and highlights the agency of female migrants, whose contribution to family welfare and to “development” is often overshadowed by their status within the family.

Does it really matter that, technically, my copy of the book hasn’t actually arrived yet? If you’ve read this far, I hope you too will indulge yourself (38,170 won on Aladin!), and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

*I first had repetitive strain injury about 10 years ago, consequence of having my keyboard too close to me, forcing me to bend my arms to type; fortunately, it resolved itself in a few weeks once I moved my computer just shy of arm’s length. This time round, it’s undoubtedly due to spending hours in bed on my phone, again bending my arms to use it; now that I’ve stopped, hopefully again the pain will go away just as quickly.

In the meantime, I can’t stress enough how much my arm can hurt at the moment, nor how debilitating it is to be literally too scared to use your right hand as a result. So, if you reading this, please do take a moment to consider how you physically use your devices, and for how long!

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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?

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

Why is Korea’s Largest Marriage Agency Only Targeting Women?

Potential customers are put off by unequal sex ratios, and Duo already has more female customers than male ones. So what gives?

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

I know, I know—I’m not even divorced yet, and I’m already looking at marriage agencies. But the reality is that Duo’s latest campaign ads are just impossible to avoid on Korean public transport at the moment. And the obvious emphasis on attracting female customers in them, for a service ostensibly about providing those women with as many romantic encounters with male suitors as their finances allow, should give everyone misgivings. For it’s not like correcting an excess of male customers is the motivation.

This concern may still sound odd. “Sweet,” I’d wager, is what usually comes to mind when most people see Duo ads. Indeed, I only did a double-take at this one at all because I happened to be reviewing my translations of a lavishly-illustrated, feminist Korean book about paintings of nude women (as any normal person does on the subway), and, glancing up, was immediately struck by how unlike those paintings the ad was. For actor Lee Shi-won/이시원‘s look back at the viewer doesn’t exactly scream pandering to the male gaze. Nor did all the other Duo ads on the subway carriage I could see from my seat, some of which just had Lee alone, and only one of which had model Noh Seong-Su/노성수 looking back with her.

Source: Duo.

Then my stop was coming up. And you don’t exactly need to have read Erving Goffman’s Gender Advertisements to be realize what the ‘relative sizes‘ of Lee and Noh in these ads signify in the ads I saw once I stood up:

But so what? What is the issue exactly, about Duo prioritizing women?

Well, the last time I checked in 2020, Duo had more female than male customers then, at a ratio of something like 6 to 4 or 5.5 to 4.5.

I don’t know if this ratio was affected by the pandemic. But regardless, more women competing for fewer men clearly disadvantages them. That extra level of competition also incentivizes charging women more for the same services offered men. Which indeed Duo, and most of the over 1000 other registered agencies out there, do so with a gusto.

Moreover, Duo, already experiencing massive drops in sales in the mid and late-2010s, almost made none at all in 2021 thanks to the pandemic, as marriages and childbirths, still inexorably tied together in Korea, dropped precipitously. Which, once again, was something the subway carriage wasn’t subtle about reminding me:

So, although Duo clearly retains the financial resources for its latest massive campaign, I speculate that it may actually represent a doubling-down on financially discriminating against young women. And, given Duo’s position as a industry leader and model, I have concerns about what this will have on Korean dating, gender roles, and marriage norms.

Not convinced? Really, it’s only a matter of degree. Please see my in-depth investigation from 2020 for a plethora of evidence on how that sexual discrimination has in fact been occurring for decades. And don’t let me forget the influence on body-image either: just a few months ago, one agency focusing on wealthy clients, with nearly half a million customers, came under fire for its strict financial criteria for admitting men, but only requiring a members’ vote of 3.6/5 on appearance alone to admit women. I also invite readers to consider that demanding women pay more to date men than vice-versa,* and deliberately skewing their customers’ sex ratios to justify this, is surely yet another form of “pink tax” that perpetuates the gender gap.

*(I realize that the norm in Korea is for men to pay on dates; no social issue that is interesting isn’t complicated!)

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There are More Entry-level Korean Women Journalists than Men These Days. So Why do Most Leave the Industry in Less Than 10 Years?

It’s not as simple as just increased childcare responsibilities—Korea already has a record-low birthrate, and women journalists the world over have less children than women in most other professions. So what gives?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Photo (cropped) by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, I like to think, that a single industry so possessed by one sex, must be in want of dramatic reform.

Okay, I did force that Austen-like opener somewhat.

But when you realize that the entry number of Korean women journalists has started to exceed that of men in recent years, only for most women to leave the industry in less than 10 years? Also, that the ensuing absence of women mentors, and continued domination of newsrooms by masculine culture are, ipso facto, some of the main causes of that?

Perhaps awkward forced changes, such as quotas for board members of news organizations, are precisely what the industry needs.

