It’s Official: UNDP Says Korea Now Feminist Paradise (NOT April 1 Joke!)

(Source: unknown)

If there was only one statistic that best sums up contemporary Korean society, then that would be its “Gender Empowerment Measure” (GEM). Calculated by the UNDP, it is:

…an indicator of women’s degree of participation in political and economic activity and the policy-making process, using for its evaluation factors such as the number of female legislators, the percentage of women in senior official and managerial positions, the percentage of women in professional and technical positions, and the income differential between men and women (source).

Or, to put it graphically (see here for more details):

And why Korea’s GEM is so revealing is not just because of its abysmal ranking, which, at 68th out of 179 countries surveyed, is bested even by developing countries such as Kyrgyzstan, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Vietnam, Moldova, Botswana, and Nicaragua. Rather, it’s because that rank is so out of sync with its other rank of 25 in the Human Development Index (HDI), which measures a country’s standard of living. Surely, as I explained two years ago, there is no greater testament to the palpable gender apartheid here, than the fact that Korea does such a good job of educating and taking care of the health its citizens, only then to effectively exclude fully half of them from political and economic power?

(Source: unknown)

Mentioning this in a conference paper I’m writing on Korean girl groups however, as one does, earlier today my coauthor quite reasonably asked me if a more up to date ranking wasn’t available?

Alas, no. But there did appear to have been some recalculating of the 2008 figures done, with the first thing I saw from my search giving Korea a new ranking of, well, 20th best in the world:

Needless to say, I did a double-take. And indeed, as most of you have probably already guessed, actually the GEM has been abolished. Instead, Korea now has a ranking of 20 in what’s called the “Gender Inequality Index” (GII), calculated according to the following criteria:

What to take away from this? Well first, if I do say so myself, that it’s a pretty interesting thing to end up with, having originated from a paragraph that just one line earlier discusses Girls’ Generation’s signature hot pants.

But more seriously, I do want to stress the incredible achievements that Korea has made in terms of affordable, quality healthcare, well-illustrated by a recent anecdote from Ask a Korean! on a Korean stroke victim in New York, who quite rationally choose to fly 13 hours back to Korea rather than be treated in a hospital there. And it’s also indicative of how dangerous it can still be for women to give birth in many parts of the world, with 1 in 16 new mothers dying in Sub-Saharan Africa for instance, that the UNDP has good reason to think that the Maternal Mortality Ratio needs to be considered in any worldwide measure of gender inequality.

Nevertheless, while budding Canadian politicians, for example, are already taking advantage of their country’s new ranking behind Japan (yet another new paragon of feminist virtue) to say it’s all the government’s fault, it’s probably Korea jumping from 68th to 20th that should be getting the most attention. After all, albeit with apologies to long-term readers for the frequent mention, it does have: among the lowest female workforce participation rates in the OECD; the lowest rate of employment for educated women in the OECD (in fact, Korea is the only country in the OECD where the more educated the woman, the less likely she is to be employed); the largest gender wage gap in the OECD; only 13.7% of its legislators women; and a President that encouraged the mass firing of women to get over the latest financial crisis.

(Source)

At the very least then, Korea’s example seriously questions the applicability of the GII to developed countries. But can readers can think of any other issues raised?

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace & the 2001 Equal Employment Opportunity Law: What Still Needs to be Done

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With thanks very much to Marilyn for the translation of the following article from Ildaro (일다), I’ll quickly let it speak for itself:

고용불안 속, 직장내 성희롱 위협 커져

In the midst of employment instability, the threat of workplace sexual harassment increases

고용평등상담실 10년, 여성노동의 현실과 미래를 말한다(2)

10^th year of the Equal Employment Counseling Office, discussing female employees’ present and future

[편집자 주] 2001년 남녀고용평등법 4차 개정으로 고용평등상담실 지원제도가 도입된 지 10년이 되었습니다. 민간단체들의 고용평등상담실은 그동안 여성노동자들의 실질적 보호장치로 기능해왔으며, 여성노동자들이 처한 현실을 사회에 고발하는 창구역할을 해왔습니다. 일다는 여성노동자회와 함께 고용평등상담실에 접수된 상담사례를 통해 IMF 경제 위기 이후 후퇴 일로를 걷고 있는 여성노동의 현실과 과제를 살펴보고자 합니다. 필자 황현숙님은 현재 서울여성노동자회 회장을 맡고 있습니다.

우 리 사회의 성폭력 문제는 온 국민이 알게 된 끔찍한 아동 성폭행, 유명 정치인의 성희롱 등으로 자주 언론에 오르내리는 이슈가 되었다. 직장내 성희롱으로 고용평등상담실의 문을 두드리는 여성들의 호소 또한 가벼운 성적 농담이나 접촉을 넘어서 심지어는 강간에 이르는 경우조차 발생되고 있다. 직장내 성희롱은 그 자체가 미치는 정신적․신체적 악영향, 노동환경의 악화뿐만 아니라 일자리 자체까지 위협받게 된다는 데에 그 심각성이 있다.

[Editor’s note] It’s been 10 years since the Equal Employment Counseling Office support system was introduced through the 4^th Amendment to the 2001 Equal Employment Opportunity Law. During that time, the Equal Employment Counseling Offices of private organizations have been functioning as female workers’ practical safeguards and have acted as liaisons that report to society the realities that female workers encounter. Through the case consultations received in the Equal Employment Counseling Office, Ilda and the Women Workers Association intend to look at the realities and problems of women workers, who are losing ground after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Author Hwang Hyun-sook is the current head of the Seoul Women Workers Association.

Through incidents of horrible child molestation, a famous politician’s sexual harassment, and others of which the entire nation is aware, our society’s problem with sexual violence has become an issue that often comes up in the press. According to the complaints of women workers who’ve knocked on the Equal Employment Counseling Office’s door because of sexual harassment, there are also cases occurring that surpass light sexual jokes or touching to go as far as rape. Workplace sexual harassment itself not only has bad mental and physical effects and worsens work environments, but is even of such a magnitude that jobs themselves [of victims] may be threatened.

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일자리 위협으로 이어지는 직장내 성희롱

“과장이 ‘피곤하지?’라며 손, 팔을 주물러 너무 불쾌하여 늘 가슴을 조이며 지냈어요. 어느 날 허벅지를 만지기도 하여 우울증에 시달리다가 문제제기를 하였더니 그 후 재계약을 하지 않겠다는 통보를 받았어요. 성희롱으로 실직하게 된 것 같아 너무 억울해요.”(2009년 상담사례, 계약직)

“사 장님이 자꾸 만나자고 하면서 ‘옆에 오면 가슴이 떨린다. 만나면 안고 싶고 무릎을 베고 누워 얘기도 하고 싶고 즐기고 싶다. 나를 받아 줄 수 없냐.”고 하더라고요. 남자에 대해 관심이 없다고 거절했더니, 부장을 통해 퇴사하라는 통보를 받았는데……“(2009년 상담사례, 2개월 근무)

성희롱 가해자가 사업주, 상사 인 상담은 매년 75~85% 가량이다. 가해자가 인사권을 직접 가지고 있는 경우가 많아 성희롱을 거부하거나 문제제기했을 경우에는 직. 간접적인 괴롭힘으로 스스로 그만두게 하거나 권고사직, 심지어 다른 사유를 들어 해고하는 사례들도 나타난다. 그래서 성희롱이 발생해도 공론화하기 어렵고 이를 은폐하도록 가해자가 권력을 행사하기도 한다.

Workplace sexual harassment extending to job threats

“My manager would ask, ‘Are you tired?’ and massage my hands and feet; it was so uncomfortable and I always went around feeling anxious. One day he even touched my thigh and so while suffering from depression, I made a complaint; because of that I received notice that my contract wouldn’t be renewed. I became unemployed because of sexual harassment – it’s so unfair.” (2009 counseling case, contract worker)

“The president of the company often asked me out and said ‘When you come near me my heart pounds. If we go out I want to hold you, put my head in your lap and talk, and have fun. Can’t you accept me?’ I refused, telling him I wasn’t interested in men, and through the general manager I received notice that I was to resign…” (2009 case consultation, working for 2 months)

Every year, about 75-85% of the consultations are ones in which the perpetrator of sexual harassment is the business’ owner or victim’s boss. There are many cases in which the perpetrator is directly in charge of the company’s human resources. Because of this, when the victim has rejected the perpetrator’s advances or made an official complaint, there have been cases in which the perpetrator may cause her to quit though direct or indirect harassment, urge her to resign, or even find grounds to fire her. Therefore, even though sexual harassment occurs, making it public is difficult and the perpetrator often exerts his authority to conceal it.

(Source: unknown)

성희롱의 온상, 회식자리 남성중심 문화

“입 사한지 1주일 만에 본사 간부급 직원들과 회식자리가 있었어요. 간부들이 버릇인양 손잡기, 어깨동무하기, 허리 감싸기, 끌어안기, 볼 부비기……. 마치 간부들을 위해 여직원들이 대접하는 자리 같았는데 어렵게 입사하여 그만둘 수도 없고 어찌해야 할지……” (2007년 상담사례, 정규직)

“회 식 2차로 노래방에 끌려가다시피 갔어요. 술 마신 남직원들이 안으려고 해서 피했는데, 갑자기 뒤에서 끌어안더니 들었다놓았다하는데 과장, 계장 모두 묵인하고, 계장은 블루스를 추자고 하더라고요. 그래서 울면서 집에 왔는데 동기들도 다른 구청이나 동사무소 근무하면서 회식자리 성희롱 때문에 너무 힘들어 해요. 블루스를 춘 여직원한테는 잘해주고, 안 추면 욕하고 못살게 군다고 하더라고요.” (2007년 상담사례, 공무원)

회 식문화가 변하는 곳도 생겨나고 있지만, 회식자리에서의 성희롱은 지금도 일상적으로 일어나고 있다. 회식자리는 직장내 위계적 관계의 연속으로 상사의 기호에 맞추어야 하고 그의 요구에 따라야 하는 업무의 연속처럼 진행된다. 우리 사회의 남성 중심적인 문화, 위계질서가 이어지는 회식 문화는 여성들의 고용환경을 악화시키는데 일조하고 있다.

The hotbed of sexual harassment, office dinner male-centric culture

“I was at an office dinner with head office management-level employees only a week after joining the company. The executives had habits of holding my hand, putting their arms around my shoulders and waist, hugging me, pressing their cheeks against mine… It was like a place for the female employees to serve executives; it was hard to get a job here so I can’t quit and [don’t know] what to do…” (2007 case consultation, regular employee)

“I went to the second [drinking-heavy] part of our office dinner like I was being dragged. Male employees who were drinking were trying to hug me so I avoided them; suddenly I was embraced from behind and picked up and put down. The manager and section chief overlooked everything, and the section chief asked me to slow-dance with him. So I came home crying; also my peers who work at other district offices or dong offices have a really hard time because of sexual harassment at office dinners. They say the female employees who slow-danced are treated well, and if you don’t dance they curse and treat you badly.” (2007 case consultation, government employee)

There are places where office dinner culture is changing, but sexual harassment at office dinners happens regularly even now. Office dinners progress similar to the business itself, in which one must adjust to the preferences of a superior ahead of one in the workplace’s hierarchical relationships, and follow his demands. Our society’s male-centric culture and hierarchy-connected office dinner culture lead to the worsening of women’s working conditions.

(Source)

친밀한 관계가 질곡인 영세소규모사업장 성희롱

“5 명도 안 되는 회사에서 근무한지 2개월인데 사장이 아침부터 술을 먹자고 하고, 남자친구랑 몇 번 하냐고 묻고 ‘나랑 애인 같은 거 하자’는 소리를 자꾸 해요. ‘이런 소리 들으려고 일하는 거 아니다’라고 말하면 무릎 꿇고 안한다고 하면서도 술만 마시면 또 그러니 일자리가 아니라 고문받는 자리 같아요.”(2008년 상담사례)

“연 말에 사장이 송년회를 가자고 해서 부담스러웠지만 가게 되었어요. 결국 2차까지 가게 되었는데 노래방에서 강제로 키스를 하고 옷 속으로 손을 넣어 몸을 만졌어요. 거부하면서 강하게 밀쳤더니 “난 사장이고, 넌 경리야”, “너 내일부터 나오지 마.”라는데, 다시 직장을 알아보면서 화도 나고 얼굴 보는 것도 두렵고 생각할수록 화가 나고 억울해요.“(2008년 상담사례, 사업주와 2명 근무)

영세소규모사업장의 성희롱은 가해자가 사업주인 경우가 많아 실질적인 법적 조치가 어려운 점, 성희롱 예방교육 특례조항 적용 사업장이라 예방교육이 실시되지 않는다는 문제점이 있다.

업 무적으로 둘만이 접촉하는 경우가 많아 사업주의 부당한 성적 요구나 사적인 친밀감을 성적 언행으로 표시하는 경우도 잦다. 성희롱을 거부하면 바로 그만두라는 통보를 받는 노동권 위협의 문제도 크지만, 매일 가까운 곳에서 얼굴을 마주쳐야 하니 버티고 싶어도 버티기 어렵다는 어려움이 있다.

Sexual harassment in a small business bound by close relationships

“I’ve been working for 2 months at an office that doesn’t even have 5 people in it; from the morning on the president suggests drinking together, asks me how many times I do it with my boyfriend, and keeps saying ‘Let’s date or something’. When I say, ‘I don’t work in order to listen to this kind of noise’, even though he gets on his knees and says he won’t do it [anymore], when he drinks, he gets like that again, so it’s like a torture chamber, not a workplace.” (2008 case consultation)

“At the end of the year, the president wanted to have an end-of-the-year party, so I went though it was annoying. I ended up going to the second part and at a karaoke room he forcibly kissed me and put his hands under my clothes and touched me. I refused him and pushed him hard so he said ‘I’m the president and you’re the bookkeeper’ and ‘From tomorrow, don’t come in [to work] anymore.’ I’m looking for another job and I feel angry and afraid of seeing his face, and the more I think about it, the angrier I get and the more unfair it feels.” (2008 case consultation, office with company president and two people)

There are many cases in which the perpetrator of sexual harassment in a small business workplace is the business owner, so real legal measures are a challenge, and they are workplaces to which the Sexual Harassment Prevention Education Exception Clause applies, so there is the problem of prevention education not being implemented.

There are many cases in business in which two people only have contact with each other, so cases in which the business’ owner expresses his unjustified sexual demands or personal feelings of intimacy through sexual speech and behavior also frequently occur. If victims rebuff the sexual harassment, the labor rights-threatening problem of immediately receiving notice to quit is serious, but there is also the drawback that because they have to see the other person’s face nearby every day, even though they want to endure it [keep working], enduring it is difficult.

(Source)

늘어나는 서비스직, 늘어나는 고객에 의한 성희롱

“고객센터에서 근무하고 있는데 외주업체 소속 강사가 메신저로 ‘만나자, 남자친구와 몇 번 했냐는 등의 말과 스킨십을 하는데 법적으로 어떻게 처리할 수 있을까요?” (2009년 상담사례, 텔레마케터)

“노 인돌보미 일을 하고 있는데, 고객이 70세인데 전직 교장이래요. 첫날부터 자꾸 몸을 밀착해오고 ‘젊은 사람이 곁에 있으니 내가 다시 남성이 되는 느낌이다’, 어제는 노골적으로 ‘아랫도리가 되살아난다’며 치근대 괴로워요. 어떻게 해야 할지…….“(2009년 상담사례, 45세)

고 용형태와 업무 방식이 다양해지면서 업무상 맺는 관계의 폭도 다양하고 복잡해졌다. 협력업체나 거래처 직원, 대인서비스직의 성희롱도 다양하게 나타난다. 그리고 간병이나 노인돌봄 같은 사회서비스 일자리가 늘어남에 따라 재가 돌봄서비스에 종사하는 여성들의 성희롱 피해상담도 늘어나고 있다.