I can’t pretend to possess insider knowledge in that regard, nor detailed solutions. But from now on, I can at least share everything I’ve collected about sexism and bias in the Korean media industry over the years to spread awareness, as well as anything new as it comes up. In particular, such a gold mine of information as Na Yeon Lee and Changsook Kim’s “Why Are Women Journalists Leaving the Newsroom in South Korea? Gendered and Emerging Factors that Influence the Intention to Leave” just published last month in Journalism Practice.

If your interest isn’t piqued just by the title alone, let me leave you with some telling quotes that demonstrate why it really should be,* and please get in touch if you don’t have access to a copy.

*Apologies for removing the numerous sources mentioned for the sake of readability. Please consult the original for those, many of which sound just as interesting and informative as this one!

Just four years, ago MBC anchorwoman Lim Hyeon-ju caused a sensation by defying the rule that female news anchors weren’t allowed to wear glasses on the job.

First, on why I think quotas are absolutely necessary:

…in South Korea in 1996, JoongAng Daily, one of the largest South Korean newspapers, employed only 24 women journalists out of a total of 402 journalists. Soon after, the percentage of women journalists began to surge so that by 2020 women accounted for about 32.8% of the total number of journalists. However, most women journalists were younger and about 10% of women journalists were in top-management positions.

And:

In South Korea in recent years, although the entry number of women journalists has exceeded that of men journalists , there were only 7 women out of 138 (5.07%) board members among the 29 major news organizations.

Next, on why a gender balance in news media is so important:

The under-representation of women journalists in newsrooms is regarded as problematic based on findings of previous studies that the gender of journalists influences their reporting practices as well as the content of news coverage. For example, a recent study found that news organizations where women journalists occupy positions at editorial levels were more likely to have covered the “#Me Too Movement” than organizations without women editors in high positions. In fact, previous studies have repeatedly reported that with fewer women journalists, portrayals of women as well as marginalization of women’s concerns are themes often overlooked in news stories. Therefore, if women journalists consistently exit the news industry, their voices in covering newsworthy topics will likely disappear along with recommendations for improved newsroom policies and culture.

Moreover, in the absence of upper-level women journalists…

…several studies have shown that while the number of women journalists has increased, characteristics of newsrooms as masculine domains remain entrenched. In fact…“Young women journalists decided to resign because of men-centered culture and they felt they had less attention than men journalists from their organizations.” [Also], although there has been an increase in the number of Korean women journalists in recent decades, the traditional model of newsrooms based on a male model that expects strong work commitment and unusually long hours has not substantially changed. In addition, in South Korea, women journalists often face work-family conflicts after marriage due to society’s concepts of the traditional gender role of women, influenced by Korean cultural standards.

Photo by Anh Tuan To on Unsplash.

And finally, in conclusion:

…the results of this study show that the three most important factors in women journalists’ leaving the newsroom are (1) the weakening of social status, (2) a newsroom dominated by masculine culture, and (3) additional online workloads.

…although more and more women journalists have entered the news industry, the masculine newsroom culture has not changed because most of high-level positions in news media organizations are still held by men journalists. Interestingly, in-depth interviews, conducted…with nine young women journalists who resigned with less than 10 years of experience, revealed they had voluntarily left because they were unable to “find a role model who overcame the male-centered culture of a journalist society and the organizational culture of newspaper companies.” Their responses indicate that women journalists in South Korea continue to be perceived as “often excluded from the internal networks established by men.” Also, they are less likely than men to have the benefit of mentors.

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ZOOM TALK: “Missing Voices that Matter: a history of Japanese women law professorial pioneers, considering the social impact of their scarcity,” Tue 11 October 6pm (PDT)/ Wed 12 October 10am (KST)

Pervasive sexual inequality can feel like death from a thousand cuts. No one source of pain or minor irritation isn’t possible to dismiss or play down in favor of other, more visceral struggles against the patriarchy. But as it turns out, women’s relative absence from the legal profession has cascading effects across all society.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes. Photo by cottonbro at Pexels.

When young Korean men return to university after doing their military service, they’re generally two to three years older than their female classmates. In a society where age really, really matters, this gap can grant those men a great deal of privilege. For example, by being able to avoid various mundane tasks periodically required of students by the university, as these get foisted onto the young(er) women instead. Like during this coming December after the university entrance exams, when some of my female students will be expected to “volunteer” to waste a precious day before their tests by bowing in the freezing cold to visiting high-schoolers as they arrive on the bus, while my male students study from the warmth comfort of the library.

Damn right, do I see a direct link to why so many talented and highly educated women are wasted answering the phones and making the coffee at Korean workplaces.