Increasing service-industry workers, increasing sexual harassment by customers

“I work in a customer service center. A supervisor [actually she uses the word for “lecturer” but I think that’s a mistake] affiliated with our subcontractor says things on Messenger like ‘Let’s go out’, ‘How many times have you done it with a boyfriend?’ and so on, and does skinship [touching like they’re in a relationship]. How can I deal with this using the law?” (2009 case consultation, telemarketer)

“I work in elder care. My patient is 70 years old and says he used to be a school principal. From the first day he has often pressed up against me and said ‘Because there’s a young person at my side I feel like I’m becoming a man again’ and yesterday, saying bluntly, ‘My lower body is coming back to life”, he made pass at me; I’m really upset. [I don’t know] what to do…” (2009 case consultation, 45-year-old)

As types of employment and ways of conducting business are diversifying, the range of relationships formed through business is also diversifying and becoming complicated. Sexual harassment of employees of subcontractors or clients, and personal service workers also presents itself in various ways. Also, in line with the increase in social service positions like nursing or elder care, sexual harassment victim counseling for women working in in-home care is also increasing.

(Source)

성희롱은 사적인 일?

“남자 동료가 수시로 농담을 하면서 뽀뽀하자, 너도 밤일 할 줄 아냐는 등 수치심을 갖도록 하여 회사에 제기하였는데, 개인의 일이라고 개인적으로 대응하라고만 하는데……”(2009년 상담사례)

직 장내 성희롱은 안전한 환경에서 일할 노동권과 직접 관련이 있다. 그래서 남녀고용평등법에서도 직장내 성희롱을 금지하고 있을 뿐만 아니라, 사업주의 의무로 △직장 내 성희롱의 예방을 위한 교육 실시△성희롱 행위자에 대하여 징계나 이에 준하는 조치를 취할 것△피해자에게 해고나 다른 불이익 조치를 하지 말 것을 규정하고 있다. 그런데도 성희롱이 발생하여 이를 사측에 문제제기하면 위의 상담사례처럼 개인적인 일로 치부해 버리는 문제들이 여전히 일어나고 있다.

Sexual harassment is personal business?

“A male coworker often makes jokes and says, ‘Let’s kiss’, ‘Do you too know how to do night work [sex]?’ and other things to humiliate me so I made a complaint to the company. They said it was personal business and just told me to deal with it privately…” (2009 case consultation)

Workplace sexual harassment is directly related to the employee’s right to work in a safe environment. Therefore, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law not only prohibits workplace sexual harassment, it also stipulates, as the business owner’s duty, 1) implementation of education for the prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace, 2) disciplinary action, or taking steps in accordance with disciplinary action, against the perpetrators of sexual harassment, 3) not firing or taking other disadvantageous action against victims. However, when sexual harassment occurs and is reported to the management, problems with it just being regarded as personal business, as in the case consultation above, are still coming up.

(Source)

고용평등상담실 통해 가해자의 공식사과와 징계 등 확보하기도

“부 원장님이 간호사들에게 안마를 해달라고 하거나 성적인 얘기도 잦아 힘들었어요. 며칠 전에는 맨발로 제 다리를 쓰다듬었는데 징그럽고 수치스러운 느낌 때문에 정신과 상담까지 받았어요. 그런데 고용평등상담실에서 도와주셔서 부원장은 공개사과와 감봉처분에, 병원 전체에 성희롱예방교육까지 실시하게 되었답니다!”

“과장님 성희롱 때문에 괴로웠는데 상담실에서 도와주셔서 공개사과도 받고 가해자는 다른 근무지로 전출되어 얼굴보지 않고 근무할 수 있게 되었어요!”

직 장내 성희롱 자체가 노동환경을 악화시키고, 이를 문제제기하면 해고나 불이익이 따르기도 한다. 그러나 다른 여직원들을 위해서라도 그냥 있을 수 없다며 이에 맞서 문제를 제기하는 여성들 또한 늘어나고 있다. 이렇듯 권리를 확보하게 되는 사례도 많았지만, 일자리 자체의 불안정이 갈수록 커지면서 적극적인 대응을 주저하는 경우도 많은 안타까움이 있다.

Securing perpetrators’ public apology, disciplinary action, etc., through the Equal Employment Counseling Office

“The vice director frequently asked the nurses to give him massages or talked about sex, so it was difficult. A few days ago he stroked my leg with his left foot; because of the nasty and shameful feeling, I even got psychiatric counseling. But the Equal Employment Counseling Office helped me so the vice director’s public apology and pay docking measure, and even sexual harassment prevention education for the whole hospital were implemented!”

“I suffered because of my manager’s sexual harassment, but the Equal Employment Counseling Office helped me so I received a public apology and the perpetrator was transferred to a different workplace so I don’t see his face and I’ve become able to work!”

Workplace sexual harassment itself has a negative effect on a work environment, and if one reports it, dismissal or disadvantages often follow. However, the number of women saying that, for the sake of other women workers, they can’t just [let it] be and accordingly, making complaints, is rising. In this way there have been many cases that secured rights, but regrettably, as the instability of jobs themselves increases, there are many cases in which [victims] hesitate to take assertive action.

(Source)

직장내 성희롱 문화? 이젠 바뀌어야

직장내 성희롱을 겪으면 그만두라고 할까봐 참고 견디거나, 문제제기하면 결국 피해자가 그만두게 되는 상황이 더 이상 반복되지 않도록 해야 한다. 지난 해 여성노동자회 고용평등상담실에 접수된 성희롱 발생 사업장의 78%가 성희롱예방교육을 실시하지 않은 것으로 파악되었다. 그러므로 사업장에서는 형식적이지 않은 예방교육 실시해야 하고 사내에서 발생하는 성희롱에 대하여 조사와 조치, 재발방지 대책 등을 마련하여 실시해야 한다.

그 리고 정부는 이런 사항들이 실질적으로 이루어지도록 적극적인 행정지도·감독을 해야 한다. 또한 남성 중심적이 아닌 성인지적 관점의 성희롱 인정, 영세사업장장의 성희롱 예방교육 지원 확대, 돌봄서비스노동의 성희롱 실태조사와 예방교육 및 대책 등을 마련해야 한다. 이를 통해 우리 사회와 직장 전반의 남성 중심적인 문화가 변화될 때 직장내 성희롱에 대한 인식과 대책의 변화 또한 이끌어낼 수 있을 것이다.

Workplace sexual harassment culture? Needs to change now

We need to make it so that situations in which, if one experiences workplace sexual harassment, they hold back and endure it because they’re afraid of being told to quit, or in which if they report it, they end up quitting, are no longer repeated. Last year, 78% of the workplaces reported to the Women Worker’s Association’s Equal Employment Counseling Center for sexual harassment were places where sexual harassment prevention education had not been implemented. Therefore, in the workplace, prevention education that is not cursory needs to be implemented, and for sexual harassment that occurs in-house, research, action, recurrence prevention measures, etc., need to be arranged and implemented.

The government needs to use assertive administrative guidance and supervision to make these remedies become reality. Also, recognition of sexual harassment from a gender-sensitive perspective that is not male-centric, securing support for sexual harassment prevention education for the owners of small businesses, research, prevention education, and measures regarding the sexual harassment of care-industry workers, etc., have to be arranged. When, through these, both our society’s and all workplaces’ male-centric culture changes, they will also be able to lead to changes in the understanding of and countermeasures for workplace sexual harassment.

The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea: Part 4

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. Source: cutilove.

“Smoking Among Men Drops to Record Low” reads a recent headline in The Chosunilbo, with only 39.6% of Korean men over 19 now doing so: a drop of 3.5% from a year earlier, and of 17.1% from 2003. Which is something to be celebrated for sure, but, strangely, the even more amazing news that almost half of women smokers also quit last year barely gets a mention. Why not?

Of course, it may just be an oversight. But there is some context to consider: overemphasizing reductions in the male smoking rate is intrinsic to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s (보건복지부) tobacco control policies for instance, and it also has a long track record of exaggerating its successes. Possibly then, the report just reflects the Ministry’s own emphases in its press release.

Alternatively, readers too may not have been interested in a paltry reduction of 4% to 2.2%. The rate has always been low, they may have said. And with a 2007 Gallup Korea study finding that 83.4% of Koreans thought that women shouldn’t smoke too, with some even slapping them in the street if they do, then apparently the consensus is that so it should be too.

But given that background, then as you’d expect there is chronic under-reporting of smoking by women, best estimates of their real numbers being closer to 20%. Add the absence of any dramatic social or economic changes to prompt women to give up the habit in droves in just the past year too, then it’s difficult not to conclude that these latest figures are essentially meaningless.

Was a line or two to that effect really too much to expect from a newspaper?

Source: Naver Movies.

But I’ve already discussed both statistical issues and taboos against women smoking in great depth in Parts One, Two, and Three (and in a newsflash), and, with the benefit of *cough* 6 months’ hindsight (sorry), then there’s little more to add on those topics really. Instead, let me continue this series by looking at the ways in which transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) have successfully targeted Korean women ever since the cigarette market was liberalized in the late-1980s, despite legislation specifically designed to prevent that. Fortunately, the journal article I’ll be relying on – Kelley Lee, Carrie Carpenter, Chaitanya Challa, Sungkyu Lee, Gregory N Connolly, and Howard K Koh in “The strategic targeting of females by transnational tobacco companies in South Korea following trade liberalisation”, Globalization and Health 2009, Volume 5, Issue 2 – is freely available for online-viewing or as a PDF download, and is short and very readable, so I’ll just summarize the main points here.

First, some historical context: this is not the first time tobacco companies have encountered strong taboos against women smoking, with attitudes towards it in the U.S. in the 1920s sounding not unlike those of Korea today (in 1922, a woman was even arrested for smoking on the street). The solution was to get women to associate smoking with equality and female emancipation, as ably described in the following segment of The Century of the Self (2009):

If that gives you a taste for watching the full documentary, as I suspect it might, then see here for links to all episodes. If you’d rather just read an explanation though, then let me refer you to towards the end of this short interview of producer, writer, and director Adam Curtis. Or for something even shorter, then this alternative explanation also gives the gist:

Edward Bernays, the man who supposedly invented most modern PR techniques, in the 1920s convinced women to start smoking. Supposedly at the time smoking was considered gross and basically for men only so very few women smoked. The show claims he hired a bunch of women to march in the New York Thanksgiving Day Parade (a big yearly parade) and had them put a pack of cigarettes in their garters. On cue they were all to lift their dresses and light one up. He then told the press to come to the parade because there was going to be a protest for women’s equality. On cue the women light up, the press took photos and reported lighting up a cigarette as the symbol for women’s equality and like over night it was now seen as if you supported equality for women you should be smoking.

And internal TTC documents demonstrate that that same logic has also been applied to emerging markets across Asia since the early-1990s. Focusing more specifically on Korea here though, crucial is the 1989 National Health Promotion Law Enforcement Ordinance, which bans all tobacco advertising, marketing and sponsorship aimed at women and children (yes really, and for more on this enduring paternalistic attitude, see Part 1). This has been circumvented by TTCs in 4 main ways:

Source: Naver Movies

First, if not blatantly targeted at them, then advertising of each cigarette brand remains permitted up to 60 times a year in print media, and “tobacco companies are also allowed to sponsor social, cultural, music, and sporting events (other than events for women and children) using company names but not product names” (pp. 4-5). Consequently, sometimes TTCs have simply used ostensibly “gender-neutral” advertisements to target women, in the mid-1990s the former Brown & Williamson promoting the Finesse brand (sold as Capri outside of Korea) by using romantic imagery of couples for instance.

Next, in the 1990s at least there was a focus on retail distribution in venues which tended to be frequented by young women, such as coffee shops, restaurants, event lunches, bars, nightclubs, and so on. Especially the first, and which is worth expanding on here, as it might sound strange in an era of ubiquitous, smoke-free, multinational chain-stores. But then it wasn’t so long ago that they were the place to hang out for young people, a rare oasis from school, work, and/or extended families living under the one, cramped roof. As described in Yogong: Factory Girl for instance (published in 1988, but really about the 1970s):

Often [18 year-old Sun-hi] goes to the home of a friend from her work. Three or four girls, all from the same factory, may walk together, stopping in at a tea room (다방/dabang) for coffee or cola and to listen to music. Or, if they have less money, they may stop to buy a packaged ice cream confection at the local grocer’s. But whether on the street corner or at the tea room, where, for the price of a drink, one may sit without interruption, there is ample opportunity to see and be seen by boys of the same age. (p. 140)

And in particular, in The Joongang Daily (image sourced from article)”

In the 1970s, cafes…became more commercialized, and owners sought to sell an image rather than a drink. “The dabang was a place for socializing. People didn’t care much about the taste of coffee ― and it tasted terrible,” said Mr. Lee.

The hugely popular “music dabangs” were associated with long hair, blue jeans and folk guitarists. Dabang deejays became the idols of teenage girls. When that trend faded, “ticket dabangs” emerged, where sexy hostesses would do more than just pour your coffee.

After half a century of popularity, dabangs started giving way to modern and chic cafes in the 1980s. Specialty cafes such as Jardin and Waltz House ― imitations of Japanese versions of European style cafes ― spread everywhere. This type of cafe, however, had its limits. Despite expensive interiors and espresso machines, the coffee quality was still poor. “Neither cafe owners nor coffee drinkers knew what a cup of good coffee tasted like,” said Mr. Lee.

But in the 1990s, the mantle of coolness suddenly passed away from dabangs:

During my first week in Korea back in 1990, I started going to a small coffeehouse Jardin, just down the street from the language institute where I taught. It was one of these upscale gourmet-type coffeehouses that, according to an article I had read in one of the English-language newspapers, had suddenly started springing up everywhere in the city….Now almost over night, people could choose a variety of coffee concoctions and flocked to these coffeehouses.

This was a big change in the early 90s in Korea. It might have seemed subtle to some people who just wanted to enjoy their coffee, but what was really happening was a break from tradition.

Young Koreans wanted something new and modern. They did not want to hang out in the dank, dark dabangs that were more often than not frequented by middle-aged Korean men and women. Likewise, the tea houses and cafés their parents had gone to in the 70s and 80s were not hip enough for the urban chic beginning to appear.

And as for what happened after 1999, when the first Starbucks opened, then I recommend this recent article in 10 Magazine. But then *cough* this post is actually about gender and smoking rather than coffee per se, so let me just highlight two aspects of that most recent development here.

First, that these new, Western establishments have been more heavily patronized by women than men, as explained by Gord Sellar back in 2008 (and recently expanded upon by him here):

The interesting thing to look at is the emergent young women’s consumer society. I’ve been trawling about online, trying to piece together the story of the Soybean Paste Girl archetype (or, dwenjang nyeo{된장녀}, as she’s called in Korean), and what I’ve found is that almost all of the criticism of this young woman is focused on her female-consumerism. That is: when she buys a coffee from Starbucks for W4,000 (usually about $4, though the won is doing badly these days) coffee, she gets criticized, but when a young man of the same age consumes two bottles of eminently acceptable (read: Korean) soju, nobody thinks to criticize it. The soju, that’s normal, but the Starbucks… that’s all foreign, all “expensive,” and more disturbingly, it’s “girly.” Girls can go there and have fun without men. (Which is doubly threatening to young men who frustratedly already see such women as “out of their league.”) As in, you see women in Starbucks with women, you see women in Starbucks with men. You almost never see men in Starbucks with men. Starbucks, like Gucci and Prada and Luis Vuitton before it, and like Outback and other “Western” restaurants since, are distinctly of appeal to women.

Sources: left, right.

And second, that women are puffing away in droves in them, as I’m no Picasso explained in a comment on Part 3:

It would be interesting to look into the correlation between the development of coffee shop culture in Korean and that of the growth rate of female smokers. I’ve seen maybe five women smoking on the street in my nearly two years in Korea, and at least three of those were ducked into telephone booths or alleys. However. When I sit in the smoking rooms of cafes (which I do quite often), they are often (particularly in the afternoon, when the coffee shops are full almost exclusively of women, with no male audience around to balk) overflowing with groups of young women smoking. A commenter above mentioned the lack of public space available for such behavior. The coffee shop seems to have become a safe haven for women smoking openly in public. I would say the growth of the popularity of coffee shops have encouraged women to be seen, at least here, smoking in public. Which has probably had an influence on the acceptance of the behavior in general, which has no doubt increased its popularity.

Meanwhile, for cigarette advertising at nightclubs then I highly recommend the 2003 Tokyo Inc. article “The Night is Still Young” about a similar strategy in Japan, and which was quite a shock to someone who used to attend dance parties naively thinking they were more about peace, love, unity, and respect:

Liquor and cigarette companies initially started to push their products to Japan’s club generation about five years ago, when new legislation banned them from advertising to people under 20. Since you have to be over 20 to legally enter a club in Japan, clubs become the perfect forum for legitimate advertising to young people. (Advertisers know, of course, that many people under 20 are habitual clubbers who can easily get into the venues). Ishihara calls it a “closed world,” a guaranteed market of self-selected consumers. Indeed, the rapid rise of tobacco sponsorship in clubs and bars since the 1990s globally has been well documented. Corporate sponsorship started conspicuously in Japan in 1996, notes Ishihara, when Grammy award-winning producer and DJ Little Louis Vega received an unprecedented [yen] 3 million from Gordon’s Gin to spin his magic in a Tokyo club.

And, getting back on track now, then a third strategy to circumvent legislation by TTCs has been “trademark diversification”, also known as “brand stretching”. In short, it means to extend a well-known brand to things with which it isn’t traditionally associated, and the article notes that in 1996, Brown & Williamson took great interest in the fact that leading Korean tobacco company KT&G:

…had advertised its brand Simple in numerous magazines aimed at female readers. Strategies included the coupling of cigarettes with bottles of Chanel perfume, and the placement of advertisements in foreign language women’s magazines available in South Korea. (p. 5)

And which as I explain here, are much more popular among young women than Korean magazines. But finally, and semi-related to the last, TTCs also used—again—ostensibly gender-neutral sports sponsorship to discreetly target females, in 1991 British American Tobacco creating “a Kent Golf Sponsorship program targeted at higher-educated, male and females aged 25 years or older with above average incomes” for instance.

But that was 20 years ago. And indeed, one big criticism of this otherwise excellent journal article (and as far as I know, the only one of its kind), is that despite the authors’ searches of internal TTC document searches being conducted between May 2006 and March 2008, literally all the practical examples of TTC strategies to target Korean women they provide are from the 1990s. Why?

Granted, there may be legal reasons and/or questions of access to consider, but these are not mentioned. But regardless, as I type this I’m suddenly left wondering as to if and/or how much they still apply in 2011, and it seems inopportune to continue as intended with more prosaic matters, like, well, how TTCs determined the appropriate cigarette circumference size for the Korean female market.

Source: kkwang.

Instead then, let me reserve that for a new, final Part 5, and I’ll finish here by opening that above question to the floor: what evidence have you yourself noticed of any of the strategies being used by TTCs described here? Or are they a little passé in 2011? And if so, then what else explains why so many young Korean women and teenagers are taking up the habit these days, as explained in previous posts?

(Other posts in the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Newsflash, Korea’s Hidden Smokers; Living as a female smoker in Korea)

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

Real & Presumed Causes of Racism Against Interracial Couples in Korea

(Sources – left: GR X Hermark; right)

Over at a recent post on Noona Blog: Seoul, an excellent blog written by a Swedish woman in a relationship with a Korean man, currently there’s several interesting comments about the sources of racism often directed against Korean female – Caucasian male (KF-CM) couples in Korea.

Many of which were written by Jake of Asian Male Revolutions, who has the admirable and very necessary goal of challenging the racist and emasculating images of Asian men in the US media through that website.

But in the process of – in my view – very much contriving to paint racism against KF-CM couples in Korea in those terms, as well as global racial power relations, I found he made many extremely sexist assumptions about Korean women, which I’d like to challenge. As technical issues prevent me from doing so at Noona Blog directly however,* then – assuming that you’ve already read his comments – I’ll post my original response here instead:

Dear Jake,

it’s difficult not to sound offensive when critiquing someone’s opinions so harshly. But still, however legitimate your concerns about representations of Asian men in the US media are, it’s incredibly naive of you to assume that that these would exist in the same form and degree in the Korean media, or indeed at all.

Argue that they still have a role in expressions of racism against KF-CM couples in Korea nevertheless though, and you end up simply sounding like an apologist.

Much more seriously however, in so doing you also rely heavily on some extremely patronizing and sexist assumptions about Korean women, let alone racist ones against Caucasian men. Let me explain.

I’ll start with your acknowledgment that “there’s no denying that simple male jealousy plays a role in the bellyaching white men…encounter as one part of an interracial couple in Korea.” Naturally I fully agree, and while I consider it a little harsh to dismiss treating that “as simple jealousy from a bunch of Korean/Asian losers” as a “pretty foolish assumption” – after all, you get jerks like that the world over – I also agree that it is wise “to consider the historical and political implications and undertones of various types and permutations of interracial dating” to understand that bellyaching more fully (source, bellyaching pun above).

But what is that historical and political context you identify?

The Western media has a much longer reach than Korean media; in fact all Asian media is to an extent influenced strongly by Euro-centric beauty standards. This has been well-documented by all the plastic surgery, and by the glorification of media figures (singers, actresses) who are selected first and foremost for their vaguely euro-Asian looks (as opposed to supposedly ‘ugly’ Korean features) and then groomed by a team of trainers and managers to become media superstars like Girls Generation, Son Dam-Bi, and all the ‘flavors du jour’ pop-tarts you see on Korean TV shows.

And again I largely agree, having written many posts saying pretty much the same thing myself. But crucially not the “The Western media has a much longer reach than Korean media” part; and as we’ll see in a moment, I feel you have an extremely inflated view of the Western media’s power in Korea.

So given the fact that an embedded system of euro/white-worship permeates South Korean pop-culture, white males have more elbow room to work with in the global dating scene. Many come to the shores of Korea and Asia and have relatively little trouble finding willing women who having seen and internalized images of white beauty standards, would like nothing more than to experience the thrill of dating the mythic “white boy”. And white men who come to Korea are only too happy to take advantage of this fact.

Okaaay…I’ll deal with your warped view of the interracial dating scene in Korea in a moment too (source above: Gusts of Popular Feeling). But first, let’s focus on your views of Korean women which it relies on, which you expand upon in your next comment:

Asian female/white male relationships cannot happen unless both parties are willing to participate in it.

This can only mean one thing – that Korean women, having internalized media messages glorifying white men, are also actively seeking them out to satisfy their own ‘white fetish’. Therefore, we cannot simply categorize white men as “predators” for Asian flesh: instead, a significant number of Asian women are willing collaborators.

Interesting choices of terms you’re using, especially that last. Continuing:

Or at the very least, they are passively open to it – that is, they might not go out of their way to seek white men, but if one does hit on them they are psychologically “primed” to be much more open to their sexual and romantic advances, as opposed to a black or even Korean man.

This is just more evidence of the pervasive white worship in Korean society, and it illustrates just how thoroughly and totally many Korean women internalize this message.

You’ve seen them in the bars and clubs and lounges of Seoul. To them, white boys on their arm are the ultimate accessory to their personal crusade to be the “coolest” chick on the block.

They’re commodifying race – and according to their rather twisted logic, being seen with a white guy the equivalent of having the latest handbag or shoes.

(Source)

They ought to stop and think about the implications of their choices. To them it’s a confirmation of their own belief that “being with a white man = COOL + URBANE + COSMOPOLITAN + TRENDY”… but it’s actually an expression of a colonial mindset – they are psychologically and mentally colonized, dominated, and enslaved.

They’re not setting the tone on what is cool – they’re doing the exact opposite: setting the tone on what is sick, twisted, and unwholesome.

Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming that ALL Korean women with white men are like this. But there is also no denying that a significant number of these women do exist. So please take my comments for what they are, and don’t take them out of context. Thanks.

Hey, no-one is denying that there are some Korean women who seek a White boyfriend for much the same reasons they would a Gucci handbag (or various types of Korean men either for that matter). But a “significant” number of Korean women with White men are like this you say? What percentage of them do you mean by that term roughly? 10? 25? And do you actually have any evidence whatsoever that they represent anything but the tiniest fraction of all KF-CM relationships?

Also, I’m rather confused: what percentage don’t want a White boyfriend as an accessory, but like you say just want to experience the thrill of dating one instead (which apparently is bad, even though we’re all attracted to the exotic)? What percentage are simply psychologically “primed” to spread their legs more readily for a White man “as opposed to a Black or even Korean” one? And finally, presuming you even allow for the possibility, what percentage of Korean women would you say aren’t passive, unthinking dupes of media messages of White male supremacy and are thus able to have genuine loving relationships with White men?

More to the point, have you asked so much as a single Korean woman of what she thinks of your characterization of them above?

I have asked one myself actually, my wife, and I’d wager that her reaction to you on the right is pretty representative. But I’ve asked many many more about interracial dating (including many who only speak Korean), and I think you’d be rather surprised at the far greater numbers of Korean women who have little interest, even a positive distaste at the possibility of dating White men.

Moreover, while global racial patterns of hegemony and privilege certainly ensure that more White guys end up in South Korea than, say, Indian guys, and that stereotypes of both exist that encourage and discourage Korean women to form relationships with them respectively, it doesn’t automatically follow that Korean women assessing them as potential partners don’t do so by pretty much the same criteria that they do for any men, including Koreans.

Most South Asian men in Korea, for instance, are laborers, which obviously puts them at a big disadvantage to middle-class White teachers. Also, as one Korean female friend put it to me, while White guys tending to be taller has a great deal to do with their attraction to some Korean women (albeit a disparity that is rapidly disappearing), that still isn’t enough to overcome the anticipated language and/or cultural difficulties for most others. And another acknowledged that while White men in Korean tended to have more money (and freedom) than Korean guys in their early-20s, with the ESL industry in Korea being the joke that is, then, financially-speaking, in fact Koreans make much better partners by their late-20s and early-30s.

In short, while the specific mixture of the fish in the sea may well be determined by forces beyond their control, women are very much the arbiters of which ones they reel in so to speak.

To be fair, you do somewhat acknowledge this in your next comment, and which I admit I misinterpreted in the first draft of this post. But still, it is interesting how you force that into a narrative of Korean female submissiveness and White men’s sexual colonialism nevertheless. You say of the relationship between one commenter’s German father and Korean mother’s relationship, for instance:

…until Korean male/German female relationships become just as commonplace as what’s already out there (that is, WM/AF relationships), you can’t exactly hold that up as a ’shining example’ of “colorblindness”. It’s not — it’s more of an expression of racialized power structures and a neo-colonial history.

No, actually it can be colorblind, and both relationships and the people behind them are more then mere expressions of vast, impersonal forces. But if you’d like a more specific critique of your twisting facts to suit your narrative however:

(Source: Baby Black)

It’s the German man’s knowledge when he goes abroad that his country is wealthier and more powerful, compounded with the Korean woman’s knowledge that her’s is less wealthy (particularly back in those days), that makes the Western-male/Asian female (WM-AF) relationship so numerous.

And since women generally look to marry “up” while men look to marry “down” (socially and economically), you can see why the inequality between the white and Asian races makes the WM-AF relationship so easy to forge.

Put simply, I call bullshit on women marrying up and men marrying down: in virtually every society, both historically and today, the vast majority of men and women marry someone within the same socioeconomic group as themselves. Earning much more money than women however, then men are certainly freer to marry down, but that doesn’t at all mean that they aim to do so, or that they don’t aim to marry up any less than women.

But this critique pales in comparison to your reaction to the commenter after that, who wonders where the inconvenient reality of increasing number of Korean male – Caucasian female pairings like her own fits into your diatribe?

If you take some time to analyze our message instead of reacting emotionally, you’ll see just how out of line your thinking is, and how little time and effort you put into trying to understand something that is admittedly *highly, highly* complex. It’s a difficult concept for anyone to wrap his or her head around, so I guess I can’t blame you for taking the lazy way out with convenient and disjointed logic.

But then I said I’d talk about the Western media’s influence in Korea, and so I’ll do so now by contrasting the different impacts you feel it has on Korean men and women (my emphasis):

But the rub for Korean men (in general) is that men in places like Madison Avenue in New York City and Hollywood who control the images that go up on billboards and on TV and movie-screens are white – and they invariably make those images in their own image: White, Male, and BLOWN WAY OUT OF PROPORTION. In short: welcome to the world of Hollywood and the White Male Action Hero.

Keep in mind that while this is happening, Asian males are either completely excluded or used as a foil to make the white male look better in comparison. So Asian males in America or Korean males living in Korea internalize this subliminal message in the media and think that they can’t possibly step up to a blonde girl (or whatever white chick). They live their entire lives being psychologically castrated, in sharp contrast to a white male from where ever, who is emboldened or even arrogantly empowered by the jumbo-sized images made in his likeness, in the embrace of gorgeous white, black, latin, and of course Asian women in movie theatres all over the world.

(Source: Somang Cosmetics, 2003)

Hey, again I completely agree about the representations of Korean and Asian men in the US media. But I’m curious as to how you think this affects Korean males in Korea exactly, and what’s more upon whom you – very tellingly – imply that there is an equal effect as on Asian males in America. Pray, have you actually watched or read any Korean television, movies, magazines, or websites recently? It’s not like they’re lacking for strong, macho images of Korean men getting the Korean girl; or indeed, frequently getting the White girl these days, creating hypersexual stereotypes of them in the process.

Moreover, for a domestic media supposedly at the mercy of the global/Western media and its emasculating imagery of Korean men, it’s just bizarre how nevertheless it still has the ability to effectively censor all expressions of women’s sexual interest in foreign players during the 2002 World Cup; to not allow a single positive representation of KF-CM relationships in advertisements until July this year; to give a free voice to groups that, under the belief that Western men are all diseased sexual predators, will literally stalk them with the aim of catching them doing illegal tutoring, thereby getting them deported; producing “documentaries” that show that Korean women will invariably get raped if they date White men; and so on.

Am I also “emotionally reacting” in pointing that out?