All of which may feel like an odd introduction to announce an upcoming hybrid talk (register) by Mark A. Levin and Tomomi Yamaguchi at the David Lam Centre of Simon Fraser University, which is not actually about Korea at all. But, based on its description below, it still feels intimately useful and relevant nonetheless. Specifically, I’m wagering it will reveal many more instances of how something seemingly innocuous like a slight age gap can have surprisingly wide implications for sexual equality, offering many similar possibilities to explore—and combat—in the Korean context:

“While the U.S. and Japan’s earliest generation of female legal scholars showed roughly similar numbers, their paths soon diverged dramatically. The number of women in the two legal academies in the 1950s to about 1960 were not all that different. Both nations counted phenomenally low numbers similarly. The U.S. took an early lead, but not by all that much. One report counted five women in tenure track positions in the U.S. in 1950 and another counted fourteen women before 1960. Japan could count five women by 1956 and eight women by 1958. Neither fifteen women in the U.S. nor eight women in Japan represent even token counts among individuals who made up the two countries’ legal academy professoriate in those times.”

“The difference then is in what followed. In the U.S., we crossed a count of 100 women around 1970 and then accelerated to 516 women by 1979, while Japan’s count essentially flatlined. From 1958 in Japan, there were no new women entrants for about ten years and then the next uptick in Japan was just five women entering the field in the late 1960s through 1974. After a second near hiatus of about eight years, Japan then saw some modest growth to have a total of twenty-two women who had entered law teaching by 1988. Our next found data point is 402 women in 2004.”

“The profound scarcity of voices of women academics as leaders, teachers, and scholars in Japanʻs legal academy for several decades remains significantly detrimental for Japanʻs gender circumstances today. The story demonstrates how crucial womenʻs and other feminist voices are in addressing gender gaps and dismantling patriarchy in a society. In particular, having women and feminist allies in the legal academy is essential for feminism to advance in a society. Conversely, deficits regarding women and feminist allies in the legal academy will invariably impact the overall society’s gender circumstances for the worse. And so, just as feminist legal theorists would suggest, it seems essential to assess those circumstances in Japan with the idea that gender gap deficits in Japan’s legal academy must be at least a contributing factor to the nation’s profound and distressing gender gap situation more generally that continue to the present day.”

“This talk aims to explore not only how, but why the two paths diverged so significantly. With time allowing, some effort will be made to draw upon Canada’s circumstances to add another historical sequence into the telling here.”

♥

Truthfully though, it was not those possibilities that first convinced me to sign up. Rather, it was the disjuncture the blurb noted between Japan’s postwar democratic, egalitarian ideals and the actual practice in Japanese women’s personal and professional lives. For it all sounded very familiar (as it probably did to many of you too), having already read much the same in a chapter from a classic Korean studies book: “The Concept of Female Sexuality in Korean Popular Culture” by So-hee Lee (pp. 141-164) in Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class and Consumption in the Republic of Korea (ed. by Laruel Kendell, 2002). To refresh your memories from page 144, with my emphases:

“[Korean women in their early-30s {now early-60s}]…were the first female generation to go to school en masse, side by side with their brothers. As Wonmo Dong (1988) argues, they learned democracy and its fundamental principles of liberty and equality as an academic subject, not as something to practice in everyday life. From the beginning of their university days, around 1980, they were pushed into the whirl of extremely violent demonstrations to demand national political democratization. Although political protests had long been a part of Korean student life, there was something about the culture of protest that emerged in the 1980s that was different from what had gone before; student activism became an all-pervasive and all-defining experience. In those days, various slogans and ideologies relating to the struggle for democracy were strongly imprinted on the consciousness of this generation as a metadiscourse. However, the students of the 1980s never examined these democratic values in the context of their own everyday lives.”

“Go Alone Like the Rhinoceros’s Horn (Source, left: Whitedevil) illustrates the bifurcation between theory and practice. Looking at their mothers’ lives, Korean women in their early thirties believed that their marriages would be different. Because the Korean standard of living and patterns of material life changed very quickly, they believed that Korean ways of thinking had been transformed with the same speed. This is where their tragedy begins. As Hye-Wan in the novel says, mothers “teach daughters to live differently from themselves but teach sons to live like their fathers” (Kong 1993, 83–84). As a result, the daughters’ generation experiences an enormous conflict between the real and the ideal. During sixteen years of schooling, they have learned that equality is an important democratic value, but nowhere have they been taught that women experience the institution of marriage as a condition of inequality. Many married women of this generation have experienced a process of self-awakening similar to that of Yông- Sôn, who early in the novel tries to kill herself. She says,“Where have I been during the last eight years of my marriage?” and concludes,“Though I don’t want to accept it, I’ve been a sincere and faithful maid who must carry out his every request” (109). Korean wives in their thirties cannot envisage a real-life alternative to the self-sacrifices of their mothers’ generation.”

See “Women Getting on Top: Korean Sexuality in Flux in the 1990s” for a further discussion of Lee’s chapter. And, please feel free to say hi in the private chat if you are able to attend the talk! ;)

(But if you can’t make it, hopefully the talk will be made available on the Centre’s YouTube channel later.)

Update—Indeed it was. There seem to be technical difficulties embedding it here however, so if the video below doesn’t work please watch it on YouTube:


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