And simultaneously (being human and all) many white women are conditioned to shoot for white men as the “gold standard”, since all the glorified images of ‘male sex appeal’ feature only white males. Some even view Asian males with contempt or pity, and this of course spills over when white chicks go abroad – though to be fair, I’ve noticed this racist bias more in North American white females than European ones. So it is any wonder we see a “global sexual marketplace” that is DOMINATED by white males (figuratively) ‘raping’ and exploiting these loopholes to their sexual advantage?

Given the above dynamics of a GLOBAL system of media brainwashing that favors white males, is it any wonder that some people in Korea or elsewhere might secretly (or openly, in some cases) resent a white male for doing what he does? It’s not unreasonable, or completely out of the realm of possibility.

Ah. So while Korean women are mere passive dupes of the Western media, in contrast Korean men are savvy, knowledgeable consumers of it, and for whom calling a Korean woman walking down the street with Caucasian male a whore, say, is hence a justified response to their symbolic castrations and emasculation therein? As is the way the Korean media treats Western men?

(See Gusts of Popular Feeling for an explanation of the above video)

To put it mildly, that sounds rather apologist to me. But then considering what you write about White guys in Korea, then what would I know, right?

But here’s the funny thing: to him, he’s just ‘innocently’ going about his personal life – but of course he also doesn’t see (well, probably chooses not to see, that is, ignore) that the entire System is built for HIS personal advantage. It’s custom-built for his white male needs – and that is very racist, no doubt.

And on that note, I’ll put this response to rest. Regular readers may well wonder why I devoted so much time to it: after all, its flaws speak for themselves. But then I’m only human, and I reacted partially because it reminded me of how a commentator on this blog also conflated the 2 issues in an earlier post for instance, and whom I simply gave up reasoning with. Much more though, because it was annoying to spend 60 minutes on a comment only to have it disappear (see below), and finally especially because I was angered by comments on a similar post on Noona Blog not only gushing with enthusiasm for Jake’s comments but also implying that he had “a fact-based academic writing style”, when if anything it’s marked by their complete absence.

Combine that with being a White man married to a Korean woman blogging about gender issues in Korea too, who as a result has had trolls insulting the both of us incessantly for 3 years, or even being sent 3000 word emails patiently explaining that the vast majority of White men in Korea (but always excluding myself of course) have yellow fever, and that I’m just being emotional in not acknowledging that…then hopefully you can see why I get very tired and angry at hearing that sort of thing sometimes!^^

Update: See I’m No Picasso and Roboseyo for two excellent posts written in response to this one.

Update 2: And now Gusts of Popular Feeling too.

You’ve seen them in the bars and clubs and lounges of Seoul. To them, white boys on their arm are the ultimate accessory to their personal crusade to be the “coolest” chick on the block.

They’re commodifying race – and according to their rather twisted logic, being seen with a white guy the equivalent of having the latest handbag or shoes.

They ought to stop and think about the implications of their choices. To them it’s a confirmation of their own belief that “being with a white man = COOL + URBANE + COSMOPOLITAN + TRENDY”… but it’s actually an expression of a colonial mindset – they are psychologically and mentally colonized, dominated, and enslaved.

They’re not setting the tone on what is cool – they’re doing the exact opposite: setting the tone on what is sick, twisted, and unwholesome.

Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming that ALL Korean women with white men are like this. But there is also no denying that a significant number of these women do exist. So please take my comments for what they are, and don’t take them out of context. Thanks.

*Actually, my original intention was just to leave a comment at Noona Blog, but as soon as I hit “submit reply” then it disappeared into the ether. As the same thing happened on a different post last week however (my first there), then wisely I’d saved it first. Of course, it’s annoying that I can’t seem to comment at all there then, but normally I’d just chalk that up to the idiosyncrasies of the individual website. Yet then the same thing happened on Seoul Beats yesterday too (thanks for the link guys!), which I have successfully commented on before. Do any technically-minded readers have any possible explanations? A plugin issue perhaps, or something to do with the most recent version of WordPress? (Switching from Firefox to I.E. didn’t help) Thanks in advance!

Women’s Typical Poses in Advertisements: A Pain in the Neck?

(Source)

Something about Kong Hyo-jin (공효진) got me all hot and bothered last week. And no, I don’t mean her lingerie photoshoot for Calvin Klein.

Rather, it was her ads for Uniqlo (유니클로), all over Busan at the moment. Surely, I thought, the creative team could have anticipated how their ads would look on the side of buses, and designed something that didn’t look like she was literally squashed into them?

But then I caught a subway train on Line 2, every carriage of which was decked out like this:

And suddenly I realized that her squashed appearance wasn’t an accident:

Still, what’s the big deal?

Well, just try it for yourself. Assuming that you have, and that your neck no longer hurts, then now you too may be wondering why her head was placed so awkwardly. Moreover, why is it overwhelmingly women that have this “head cant” in advertisements too, albeit not usually tilted quite so much?

(Sources: unknown)

Sociologist Erving Goffman believed it made women look subordinate, and hence that the disparity was evidence of sexism. But as I already discussed that back in February, my original aim here was just to pass on further evidence of the sociological pattern.

Yet the more I looked at the ad, the more I liked it despite myself. And I wanted to know why.

One possible reason, I thought, was Kong Hyo-jin’s luxuriant, flowing hair, another recurring theme of advertisements. Combined with her hands on her hips, it reminded of this ad with Kim Ah-joong (김아중) especially:

(Source: unknown)

And in particular, the wind effect:

…makes it look as though whatever she is looking at (presumably a male viewer) is powerful enough to nearly blow her away while she marvels at him and waits for his approach. She doesn’t look like she intends to act, but rather like she hopes to be acted upon–sexual but still submissive.

As discussed in detail here. But of course that wouldn’t apply to all cases of women with windswept hair in advertisements, and so I did a little investigating. And just guess what I found was #1 in “The 13 Most Common Female Courtship Signals and Gestures” in my Korean edition of The Definitive Book of Body Language (p. 290)?

Basically, that says that when women see a man they are interested in, the first thing they tend to do is start touching their hair, as raising their arms allows them to more easily give off pheromones via their armpits. I’m surprised that it doesn’t also mention that it would also serve to thrust their chests out a little too, and that as women tend to have longer hair than men then touching it also shows off that secondary sexual characteristic; but it does note that even women with short hair do it, so that latter may not be all that important really.

The head cant though? It’s more complicated, and for a little while I confused it with number 7 on that list (pp. 293-4):

But which is not actually referring to the head cant, but rather how women will raise their shoulders and look at the object of their affection while he’s preoccupied, suddenly looking away when he looks at them (which in turn makes him secretly look at them afterward, according to the book). Apparently, the round shape of their shoulders is suggestive of breasts also, which is not as ludicrous as it sounds considering breasts themselves likely evolved (to such a disproportionately large size for primates) through looking similar to buttocks.

Still, I did know that a tilted head showed interest in something or someone though (sexual or otherwise), and sure enough I soon found this (pp. 231-2):

Apologies for lacking the time to properly translate all of the above scans; if anyone would like me to, I’m quite happy to later in the week. In the meantime, it basically says that in addition being an expression of interest, tilting the head also serves to expose the neck, the obvious submissiveness of which is exaggerated by also having the effect of making the person shorter and/or smaller, which is quite the opposite of standing up straight to emphasize our height when we want to compete or fight with others in some sense.

Finally, it notes that it is often seen on women in advertisements, although it doesn’t say why. Upon reading that though, I finally realized what many of you probably knew all along: Kong Hyo-jin is in that pose because it’s sexually appealing to men, as easily confirmed by this, this, and this article on dating advice, and that’s why I was drawn to it I guess.

Hell, even knowing all that, I still like it!

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t problematic. Or rather, that seeing that pose so often on women in advertisements isn’t. After all, there are many many other ways to appeal to heterosexual men, some quite the opposite of looking submissive, so it’s strange that that particular one would be so common (and, related, that you find women taller than accompanying men in ads much less than in real life). Moreover, why is the ad designed for a male gaze too, when presumably the intended consumers of the women’s clothes advertised are women?

But I started this post because Kong Hyo-jin’s pose looked so strange, and just because it did ultimately prove to have a logic is not to say that women in advertisements aren’t still frequently placed in some bizarre, awkward poses nevertheless. Consider the other Uniqlo advertisement in the series on the bus for instance:

(Source)

Next, on the subway:

And finally, the full length version:

Now, despite deconstructing advertisements for over 3 years, just like everyone else in a developed country I too am exposed to 500-1000 advertising messages a day. So some common advertising themes I just simply get used to, a sure sign of which is that I originally thought that this was the more normal and natural-looking of the 2 advertisements, and hence had no intention of writing about it.

But in fact, it’s anything but “natural”. Again, I invite you to adopt Kong Hyo-jin’s pose for yourself just to see how strange it really is.

The crucial thing is her arms: one folded over the other, it reminds me most of a gesture that you’ll frequently see on new students and colleagues and so on on their first days at schools and workplaces. Just like on the woman below on page 103 of The Definitive Book of Body Language:

As I first mentioned here, the logic behind it is that when someone is nervous, then their instinctive reaction is to protect their exposed fronts using whatever comes to hand, be they bags, books, folders…or of course their own arms. Meeting people with folded arms doesn’t exactly create a warm and open first impression though, and so with the other partially open, hanging arm, they try to express that at the same time.

Yes, it is indeed an awkward compromise, but even having read the 1989 edition of Body Language above at the age of 13, and being perfectly aware of what I was doing (and why) thereafter, nevertheless I still couldn’t stop putting my arms like that on my first days at all 6 of my high schools (in 3 years in 3 countries). For those lacking self-confidence, as I did back then, it is an amazingly powerful instinct.

In Kong Hyo-jin’s case however, while I guess the expression of nervousness does accentuate an image of submissiveness, it’s just too much of a compromise to expose one part of the body – the neck – while protecting others with the arms. It also contradicts her “bashful knee bend” too, which I discuss here.

But why? I confess I simply don’t know, being a little mentally subdued after having to reconsider my original opinions about the first ad so much. Now seems as good a time as any then, to throw the floor open to readers, who may see something that I’ve missed and/or have alternative explanations!^^

Fighting Sexual Harassment at Samsung: Part 3

( Source )

This post, about Lee Eun-eui’s successful suit against Samsung Electronics for sexual harassment by her boss and then being punished for reporting it, follows directly from Part 1 and Part 2. If you haven’t already, please read those before continuing:

소송과정에서 가장 힘들었던 점은?

What has been the most difficult thing in the whole legal process for you?

회사에서는 내가 거짓말 한다고 했다. 인권위에서나 법원에서 회사의 주 변론이 ‘원하는 부서에 배치 받으려고 있지도 않은 성희롱을 했다고 주장한다’라는 거였다. 그럴 때마다 수치스러웠다. 주로 남자들이 있는 자리에서 내가 당했던 일을 말하는 게 쉬운 일도 아니었고.

처음 성희롱이 몸의 수치였다면, 사내에서 가해진 왕따는 영혼의 수치였고, 그 이후 회사의 반응들은 영혼과 몸을 다 부정당한 기분이었다. 내가 나의 성을 팔아야 할 만큼 부서배치나 승진이 대단한가? 매번 그런 사실을 법원에서 인권위에서 해명할 때마다 느꼈던 좌절감이 오늘의 나를 만들어 준 것 같다. 분노로 담금질 됐다. 회사는 나를 괴물같이 보겠지. 퇴사하지도 않고 심지어 (소송에서) 이기기까지 했으니. 그렇지만 나는 이런 ‘괴물’을 만든 건 회사라고 본다. 나는 원래 그런 존재가 아니었는데, 나를 자꾸 흔들어서 내가 살기 위해 움직이다 보니까 이 자리까지 온 거다.

잠시 숨을 고르던 이씨는 신입사원 시절, 연수원에서 배웠던 ‘도덕성ㆍ에티켓ㆍ인간미’를 이야기 했다. 그는 “유치하고 뻔 한 말이지만, 그 세 가지가 지켜졌다면 없었을 일이 황유미ㆍ박지연(삼성전자에서 일하던 중 백혈병으로 사망)씨였고 나였다”라고 말했다.

Samsung Electronics saying that I was lying. Their response to the Human Rights Commission and the Court was that I was simply accusing my boss of sexual harassment in order to get the position I wanted within the department. I felt really ashamed and humiliated whenever I heard that. And it was especially difficult to talk about it when there were men around (source, right).

At first, the sexual harassment made me feel ashamed and humiliated bodily, but then when I was ostracized within the company my spirit felt that way too, and because of the company’s reaction I felt such a sense of injustice and frustration both mentally and physically. Was being promoted within the company so important that I had to sell myself sexually? Whenever I had to explain the fact of what happened to the Human Rights Commission or in the Court, I felt such a sense of frustration and discouragement, and that’s made me what I’m like today. But my anger was sated, and the company will look at me as a monster from now on. However, I wasn’t originally like that, it’s what the company made me; because they kept pressing so hard, I had to hold my ground just to survive and get on with my life.

Reporter Jang Il-ho: Catching her breath, Lee talks about back when she was a new employee, and how at the training center she learned about ethics, etiquette, and humanity through stories. “They were childish, and I always knew what the endings were going to be, but if the company itself had just borne them in mind then cases like Hwang Yu-mi’s, Park Ji-yeon’s (who both allegedly died of Leukemia from working at Samsung Electronics assembly lines), and mine would never have happened” she said.

회사를 그만 두지 않은 이유는?

What is the reason you haven’t quit working for Samsung Electronics?

(그만둘까)많이 생각했다. 편하게 갈 수 있는 길도 있었고 후회와 고민도 있었다. 그렇지만 나는 회사가 이건희 회장이나 사장의 것이라고 생각하지 않는다. 직원과 주주 것이라고 생각한다. 내가 들어오고 싶었던 회사, 자랑스럽게 생각했던 회사, 꿈에 그리던 회사…열심히 다녔고… 결국 내 꿈에 대해 실망했었다.

그렇지만 이 회사는 나의 빛나던 20대와 뜨거웠던 30대가 녹아 있는 곳이다. 불이익을 당했을 때, 회사를 바르게 사랑하는 방식은 바로잡기 위한 노력을 하는 거라고 생각했고, 그걸 실천에 옮겼을 뿐이다. 사실 나는 황유미씨나 박지연씨만큼 중요한 사람은 아니다. 그런 의미에서 부채감도 있다. 그들은 생명권의 문제, 타협이 불가능한 문제다. 그러나 애초에 나는 타협도 조율도 가능했다. 그런데 그걸 해주는 사람이 회사 내에 아무도 없었기 때문에 싸워야 했다.

Quitting…I thought about it a lot. It would have been very easy, and in some ways I regret not doing so. But then I don’t think this company belongs to its chairman Lee Kun-hee, or the bosses of its many subsidiaries, but rather to its employees and stockholders. It’s a company I also wanted to work in, I was proud to work in, it was my dream to work in…I worked hard here…although in the end, my dream was crushed (source, left).

However, my shining (with potential) 20s and energetic, passionate 30s just melted into this company. I thought that whenever something was wrong, the way to show your love to the company was to do what was right to fix it, and indeed in reality that’s all I did. I’m not as important as Hwang Yu-mi or Park Ji-yeon, who had problems with their very lives, which were impossible to negotiate with. With me though, it was possible to do something about my problem from the outset, although because no-one within the company would help me I had no choice but to fight.

삼성은 노조가 없어도 노사협의회로 노동자의 권리를 보호해준다고 하는데, 도움이 됐나.

Samsung doesn’t have a union, but it does have a labor-management arbitration committee to help protect workers’ rights. Did they help?

단적으로 노조가 있었다면 소송할 때 변호사비도 들지 않았을 거고, 회사 내에서도 중재가 가능했을 것이다. 노사협의회에 도움을 요청했더니, 회사와 개인의 문제에 끼어들 수 없다고 하더라. 이 문제에서 노사 협의회는 전혀 도움이 안 됐다. 오죽하면 노사협의회에 근로자위원으로 입후보하려고 했는데, 우연의 일치인지 입후보 기간에 맞춰 출장을 보냈다. 이번 민사 판결이 의미 있는 이유 중 하나는 노조가 없는 회사에서 그동안 ‘회사와 싸우면 깨진다’라는 본보기를 깨트린 점이다.

Putting it simply, if there had been a union then they would have provided money for a lawyer and/or mediated with the company for me. In contrast, the labor-management arbitration committee told me that if was a personal issue between myself and the company and so they couldn’t get involved: they weren’t any help whatsoever. Indeed, I applied for a position on that committee, but by a [supposed] coincidence I was sent away on a business trip and was unable to. The judgment of the lawsuit means [though], that unlike what everyone thinks, you can win if you fight against a company which has no union.

(James – I’m a little confused by her application: she was immediately moved from her department after reporting being sexual harassed by her boss, she was then completely ostracized at work – indeed, later put on extended leave for 7 months – , but somehow still expected to get on to a committee that had already refused to help her? My wife suggests she may have been so desperate though, that she literally tried anything)

가족들의 반응은 어떤가.

What was the reaction of your family?

물정 모르고 자란 막내딸이 이런 소송에 휘말릴 것이라고 생각지도 않으셨다. 아직도 어머니가 매일 아침 머리를 말려 출근 시켜주신다. 그런 어머니에게 차마 말을 할 수 없었다. 알고 나서 무척 싫어하셨지. 그렇지만 나중에는 제대로 싸우라고 응원해줬다. 이왕 얼굴 내놓고 싸울 거면 예쁜 모습으로 싸워야 한다고, 옷 같은 것도 참견하시고(웃음). 종내 항상 힘을 보태주고 지지해주는 건 가족인 것 같다.

4시간 가까이 쉼 없이 말을 쏟아놓던 이은의씨에게 카메라를 들이댔다. 이씨는 “이왕이면 예쁘게 찍어 달라”라고 요구했다. 그는 “여자로서의 욕망이 아니라 ‘파이터’로서의 옵션이다”라고 덧붙였다. 불쌍하게 보이고 싶지 않다고 했다. 질 수 없었던 싸움, 희망의 언표가 되고 싶다는 이유였다. ‘언니를 지지할 수는 있지만, 언니처럼 될 수 없어서…’라며 성희롱 피해를 당하고도 싸우지 못하는 많은 여직원들을 보며 그는 ‘파이터’의 감수성을 키워왔다.

앞으로의 계획을 물었다. “지난 5년은 힘들면 맥주 한 잔 하고 풀 수 있는 평범한 일상이 사라진 시간들이었어요. 이제 그 시간들을 회복해가야죠”

My parents never imagined that their youngest child, who knows so little about life, could ever get involved in such an unsavory thing. But still, my mother dries my hair everyday as I prepare to go to work. At first, I couldn’t tell her anything about it. And once I did, she really really hated it. However, later she said that if I was going to fight then I had to do it properly, and that she would support me. And that because my face was already out there, I had to do it prettily, so (laughing) she was always telling me what to wear! And in the end, whenever my strength and resolve were lagging, my family always made up for it (source, above).

Reporter Jang Il-ho: After talking without a break for 4 hours, I started taking pictures of Lee. She said “please try to make me look nice I guess”, but added that she “didn’t want people to think of her as a desirable woman, but rather as a fighter”. And she doesn’t want people to take pity on her, but instead think of her as someone who couldn’t lose, who is a symbol of hope, as she heard from so many women who’d also suffered sexual harassment that they could help her, but they couldn’t be like her, so she developed a real sense of herself as a fighter.

I asked about her plans for the future. She said that “For the last 5 years, I’ve had no opportunities for a normal life, even just having a simple glass of beer. Now, I have to recover, and make up for lost time”. (end)

( Source )

Personally, I was a little disappointed with that conclusion to the interview: there were many further questions raised about the incidents of sexual harassment, the reaction of the company, and the lawsuit and so on in Part 1 and Part 2 (and indeed even here too), but unfortunately we were given a rather repetitive look at the emotional side of the case rather than any real answers to those. Not that her own feelings are trivial or uninteresting of course, but I am left feeling a little frustrated.

Anyone else feel the same way? There are a few more Korean-language sources available, so if you have any further questions yourself about the case, then I’ll endeavor to find the answers myself if they’re available, albeit only translating the relevant sections of the articles this time!^^

Fighting Sexual Harassment at Samsung: Part 2

(“What? Sexual Harassment at Samsung Electronics?? Heaven Forbid!”. Source.)

This post, about Lee Eun-eui’s successful suit against Samsung Electronics for sexual harassment by her boss and then being punished for reporting it, follows directly from Part 1. If you haven’t already, please read that before continuing:

블로그에 “1차 레이싱이 얼추 막이 내렸다“라고 썼더라. 1차 레이싱을 뛰고 난 소감이 어떤가.

On your blog, you wrote that”The First Round is almost over”. How do feel about that?

아직 실감이 잘 안 난다. 꿈꾸는 것 같다. 회사가 항소를 할 건지 안 할 건지에 따라 바뀌겠지만, 지금은 해묵은 숙제를 끝내고 조금 쉴 수 있는 시간이다(삼성은 “내부적으로 법률적인 판단을 거친 뒤 항소 여부를 결정할 것이다”라고 밝혔다). 판결 뒤 며칠 편하게 잠을 잤다. 사건을 겪으면서 죽고 싶다는 생각도 많이 했다. 내가 일하는 건물(수원 삼성전기 본사)에서 죽을까, 삼성 본관이 있는 강남이나 태평로로 갈까…생각하면서. 그런데서 죽었으면 신문에 한 줄이라도 날까? 결국 살아서 싸우니까 좋은 결과를 본다고 판단했다. 삼성 사건 치고는 기사도 많이 나왔다(웃음).

It doesn’t feel like it’s real yet. It’s like a dream. Of course, Samsung may yet decide to file an appeal, but for now at least I am finally able to finish all my work related to the case and take a rest (Samsung stated that it will “decide whether or not to file an appeal after discussing the legal judgment within the company”), and I’ve slept soundly in the few days since the judgment was handed down. While the case was going on, I often thought of killing myself, but wondered whether to do it at my workplace (Suwon Samsung Electronics branch), at Samsung’s headquarters in Gangnam, or on Taepyeong Road [in front of Seoul City Hall – James]…but if I did, would it even get one line in a newspaper? So, I decided to carry on and fight, and in the end I was able to see a good result. And now (laughing) there are many articles about Samsung electronics in the news!

5억을 제기했었는데, 판결은 4천만 원을 배상하라고 나왔다.

You sued Samsung for 500 million won (US$422, 305), but were only awarded 40 (US$33,784)…?

따 지자면 5억을 받아도 성에 차지 않지만, 금액이 중요한 게 아니라 내용이 중요하다. 판사도 용기 있는 결단을 했다고 생각한다. 판결문 보고 엉엉 울었다. 판사에게 너무 고마웠다. 억울했던 것들에 대해서 인정을 받았으니까. 판사는 수많은 재판 중에 한 건이겠지만, 이건 굉장히 많은 여성 직장인들에게 큰 영향을 미칠 거라고 생각한다. ‘네가 이겨줘서 고맙다’ ‘뜨거운 마음으로 박수를 보낸다’ 등 연락도 많이 받았다. 회사에서 어려움을 겪는 분들, 특히 여직원들이 상담을 해오기도 한다. 아주 많은 숫자는 아니지만, 중요하다고 생각한다. 4천만 원을 배상하라는 것과는 비교할 수 없는 일이다. 회사가 항소하지 않으면 나도 안 할 생각이다. 이 판결을 그대로 유지하고 싶다.

이은의씨는 “미안한다는 말이 그렇게 어려웠을까”라고 기자에게 되물었다. 그녀는 가해자나 회사가 ‘미안하다’라며 사과를 했다면 소송까지도 가지 않았을 것이라고 했다.

Even if I’d received the full 500 million won, that wouldn’t have been enough to satisfy my anger, but then the amount isn’t the important thing anyway. I thought that the judge was very brave with his final decision, and I wept as it was read out, I was so thankful to him for showing everyone that what I’d said was true. And while to him this was surely just one case out of many, I think it will have a huge effect on women workers. I have received many messages like “Thank you for your victory” and “I applaud you with a warm heart” and so on, and have also been asked for advice from other women experiencing similar problems at their own companies. While their numbers aren’t great, I think that it is very important, and 40 million won can’t compare to that. And if Samsung doesn’t appeal, then I won’t either: I want this judgment to stick. (Source, above)

“Was it really so difficult for them to say sorry”? Lee Eun-eui asked. And she adds that if the offender or the company had simply apologized, then she probably wouldn’t have gone so far as to file a lawsuit against them.

2005년 5월 이후, 판결이 나기까지 5년이 걸렸다. 싸움이 쉽지 않았을 것 같다.

It has been 5 years since the first incident in May 2005 to the final judgment. It can’t have been easy.

사내에서 받아들여지지 않아 2007년 인권위에 진정했다. 인권위가 삼성전기에 재발방지 대책 수립 권고를 내렸지만, 회사는 권고를 취하해 달라며 행정소송을 제기했다. 그리고 2008년 내가 제기한 민사소송(손해배상)까지 내면서 ‘전문가’가 됐다. ‘삼성’이라고 하면 어느 곳도 싸워주겠다고 제대로 덤비는 곳이 없었다. 어렵게 도와주시는 변호사를 만났지만, 그런 과정을 거치다 보니 시간이 길어졌다.

회사가 ‘미안하다’라고만 했어도 일이 이렇게까지 안 됐을 거다. 사과는 커녕 ‘외부에 이런 사실을 알리면 민형사상 소송을 진행하겠다’라는 회사의 메일을 받을 때마다 처음엔 무서웠다. 인권위에 진정하기 전까지 2년 동안 병이 났다. 아버지가 갑자기 돌아가시고, 부서에서는 내쳐지고…배신감과 누적된 정신적 피로감이 폭발해서 실어증이 왔다. 당시에는 말만 시작하면 계속 울었다. 회사가 ‘성희롱 없었다’ ‘대기발령도 사실이 아니다’ ‘왕따도 없었다’라며 전면적으로 부정하는 데 정말 할 말을 잃었다. 결국 인권위에서 권고가 나왔고, 회사가 인권위에 제기한 행정소송에서도 인권위의 손을 들어줬다. 이번 민사소송도 승소했고. 주위에서는 ‘기적’이라고 한다.

As nothing was done within the company about my accusations, in 2007 I informed the Human Rights Commission, and they made an official recommendation to Samsung that the company needed to institute measures to prevent such sexual harassment from occurring again. Rather than following that recommendation however, Samsung sued the Human Rights Commission to have that recommendation withdrawn! Then in 2008 I filed my own civil suit against Samsung for personal damages, and in the process became quite the legal expert, as there were no lawyers prepared to take up my case and defy Samsung. In the end I did find a lawyer to help though, but that was just the start of a long and arduous legal process. (Source, above)

If only Samsung had said sorry, things would never have gone this far. But rather than apologize, instead they sent me emails saying they would sue me if I informed anyone outside the company of it, which was very scary at first. And in the 2 years before I informed the Human Rights Commission, I got very sick. My father suddenly passed away, I was completely cut out of the department I’d worked in…I felt such a sense of betrayal, and the mental stress and fatigue just kept accumulating and accumulating to the extent that I even developed aphasia. Whenever I started speaking, I would just keep crying. But the company completely lied and said that there was no sexual harassment, that I was not placed on extended leave, and that I was not ostracized at work, which just left me speechless anyway! In the end, once the Human Right Commission’s recommendation came, the company sued them but lost, and this time I won too. People around me say it’s a miracle.

(Source)

And, daughters permitting, Part 3 of the interview will be up on Monday!

Fighting Sexual Harassment at Samsung: Part 1

( Source )

Extremely important for its ramifications for Korean workplaces, frankly I’m amazed that I’ve been unable to google any English-language sources on the following sexual-harassment case at Samsung. Perhaps the Korean English-language media still feels intimated by the company, let alone the Korean-language one?

Either way, it deserves to be much more widely known, and if I’d realized that when commenter “previouslyafter” first passed it on, I certainly wouldn’t have had a month’s break from blogging immediately thereafter! My apologies for the delay then, and to make the long article from Sisain more readable, I’ve decided to split it into 3 parts, especially as there are some important questions raised by the first. Which for the sake of accuracy and context, I would really appreciate readers’ help with answering before continuing translating Part 2:

삼성에 맞선 ‘만년 이 대리’의 기적 같은 승리

A Miracle-like Victory in a Long-time Deputy Section Chief Lee’s Stand Against Samsung

by Jang Il-ho (장일호), 28/04/10

뒷목과 머리카락으로 부서장의 손이 오고갔다. 브래지어 끈을 만지작거리는 날도 있었다. 해외 출장을 갔던 2005년의 어느 날, 부서장 박아무개씨는 엉덩이를 치면서 “상사를 잘 모시라”는 말을 하기도 했다. 삼성전기 전자영업팀에 근무하던 이은의 대리(36)는 지금도 그날의 수치를 잊지 못한다.

2005년 6월, 이은의씨는 더 이상 견딜 수 없어 부서장 박아무개씨한테 당한 성희롱 피해를 회사 인사팀에 알렸다. 그러나 돌아온 것은 부서장이 아닌 자신의 대기발령이었고, 부서전환, 그리고 왕따였다.

Park, the department head, would quickly touch the hair on her back of her neck with his hand. One day, he fondled the strap of her bra. And once while on a business trip in 2005, he stroked her buttocks while telling her “You should obey your superiors”. Deputy Section Chief Lee Eun-eui (36), who worked for Samsung’s electronic appliances’ sales team, still can’t lose the sense of shame and disgrace she felt on that day.

In June 2005, she decided she could stand no more from Park, and so informed the personnel department. Rather than Park being punished however, instead Lee was put on extended leave. Eventually she was brought back to work and transferred to a different department, but was generally ostracized in the company (source, right).

지 루한 법적공방이 이어졌다. 골리앗 삼성을 상대로 싸운 다는 게 어떤 것인지 그녀는 온몸으로 깨달았다. 실어증과 우울증을 앓았다. 자살까지 생각했다. 그러나 지난 4월15일 수원지방법원 성남지원 민사합의1부(재판장 황현찬)는 이씨의 손을 들어줬다. 회사 내에서 발생한 성희롱 사건과 관련해 가해자는 물론 회사도 책임이 있다는 판결이었다. 재판부는 판결문에서 “삼성전기는 원고가 직장 내 성희롱 피해를 당하였음에도 불구하고 그에 대한 적절한 조치를 취하지 않았고, 오히려 불이익한 조치까지 취하였으며 이로 인하여 원고가 정신적 고통을 입게 되었음은 경험칙상 명백하다. 가해자 박씨는 250만원, 삼성전기 3750만원, 모두 4천만원을 이씨에게 배상하라”고 밝혔다. 이씨는 판결문을 읽고 또 읽으면서 “엉엉 울었다”라고 말했다.

A tedious legal battle ensued, and Lee realized just how much of her it would take to fight a goliath like Samsung, eventually suffering from aphasia, depression, and even considering suicide. However, in a civil trial in the Songnam branch of the Suwon district court, Judge Hwang Hyeon-chan awarded damages to Lee on the 15th of April, and it was ruled that in addition to the perpetrator, clearly Samsung also had a responsibility for sexual harassment within the company. According to the judge’s ruling, “Despite the incidents, Samsung Electronics did not take measures to deal with the problem of sexual harassment within the company, but rather decided to disadvantage Lee instead, which clearly caused her great mental anguish”. Accordingly, perpetrator Park was ordered to pay her 2.5 million won in damages, while Samsung Electronics was ordered to pay 37.5 million won, for a total of 40 million won. The judge also noted that Lee wept loudly as the ruling was being read.

지난 4월22일 서울 강남에서 이은의씨를 만났다. 이씨는 지금도 삼성에서 일하고 있다. 지난 1998년 삼성전기 경영지원팀 입사해 2003년부터 전자영업팀 해외 업무를 담당해 왔다. 성희롱 피해 사실을 알린 이후 7개월간 대기발령을 받았고, 기획팀을 거쳐 2007년부터는 인사팀 총무보안그룹 사회봉사단에서 결연후원을 모집하는 일을 하고 있다.

이씨는 “남미와 유렵 등에 부품을 판매하는 해외 영업을 해왔는데 성희롱 덕분에 졸지에 좋은 일 하는 부서로 옮겨졌다…벌써 8년째 대리다. 내 이름은 이은의가 아니라 ‘이 대리’다”라며 웃었다. 사건 이후 그의 인사고과는 늘 ‘C-‘, 그의 동료들은 벌써 과장 직함을 달았다.

( Source )

I met Ms. Lee Eun-eui on the 22nd of April in Gangnam in Seoul. She is still working for Samsung. She originally joined the company in 1998, first working for the management and support team. In 2003, she joined the electrical appliances’ sales team, where she focused on overseas affairs. And informing the personnel department of the sexual harassment, she was placed on 7 months leave, first joining the planning team and then from 2007 working the social welfare service group within the personnel department itself, helping to collect funds to be donated to charities.

Lee says “I used to deal with selling parts to overseas companies in South America and Europe and so on, but because of the sexual harassment I was very suddenly transferred to the social welfare service group…I’ve already been a deputy section chief for 8 years. My name isn’t ‘Lee Eun-eui,’ but ‘Deputy Section Chief Lee'” she laughed. And after she told the personnel department about the sexual harassment, they gave her an evaluation of ‘C-‘, whereas most of her colleagues have already been promoted to section chiefs.

And Jang Il-ho’s interview will continue in Part 2. But first, there is the question of the exact English meaning of 대기발령 mentioned in paragraph 2, and then 대기발령을받다 mentioned in paragraph 5, as after a great deal of debate with my (Korean) wife…we realized that we really had no idea. According to my cheap electronic dictionary however, 대기하다 means to “wait for a chance; be on alert; be on standby”, whereas according to Naver 대기발령 means to “be placed on the waiting list”, and 대기발령을받다 to “wait to be assigned or placed in”. Hence we plumped for to “be put on extended leave” in the end, but I would appreciate it if any readers could confirm that, and regardless it raises the additional questions of if it was unpaid, how common it is at Korean workplaces, and/or if it is only ever done to punish employees?

My original second question was much more important, but I’ve since been able to answer it through a report on the judge’s ruling on SBS News on the 21st of April, which unfortunately I’ve been unable to embed nor to download. If you fast-forward to 1:40 however, you’ll see that it leads with the headline above that “Companies also have responsibility for sexual harassment” and indeed the newscaster says that this is actually the very first time that such a judgment has been made; a notion I find simply bizarre on the one hand, and yet all too explicable in light of Korea having the “most unfriendly work conditions for women in OECD” on the other.

But am I misguided though, in believing that in cases of sexual harassment in the workplace in Western countries, it is generally employers rather than individual perpetrators that are considered liable?

Regardless, I’m sure you’ll agree that an important precedent has been set, and now I’m really looking forward to learning more about it in Part 2, which you can expect to be be up on Thursday Friday!

Korean Photoshop Disaster #6: I like it hot, strong, and black! (Updated)

( Source )

Do men pay more attention to men’s chests than women?

As a gym addict 10-15 years ago, I read somewhere in a newspaper that they do. And with my self-confidence back then wholly tied to how much I buffed up, it certainly matched my own experience.

Unfortunately for the sake of objectivity though, it’s been difficult not to remember that every time I’ve seen a topless man ever since. One look at Changmim of 2AM half-naked and holding his crotch in a coffee ad then, and all I could think about was the large, firm package that used to be the weekend edition of the New Zealand Herald.

Naturally enough, most commenters at allkpop and Omona! They Didn’t focused on the one that Changmin was allegedly holding in his left hand instead, and I’m going to take a wild guess that most of those were heterosexual women. Perhaps that explains why so few noticed the appalling photoshop job on his chest?^^

Yet despite men’s greater interest in those in a competitive sense, in reality not only is bilateral symmetry a good indicator of genetic health for both sexes, and hence a heavily favored trait in mates, but even women’s own breasts become more symmetrical during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle too. So it’s a strange oversight.

And of course for the photoshopper too, who presumably originally aimed to create some sort of languid, fluid-like effect, and I expect the mistake will be corrected before the full ad campaign for Maeil’s “Cafe Latte Americano Dutch” is launched on the 13th (source, above). But regardless, and on a more serious note now, it still has to be the first of the recent spate of Korean advertisements to objectify men that I’ve positively disliked, rather than be merely nonplussed or amused by.

For it is just as lame as it is provocative.

Putting aside how problematic the slogan “Find Your Black” is to English speakers, as described at allkpop the campaign’s basic concept is that various members of 2AM represent “Chic Black”, “Luxury Black”, “Tough Black”, and Changmin as “Sexy Black,” and the first major problem with the ad is also the most obvious: what does a topless idol grabbing his genitalia has to with coffee exactly?

Or indeed, with being “sexy”, and it that sense it also reduces to and perpetuates the notion that sexiness is only a matter of skin exposure, whether for men or for women. A problem which is hardly unique to the Korea media of course, but it is exaggerated here, and so unfortunately I’m wasn’t all that surprised that that was the best that the creative team could come up with.

And yet, would the same ad have actually been possible with a woman? Specifically, one with her hand placed on her crotch, a pretty blatant gesture of intent in anyone’s language?

( Source: unknown )

But why so specific? Well, if there’s one consistent theme to emerge out of writing about Korean advertisements for 3 years, that would be being witness to a long line of firsts: the first erect nipples; the first portrayal of Korean female – foreign male relationships; the first kiss; the first spoof of objectification within ads(!); the first soju ad to portray a woman as, well, really rather slutty, as opposed to decades of portraying them as virgins; and so on. And no matter how difficult it may be to believe for recent visitors to the country, in fact some of those emerged just within the last 3 weeks, let alone the last 3 years.

So, it’s natural to write as if I have almost a perverted fixation on things like crotches sometimes! And indeed, if there’s one thing to take away from Changmin’s ad, it’s the realization that however permissible grabbing one’s crotch is in passing in brief dances on talk shows and in music videos and so on in Korea, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a print advertisement. On women or on men, and hence netizens’ intense interest in Changmin’s ad.

But of course I may be wrong, and so as always, please pass on any earlier ads that you are aware of. But for various reasons, I really do think that an equivalent ad with a woman would have aroused far more controversy.

How about you? Let me finish by providing two related examples to help get you thinking.

First, the the above one with Kim Ah-joong (김아중) from 2006, which at first glance is sexually-assertive enough. But as commenter “huncamunca” pointed out to me 2 years ago (in a post I ironically deleted yesterday!), it is definitely not an example of the sexually aggressive “cowboy stance” that I first interpreted it as:

…I agree that the “cowboy” thumbs in the belt loops make the picture sexual, but other elements of the stance make it sexual AND DEMURE, not aggressive. Usually, in the cowboy stance, the shoulders are relaxed and legs are slightly apart, with weight more on one foot than the other (see for example the picture of the woman on page 240 of the Pease book) [on body language]. However, Kim Ah-jung’s shoulders are raised, as if she is shrugging slightly in a demure way. Her elbows are straight and held close to her body to take up as little space as possible, which is not typical of the relaxed cowboy stance. Her legs are also tightly closed to take up as little space as possible, and they don’t look like they are about to take her toward what she wants. Her head is tilted down so she can look up demurely at the viewer. The combination of raised shoulders and lowered head is similar to the “Head Duck” in the Pease book (p. 235), which shows submissiveness. Also the wind effect makes it look as though whatever she is looking at (presumably a male viewer) is powerful enough to nearly blow her away while she marvels at him and waits for his approach. She doesn’t look like she intends to act, but rather like she hopes to be acted upon–sexual but still submissive.

Not that Changmin looks all that sexually aggressive either of course: indeed, he appears to be protecting himself more than anything else, but either way the ambiguity again points to a lack of thought behind the campaign.

Finally, a female equivalent of gratuitous objectification and/or nudity in a coffee ad provided by Italian coffee company Lavazza, also in 2006:

( Source )

Notorious for ads involving sex and/or the excessive objectification of women since at least 2005, this one was ultimately judged as discriminating against women by the Swedish Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK), and presumably forced to be withdrawn:

Sweden’s Ethical Council has a lower tolerance for the use of scantily clad women to advertise products than comparable regulatory bodies in other countries…

…ERK judged “that the woman is used as an eye catcher without any connection to the advertised products, and that it is insulting towards women”.In its defence Lavazza wrote that the 2006 calendar from which the images were taken used humour and irony to recreate a 1950s feel. The company claimed that the images depicted glamour, style and a lust for life and were in no way discriminatory.

[ERK Secretary] Jan Fager disagrees. In his opinion it is not acceptable for an advertisement for coffee to be sexy in the same way as, for example, an underwear ad. He noted that while H&M has come in for much criticism from the general public the company’s Christmas campaigns have never been found in breach of ethical standards…

…In its written judgment the ERK maintained that Lavazza had not lived up to the principle “that advertising should be formed with due regard for social responsibility”

Good for ERK, and yes, I rather like that acronym too!^^ But one wonders what they would make of Changmin?

Update – Unfortunately my English copy is in New Zealand, but see below for more on the cowboy stance, and how intimately sexual and physical aggression can be linked. From pages 236 and 237 of the Korean edition of The Definitive Book of Body Language by Alan and Barbara Pease (2006), it’s easily one of the most helpful book purchases you’ll ever make, although I did much prefer the realistic line drawings in the 1989(?) edition to the cartoon-like ones and photos of famous people in the new one:

And for comparison’s sake, here’s a less disastrously photoshopped image of Changmin:

( Source )

(For more posts in the Korean Photoshop Disasters series, see here)

The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea: Newsflash

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Article source: Metro, Busan edition, 8 July 2010, p. 3.

A quick newspaper report on Korean smoking rates that caught my eye.

Of course, I was a little disappointed that it discussed “average” rates for men and women, as these are essentially useless pieces of information given the huge diversity within each gender in Korea, and doubly so for women because of chronic underreporting. But that is to be expected for a free daily, and at least it takes a step in the right direction by mentioning that female teenagers tend to start smoking much earlier than males, which will hopefully result in some much-needed attention being given to this burgeoning group:

People Would Consider Quitting if Cigarettes Cost 8500 won a Packet

At 42.6%, Korea has the highest adult male smoking rate in the OECD

Although the general social trend is for people to stop smoking, Korea retains its position as the country with the highest adult male smoking rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

According to a survey of 3000 men and women over the age of 19 conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare last month, 42.6% of Korean men smoked in the first half of this year, a decrease of 0.5% from the second half of last year, and a break in continuous increases for the past 2 years from August 2008, when it was 40.4%. However, a large gap between this and the average OECD rate of 28.4% (2007) is apparent.

Of particular interest, the survey also revealed that compared to men, women are starting to smoke at earlier ages. Of those smokers under 29 surveyed, the average age both sexes started was 18.1, but the average age of women was 16.5 and that for men was 18.3, showing women started roughly 2 years earlier.

However, of non-smokers surveyed, 21.4% replied that they did once smoke, but 62% of those were successful in quitting on their first time, showing that it is becoming easier and the social norm to do so. Indeed, 59.4% of smokers replied that they intended to quit.

Accordingly, when asked what the most effective method of quitting would be, the most popular choice [James – among current smokers?] was “increasing the numbers of no-smoking zones” at 22.8%, followed by raising the price of cigarettes (18.7%), increasing penalties for smokers (18%), and launching public campaigns (16.3%). In particular, when asked “How much would the price of cigarettes have to be raised to be effective in making you quit?”, the average answer was 8510.8 won a packet, or 3-4 times higher than current prices.

Next week, after Part 4 is completed, I’ll translate this much longer Korean article that looks at female smoking more specifically.

(Links to other posts in the series as they appear: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4; Korea’s Hidden Smokers; Living as a female smoker in Korea)

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

The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea: Part 3

( Korea is 4th from right; source )

Apparently, Korea is pretty unique in its huge difference in smoking rates between the sexes: up to 10 times more Korean men smoke than women. Or do they?

In short, probably not: considering that a 2007 Gallup Korea study found that 83.4% of Koreans thought that women should not smoke, then the accuracy of almost all figures are undermined by chronic underreporting by women. Moreover, it is misguided to speak of male or female smoking rates in the first place when those within each gender differ so widely by age, socioeconomic position, and/or marital status. Even unhelpful too, as low perceived rates for women overall have encouraged Korean medical authorities to almost exclusively focus on reducing smoking rates among men instead, overlooking rapidly rising rates among young women especially.

But for all their flaws, it is only natural to want to have some numbers to work with. And so, when I wrote Part 1, my original intention here was to pass on all those provided by 3 recent journal articles on the subject, hopefully providing readers with enough information to get at least a rough idea of the true numbers in the process. Numerous failed drafts later however, I now realize that that approach was a mistake, and should have paid much more attention to the following points by Lee et .al. (2009):

…the limited data available on female smoking prevalence and behaviour in South Korea must be urgently addressed. Data from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Survey (Table 2) suggests female smoking rates have fluctuated significantly between 1980 and 2003, with variations within age groups by year that are difficult to explain. There are also inconsistencies across different data sources which prevent clear understanding of smoking behaviour within specific cohorts by age, location, socio-economic group and other variables.

Instead then, let me do my best to point out broad themes within the various data sources instead, starting with those revealed by the following graph provided by Young-Ho Khang and Hong-Jun Cho, “Socioeconomic inequality in cigarette smoking: Trends by gender, age, and socioeconomic position in South Korea, 1989-2003“, Preventive Medicine Volume 42, Issue 6, June 2006, Pages 415-422:

Based on a huge sample population from 5 Social Statistical Surveys from the Korea National Statistical Office, it does at least provide a good illustration of overall smoking trends for both sexes over the period covered. A quick summary:

Results show that for men, smoking rates decreased in all age groups…For women aged 45+, smoking rates decreased…while those for younger age groups either remained stable (25-44) or increased (20-24). In addition, the decreasing pattern of smoking among women aged 45+ was not the same as that of men. For women aged 45+… reductions began earlier than for men. (p. 418, paraphrased)

And they believe that the decreases were primarily due to legislation; in particular, the 1995 Health Promotion Act, which restricted smoking in public buildings and places. Unfortunately however, it was not very effective on young women, nor on the inverse relationship between educational level and rates of smoking, which was generally true in all age groups and both genders. They speculate that that was partially because:

…most policy efforts have been aimed at the dissemination of information about the hazardous health impacts of smoking while policy efforts on work site smoking cessation programs or economic measures (i.e., taxation) to discourage smoking were minimal. (p. 421)

( Source )

Khang and Cho do provide further details of how women’s smoking rates differ by their socioeconomic position, but to be frank I found that jargon-filled part of the article rather poorly written, and don’t understand it despite several rereadings. Whether that’s my fault or theirs, I’ll have to skip covering that topic here regardless, and instead will focus on the following point that you may already have noticed yourself:

Unlike many developed Western countries, this study showed greater smoking rates in older women compared to younger women. This is consistent with studies conducted in Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, and India….Age differences in power relations by gender and social pressure toward young women may explain the difference in female smoking prevalence between Western countries and less developed Asian countries. However, further studies are needed to elucidate the causes of the difference. (p. 420, my emphasis)

And probably not by coincidence, in Hong-Jun Cho, Young-Ho Khang, Hee-Jin Jun, and Ichiro Kawachi, “Marital status and smoking in Korea: The influence of gender and age“, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 66, Issue 3, February 2008, Pages 609-619, they provided exactly that, from which an intriguing finding was:

…that the difference in the effect of marital status on smoking rate varied according to gender….smoking rates for unmarried women compared with married women were generally much greater than comparable [rates] for men across all age groups, and were particularly high in younger women. This finding differs from many previous Western studies that reported either no gender difference in the influence of marriage on smoking, or greater difference between married versus unmarried rates in married men compared to married women. (pp. 613-14, my emphasis)

Some details:

The smoking rate for unmarried women was approximately 2-8 times higher than for married women depending upon the age group. In contrast, the smoking rate for unmarried men was not higher than the married men for the 25-34 and 65-74 year-old age groups…

…In the 35-54 year-old age range, the smoking rate in divorced women was more than twice that of the widowed women. This difference was smaller for men…

…the present study found that the smoking rate was higher in unmarried compared to married people. This finding is consistent with those of many Western studies of both men and women…(p. 613)

( Businesswoman by the_toe_stubber )

And crucially:

Women’s smoking can be underreported in societies where there is a strong social norm against young women adopting such behavior. Such a reporting bias may have affected the findings of this study. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether reporting bias would have produced the differential patterns of smoking rate according to marital status…

…a definite casual relationship between marital status and smoking could not be established [in this study]. Selection is also possible. The divorce rate for smokers is twice that for non-smokers, and men who continue smoking have a lower probability of getting married. But, because the effect of marital status on smoking is stronger in men than women, this cannot explain the gender-related difference in the present study. (p. 616 & 617, my emphases)

And they identify many reasons why unmarried Korean women may smoke more than married ones, and particularly divorced or widowed ones. Some are positive:

…smoking by women, and especially married women, can be restricted by social pressure applied from both inside and outside the family. In such cases, becoming divorced or widowed may release women from the force of sanctions and expectations. (p. 611).

And see here and here for more on those social pressures married women face. Unfortunately however, newly-single women are much more likely to smoke from stress rather than a feeling of liberation:

Higher smoking rates in the unmarried may be a reflection of coping in response to stress brought on my marital disruption. Marital disruption can create two types of stress – that which is directly associated with the disruption, and that which is indirectly associated, such as role change, financial difficulties, and child caring responsibilities. Women suffer greater financial hardship following marital disruption compared to men, especially in societies where the gender age gap is high [James – and Korea’s is among the highest the world; see #10 here]….[in 2002], the income of a woman-headed single-parent family was 83% of a man-headed single-parent family.

Above: “A Woman Smoking” (여자가 담배피는게) by Im Su-bin (임수빈), which according to allkpop “tells of a sad story of how a woman resorts to smoking and drinking after being heartbroken and why there’s nothing wrong with that”.

On a final note however, it is also true that widowed or divorced women also tend to older than average, and in Korea particularly the effects of that are difficult to separate from their marital status because:

…older women may find it easier to smoke due to less social pressure on this age group stemming from the general respect shown for the elderly in Confucian traditions. (p. 611)

With a nod to copyright, if any readers interested in reading the articles for themselves, please email me if you like me to send copies (and thanks again to the reader who sent them to me in the first place!). Meanwhile, as those turned out to be much more closely linked than I first realized (indeed, they even use the same data), then I’ve decided to discuss the third article – Kelley Lee, Carrie Carpenter, Chaitanya Challa, Sungkyu Lee, Gregory N Connolly, and Howard K Koh, “The strategic targeting of females by transnational tobacco companies in South Korea following trade liberalisation”, Globalization and Health 2009, Volume 5, Issue 2) – in a separate post (Part 4) rather than carry on here. The final Part 5 though, will still be a “discussion on the ways in which tobacco companies have (largely successfully) targeted Korean girls and women over the last two decades” from that however!^^

Update 1 – For anyone interested, a recent survey found that Seoul residents endure 50 minutes of passive smoking a day.

Update 2 – A picture that I was reminded of by I’m no picasso’s comment on the connections between coffee-shop culture and female smoking. From Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity by Laurel Kendall (1996):

(Other posts in the series as they appear: Part 1, Part 2, Newsflash, Part 4, Korea’s Hidden Smokers; Living as a female smoker in Korea)

Korean Sociological Image #41: Mothers of Warriors

(Source)

A quick question: who would you choose to sell hormone-treatment and anti-depression medication to middle-aged women?

Barring Bae Young-joon (배용준) above, notoriously popular among them, then I’d wager that middle-aged women themselves were your most likely answer. And your least likely? Probably men in their early-20s, which begs the question of why they’re the only ones actually speaking in the following commercial from Dongkook Pharmaceutical (see below for a translation):

Of course, the reason the young men are featured at all is because Korea has universal male conscription, which makes parting scenes like those featured above a normal part of the Korean life-cycle. So while the leaving ceremony itself may be unfamiliar to most Western observers, a company encouraging consumers to associate its product with it is really no different from a bank using imagery of, say, children’s university graduation ceremonies to sell retirement savings plans.

Still, that’s not to say that it’s just any old commercial. For in relying on an emotional event for Korean mothers and sons to sell its products, but quite literally denying only the mothers a voice in that, Dongkook Pharmaceutical has ironically provided an apt illustration of Korean women’s expected role in any public debates about military conscription. Which is in short, to be seen and not heard, their opinions taken for granted by others.

For instance, in 1997 the Korean media revealed that the sons of Lee Hoi-chang (이회창), the then presidential candidate of the then ruling Shinhangukdang (New Korean Party; 신한국당), had been exempted from their military service due to medical grounds; popularly believed to have used his wealth and influence to secure this, the backlash against Lee for failing to fulfill his paternal and nationalist responsibilities was so intense that his political career was soon over. And yet according to Insook Kown in A Feminist Exploration of Military Conscription: The Gendering of the Connections Between Nationalism, Militarism and Citizenship in South Korea (2001), even in the midst of all that:

…women were voiceless. Those who accused Lee, answered the accusations, reported the matter, and contributed articles were all men. In public, the conscription scandal seemed a matter for men only. Sometimes, mothers were used by men as a reference symbolizing a certain group of women only concerned about the welfare of their sons. Many male editorial writers represented the angry emotions of mothers to show South Korean popular opinion. One editorial writer in the JoongAng Daily (22/08/97) described the anger of many mothers of sons. According to him, these mothers wrote a slogan on the calender for Election Day: “Let’s never forget the exemptions of Lee’s sons”. (p. 43)

(Source: anja_johnson)

And later another editorial writer in the same paper (27/08/97) illustrated the emotional background of the issue by using a motherly perspective:

People did not deal with the exemption by making accusations of immorality or illegal intervention in the exemption, but with emotional anger like, why did your sons not have to go into the army, while my son is suffering in a life-or-death crisis. What made women angrier than anyone else, was caused by this kind emotion. (p. 43)

Kwon argues that the Korean state has always very much had a stake in accepting feminized forms of self-sacrifice in its name, whether as factory workers, prostitutes to the US military or Japanese tourists (a crucial source of foreign exchange in the 1960s and 1970s), or mothers of conscripts. Focusing on the latter here, consequently they have so far lacked:

…room to represent their own sacrifices in public. Mother’s concern and pain over their son’s conscription has remained hidden under the taken-for-granted necessity of military conscription for national security. Their voices have been deprived of a space for expression; and because their emotional attachment to their sons has been translated into a private matter, they have not mobilized as a group. (p. 37; tenses have been changed)

Not that this lack of representation means that mothers are necessarily opposed to conscription. For example, Cynthia Enloe, who has written extensively on the subject of “patriotic motherhood” narratives constructed by militarized states, argues that in fact they can have attractions for women whose mothering role has been evaluated as personal and private. Indeed, it can be a chance for them to completely revalue their maternal duty:

Some women feel deeply validated when some politician goes on the call for mothering to be defined as a vital contribution to the nation’s war effort, because warfare has been imagined by many to be the quintessentially public and national activity. (Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, 2000, p. 11, quoted in Kwon p. 46)

Moreover, what are these “sacrifices” referred to exactly? Kwon’s analysis is a little weak on this point, as although she provides a comprehensive and convincing demonstration of how in fact all women suffer from the conscription system (a subject taken up in this series), there is little evidence that mothers specifically suffer beyond that aforementioned “concern and pain over their son’s conscription”. As the commercial demonstrates however, that may be rather more than a Western observer might expect.

At which point it is prudent to provide the translation of it(!). Below, the text featured on the screen is written as normal text below, while everything spoken by the conscripts or in the voiceover I’ve put in quotation marks. I’ve also provided the commercial again to make it easier to follow along:

엄마…..그동안 받기만 해왔습니다

Mother…..(I’ve) only ever received things (from you)

엄마…이제 처음으로 엄마품을 떠나네요

Mother….this is the first time I’ve left my mother’s (your?) bosom”

엄마…고맙습니다

Mother…thank you

듬직한 대한민국 군인이 돼서 엄마가 믿고 의지할 수 있는 아들이 되겠습니다

I will become a reliable, trustworthy Korean soldier whom you can trust and depend on

이제는 우리가 엄마를 도와드릴 차례입니다

Now it’s our (my?) turn to help our mothers

어머니 잘 다녀오겠습니다. 사랑합니다. 사랑해

Mother, I will do well before I return. I love you (formal). I love you (informal)

엄마, 사랑합니다. 충성!

Mother, I love you (formal). Loyalty! (Fealty?) (Devotion?) [James: whatever the exact meaning, it is said when saluting]

대한민국 갱년기 어머니들의 10명 중 8명은 다양한 갱년기 증상으로 힘들어하고 있습니다

Out of every 10 mothers of the Korean public who experience menopause, 8 suffer from various symptoms

(Above, left and right): 여성 갱년기 극복 갬폐인 & 동국제약

Female Menopause Conquest Campaign & Dongkook Pharmaceutical

엄마에게, 사랑의 마음을 전하세요. 훼라민큐가 함께 합니다

Tell your mother the love you feel in your heart. With HeraminQ.

이제, 엄마의 갱년기를 도와주세요. 훼라민Q.

Now, please help with mothers’ menopause. HeraminQ.

(In very fine print): 의사, 약사와 상의하십시오. 부작용이 있을 수 있습니다

Please consult with a doctor or pharmacist. Side effects are possible.

Update: Seamus Walsh has provided a slightly more accurate translation (with explanations) in the comments.

(For another post: the impact on sisters and girlfriends of conscription? Movie poster for The Longest 24 Hours, (기다리다미쳐, 2007), a lighthearted look at military service from the perspective of conscripts’ girlfriends; also known as Crazy4wait. Source)

While this may sound a little hypocritical at first, let me begin my discussion on the subject of the mothers’ feelings by highlighting those of the men; actually, that is the original reason I wanted to write this post, for let me stress that you were seeing men in their early-20s crying at the thought of leaving their mothers. What did that make you think of them?

Well, at risk of sounding insensitive, personally I found them to be pathetic. Not that I was all that mature at the same age of course, and in many senses my reaction may simply be because of cultural differences. Like Brian in Jeollanam-do once put it:

…everything in Korea tries to be cute, in the same way everything in the States is “Xtreme” and too cool for school. Korea uses a cartoon to advertise where the US would have a gravelly stoner voiceover, and Korean videos often feature cuteness exaggerated to a sickening degree where American videos would lots of brooding and feigned indifference.

And not unrelated is how different average Koreans’ and average Westerners’ life-cycles are at that age, although 30-somethings like myself should be wary of projecting their own experiences onto today’s 20-somethings. Nor do I want to make light of the hardships conscripts have to endure either.

(Source: anja_johnson)

But then I’m not: in that commercial at least, thinking about those hardships is not why they’re crying. Moreover, to describe the crying as a simple cultural difference underplays the extent to which this practice is unique even within Korean culture itself, as beyond obvious cases such as funerals, my (Korean) wife for one could think of no other situations in which it is so socially acceptable for a man of that age to cry publicly. That they can and do then, is partially because a) the vast majority of Koreans don’t actually think of any male as a “man” until he has fulfilled his military service, and b) this uniquely strong bond between mothers and conscript-sons. Indeed, there is:

…a widely held popular belief that a father should encourage his son to go into the army, and to fulfill his national defense duty to achieve real citizenship. In this gendered construction, mothers represent emotional attachment such as compassion and pity toward their conscripted sons. In other words…the emotional part of the work of conscription….

…At the most emotional step of the conscription process, the father disappears. For instance, in two recent guidebooks published for pre-conscripts, the authors, both male, make almost no mention of fathers. The only ‘object’ for whom male soldiers are expected to feel concern about in the family is the mother. (p. 44)

And as you might expect, this is well-represented in popular culture, and in addition to commercials like the above I have frequently seen conscripts brought on to the stage after a girl-group has performed on an army base to wax lyrical about their performance and their attractiveness…only then to break down in tears and leave a very emotional message to their mothers watching back home (indeed, often they’re literally choking on their words so much that Om-ma “mother” is the only word you’re able to discern).

Unfortunately for readers however, this is yet another case of something interesting to outside observers that is unremarkable to Koreans themselves, and so I’ve spent over an hour unsuccessfully looking for examples to post here (videos of girl-group performances typically finish just before the soldiers are brought on stage). If any readers find any I would appreciate it if you could pass them on, but in the meantime let me finish by passing on what Kwon says about the program Ujeongdui Mudae (우정의 무대), or Stage for Friendship, the only program about conscripted soldiers in the 1990s, and which had:

…one famous section, ‘Yearning for Mother’. An unidentified mother talked about her son from back stage. Following her talk, a lot of soldiers ran on the stage shouting “Mother” and insisted she was their mother. Finally, the mother appeared on stage and hugged her son. Finally, the mother appeared on stage and hugged her son. Accompanied with deeply moving music, both mother and son cried, as did other soldiers and everybody watching the TV show. (p. 44).

For your interest though, I did find this 2008 commercial with Moon Geun-young (문근영) for GS Caltex (칼텍스), which features a mother visiting her son during his military service (and impressed with how much of a man he has become):

And for the record, Dongkook Pharmaceutical did produce more “normal” commercials for HeraminQ with middle-age women, here, here, and here, as well as another one in the “life-cycle” series featuring mothers’ high-school children taking their life-determining university-entrance exams:

Thoughts?

(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here; for more on the effect of conscription on Korean society, see here and here)

Korean Sociological Image #40: As Pretty as a Picture?

(Source)

As any visitor to the country can tell you, Korea is a society obsessed with appearance.

After all, cosmetic-surgery clinics are everywhere. And where else can you hear of people bothering to photoshop passport photos, or even that it’s completely legal to do so?

But if we accept that obsession as a given, then, whatever its pernicious effects on women (and, of course, it does primarily affect women), it doesn’t mean that Korean consumers are simply dupes. A woman who decides to get breast-enlargement surgery, for instance, isn’t necessarily suffering from something like gong-ju byeong (공주병), or “princess disease.” More likely, she’s making a very rational, informed choice that has a dramatic positive effect on her career opportunities and confidence, more than paying back the initial investment.

And indeed, short of becoming some form of activist, and a poor and frustrated one at that, what exactly can people do when prospective employers require photos with resumes?

Still, as regular commenter Gomushin Girl pointed out in an earlier post:

You can say that an individual’s decision to participate in a socially normative activity may be rational, but that doesn’t make it either healthy for the individual or a rational norm for society to perpetuate. Female genital mutilation makes rational sense to the parents who inflict it on their daughters, who thereby ensure their daughter’s ability to participate as a normative member of society. However, few people would argue that submitting a child or young woman to a painful, permanently physically debilitating, possibly lethal, and medically unnecessary surgery is a healthy decision for either the individual and the society, no matter how established.

Add to this that the decision to get plastic surgery is not an uncoerced one and focused almost entirely on policing the looks of a single gender, and you have a deeply problematic social custom. It’s also a social custom under considerable debate among Koreans themselves, so it’s not like the big bad Westerners are coming by just to tsk tsk at the silly Asian custom. (My emphasis.)

With those negatives in mind, I’m glad to pass on the news that at least one politician is trying to do something about resume photographs:

(Source: Focus Busan, June 9 2010, p. 6.)

Will Photos Be Removed From Resumes?

On the 8th, Grand National Party (한나라당) National Assembly member Jeong Ok-im (photo) pushed for a revision to existing anti-sexual discrimination legislation for it to also prohibit the attachment of photographs to resumes and/or application forms.

According to existing legislation, if employers ask female applicants for details of their looks, height, weight, and other bodily-related facts, and also such things as their marital status, then they can face of a fine of 5 million won.

Jeong aims to add two extra clauses to this. First, that it should not be confined only to “female workers” but should be instead be made applicable to all “workers”; and also, that employers can not demand photos with applications. The reason is that such questions are not just a problem for women, but in fact affect both sexes.

(Source)

Moreover, Jeong explained that this requirement for photos, reflecting a long-seated overemphasis on appearance, is not to be found in developed countries like the U.K., U.S., Australia, and Canada. In fact, in the O.E.C.D., only Korea and Japan follow this practice.

Indeed, from the outset employers in those other countries do not request information about such things as your sex, age, body size, weight, and so on, as these are irrelvent to your ability.

Jeong says that “this ‘Perfect Face Culture’ has deep roots in tradition and our patriarchal culture, and it continually distorts the employment market. Hence I have proposed these changes to the legislation to put a stop to it.”

What do you think? Have any readers, and perhaps particularly Gyopo readers, had any negative experiences of being asked questions like the above in interviews, which they would be much less likely to by Western employers?

Of course, I’m not so naive or biased to assume that Western employers don’t sometimes ask inappropriate and/or illegal questions either, but then I doubt they would ever ask details of applicants’ family histories and parents’ jobs for instance, and I imagine that I would be very uncomfortable working for an employer for whom the answers to such questions were important. Indeed, it behooves me to remember how my own work-life as foreign English teacher is really quite isolated from the rest of Korean society in that regard.

But regardless, even if the legislation is revised, it remains to be seen if it is actually enforced: women are still regularly fired for getting pregnant or requesting their legally mandated maternity leave for instance, despite already comprehensive anti-sexual discrimination legislation. But hey: at least it’s a start!

(Source: SOCIALisBETTER)

Note: This post is not intended as:

An indirect commentary on the attractiveness of the random Korean woman and man above
An invitation to question their intelligence and/or mock their decision to have their photos photoshopped
Nor an invitation to criticize the random photo studio for providing such a service (with my apologies for using its pictures).

Please: no comments along those lines.

Update: With apologies for overlooking it, Brian in Jeollanam-do also discussed this topic a little last June.

(For all posts in the Korean Sociological Images series, see here)

The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea: Part 2

A teaser for the next posts in the series (click to enlarge):

With apologies for the poor quality of the scans, those are from an activity in the ESL activity book Decisionmaker: 14 Business Situations for Analysis and Discussion (1997) by David Evans, which I happened to be doing with my advanced students when a reader sent me the journal articles that inspired this series. It seemed a pity not to mention the interesting coincidence!

Yet another coincidence is that before I moved from Jinju (진주) to Busan in late-2003, I also happened to have a 23-year old female Korean friend who was similarly attracted by the possibility of working for British American Tobacco, which was then setting up a manufacturing plant in Sacheon (사천) just a few kilometers away (it’s still there). We didn’t quite have a conversation like Kim Jin-hiu did with her family, although I did try to discourage her from applying; as I would today too, although I’d have a much better appreciation of her motivations. In the end though, she ignored me and managed to get an interview, but surprisingly wasn’t offered a job.

Meanwhile, as David Evans explains, the marketing plan in the “secret memo” does sound outrageous, but in fact:

…some cigarette companies have undoubtedly targeted children in their marketing strategies. A leaked memo from a Canadian tobacco company listed teenagers as a target group, and cigarette adverts are regularly shown on children’s TV in Japan (James: is this still true?). In 1991, a study showed that American children as young as six could identify Joe Camel (a cartoon character advertising Camel cigarettes) as easily as Mickey Mouse!

And in Part 4, which I’ll link to below once it’s up next week, I’ll outline how internal industry documents reveal that cigarette companies in Korea (including British American Tobacco) have indeed been using many of the same strategies mentioned above, albeit technically not explicitly to girls (or boys for that matter). Watch this space.

(Links to other posts in the series as they appear: Part 1, Part 3, Newsflash, Part 4, Korea’s Hidden Smokers; Living as a female smoker in Korea)

The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea: Part 1

( Park Soo-ae {박수에} in A Family {가족; 2004}; source )

As numerous expats can attest to, coming to live in Korea can be quite a jarring experience sometimes. But probably not as much as you’d expect, for Korea too is a modern, developed country, with institutions and services that match – nay, are often better – than equivalents in your home country. Comparatively speaking, the transition is really rather smooth.

Scratch below the surface however, and decidedly archaic twists to many aspects of daily life do soon emerge, many of which are profoundly gendered too. For example, after a few months here I began teaching a group of highly intelligent women already fluent in English, who attended my class merely as a hobby. All housewives, later I learned that they likely did so because while Korea has been providing an equal education to both sexes for decades now, and indeed as many as 82% of high-school graduates go on to university, just a few years after graduating women are routinely fired and/or are pressured to resign upon getting married or becoming pregnant. Which makes one wonder what the point of women’s higher education was exactly, and accordingly a study conducted just a few years earlier (Women’s education, work, and marriage in Korea: women’s lives under institutional conflicts by Mijeong Lee, 1998, pp. 161-163) found that, à la Jane Austen, it was largely to secure higher-earning husbands.

It is true though, that modernization the world over has invariably entailed such “housewifization” and nuclearization of the family, so in that sense at least Korea is arguably simply repeating the experience of societies that developed earlier. One way in which Korea does stand out then, is the case of smoking, and you’re probably well aware that it once had the highest male smoking rate in the world, whereas that for women has historically been extremely low. But unless you are already living in the country, then you may not have realized that this is not necessarily by choice, but rather because women can still get slapped for simply smoking in the street, even in 2010. And as testament to the strength of this taboo, it has influenced the smoking habits of at least one female blogger here too for instance, even though most Koreans excuse expats from the vast majority of Korean social norms (source, right).

This brief four-part series is about that gender politics of smoking in Korea, starting in this post with how such an artificial gender binary emerged in the first place; a later one will provide detailed statistics on the number of smokers in Korea, followed by a discussion on the ways in which tobacco companies have (largely successfully) targeted Korean girls and women over the last two decades. As you’ll soon see, it is really a little naive to speak of a “Korean smoking rate” or even “Korean male” or “Korean female” smoking rate when the results differ so widely by age, gender, class, and/or marital status, and the widely perceived notion that Korean women don’t and/or shouldn’t smoke is obscuring the fact that in reality more and more are over time (very roughly 1 in 5), and that success in reducing the number of male smokers comes in the midst of a looming health crisis among female ones.

But first, perhaps “taboo” is not strong enough a word. Consider why the Seoul Metropolitan Council recently proposed banning smoking in public spaces for instance:

“I suggested the bill to protect pregnant women and children from second-hand smoke on streets and at other public spaces” Park Hee-sung, a city councilor, said. “It also secures the right to smoke by designating smoking areas.”

No mere slip of the tongue, this is really a bizarre rationale for banning public smoking: don’t men and non-pregnant women also suffer from passive smoking? But place it in the context of decades-old legislation that posits both children and all women alike as in need of protection however, as mentioned in Kelley Lee et. al. in “The strategic targeting of females by transnational tobacco companies in South Korea following trade liberalisation”, Globalization and Health 2009; 5: 2 (download here), then it does begin to make some sense:

The National Health Promotion Law Enforcement Ordinance, adopted in 1989, bans all tobacco advertising, marketing and sponsorship aimed at women and children including both print and broadcast media.

Although as I’ll explain in Part 4, cigarette companies have largely managed to circumvent this restriction. In the meantime, how did the gender ideology behind the law come about?

( Source: iMorpheus )

Well, consider the thoughts of C. Paul Dredge in “Smoking in Korea” published in the Korea Journal back in April 1980, (downloadable here), which are worth quoting at some length. From page 28:

With a clear logic rooted in Neo-confucianism, this explanation intuitively makes sense, and I feel confident that I speak for almost everyone when I say that if that excerpt was all of Dredge’s article that was still available, then we’d be more than satisfied with it.

You can imagine how I felt then, when I read on and learned that that was actually bullshit. From pages 28-29:

A good lesson to remember when trying to understand any society better, and indeed I’ve previously made a similar point in the context of how authority and/or hierarchical relationships are portrayed differently in Korean and Western advertisements, so I should have given it a little more thought myself.

With a newfound respect for Dredge then (does anyone know more about him?), I highly recommend reading his article for yourself to learn more (it’s only 11 pages long), in which he goes on to discuss how the above affected Korean women’s smoking habits (at least in 1980). Also analyzing how they differed in the context of the aforementioned divisions of age, class, and marital status however, then I’ll leave that discussion for Part 3 next week.

For now, I’d be more interested in hearing about your own experiences and opinions of smoking in Korea. Alas, although I’ve never lectured anyone about smoking, I confess that I’m an anti-smoking Nazi myself, and possibly for that reason I only have 2 very occasional smokers among my friends to ask. So I would really appreciate it!^^

Update 1: For those interested in smoking culture in North Korea also, see here.

Update 2: An interesting response to this post by a Korean blogger (in English) is available here.

(Other posts in the series: Part 2, Part 3, Newsflash, Part 4, Korea’s Hidden Smokers, Quick Hit: Living as a female smoker in Korea)

Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context: The Mile High Club

( Source )

Quick question: for want of a better word, what vibe do you get from the above image? How does it make you feel?

Part of this Korean Air advertisement, how about with the caption:

From departure to arrival, only dignified services for our dignified guests.

Or with the fine print:

When you land, you should be in the same delicate condition as you were during take-off. That’s why our delicate service with a smile remains constant throughout the flight until you reach your destination.

In particular, do you find it demeaning to the steward in any way, or women in general?

Does the fact that only 11% of Korean Air stewards are men influence you in any way, Korean Air only hiring men from within its own ground staff since 1997, but women also from the general public?

And finally, do you get the same vibe from this Gucci advertisement? Why or why not?

( Source: the Fashion Spot {NSFW})

Alas, I have no information about the Gucci advertisement unfortunately (I would be grateful if any readers could enlighten me), but the Korean Air advertisement at least ran in magazines and newspapers worldwide in March 2008, and I recall finding it vaguely disturbing when I saw it in the Asian edition of The Economist at the time, but not quite being able to put my finger on why exactly.

And as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one, commentators from Singapore to London either baffled by it, finding it “hilarious that Korean Air published it in a Western magazine,” thinking it demeaning to women, and/or hoping that in Korea itself “it’s some kind of image of empowerment.” But I didn’t personally see anything sexual in it however, and so – forgive my naivety – originally didn’t quite get this unspecified newspaper author who commented that they were “glad that she is wearing a scarf, which is part of her uniform, and not something else.” Moreover, I certainly didn’t think it looked like she was about to perform fellatio either, unlike the author of Copyranter:

KOREAN AIR: How May We Service You?

Korean Air: You think our turbines have suction power…

The ad copy (click image) reads, in part: “That’s why our delicate service (no teeth!) with a smile remains constant throughout the flight…” Now, the ad was scanned from the March 31st Asian edition of Newsweek. And as tipster Juditha wrote, there certainly is a cultural difference with how female flight attendants (and really, all females) are perceived in Asian culture. But. Still. If the airline keeps running ads in this vein (sorry!), their male passengers are not going to stop at unbuckling just their seat belts.

But hey, we all make mistakes, and it’s not like there weren’t some distinctly sexual overtones to the advertising campaign as a whole; with thanks to fellow blogger Logan Row for pointing it out, note the symbolism at 0:19 in the commercial below for instance (and quite a common theme in wine advertisements!):

What is the logic of the Korean Air advertisement then? Well, as commentators in those above links pointed out, what Korean Air is trying to say in it is:

…that their attendants will go the extra mile for their guests. The pose that the flight attendant is striking is how traditional Korean hostesses would serve guests in their own homes. It is a traditional Korean (and to an extent Japanese) form of humility and hospitality

And that it’s a reference to the:

…Korean (and Asian) custom of bowing in front of your elders, parents, to people you respect, or in general to show deference to someone and submission. (ie students serve their teachers drinks/food on their knees) Its a position of servitude not necessarily the same ‘on your knees’ sexual connotation we have in the US. Obviously all of this still is problematic as far as the the female subjugation at the will of the Korean Air clients and basically almost just as offensive. But I thought that cultural reference was probably really important as well, as Korean, and other Asian cultures would read it with that in mind.

And finally that:

it conjures up being treated like royalty – in the old days the servants of royalty had to kneel and bow at all times when presenting the king with food/drinks/documents and then scoot out the door, never showing their backs. it is a sign of respect. with that said, this should not run anywhere outside East Asia as it can be misconstrued by everyone else.

( Source: the Fashion Spot {NSFW})

However, unfortunately it was. And unlike in Korea where cultural factors mean that the advertisement is not necessarily demeaning to women, a person’s social status usually trumping factors like how (literally) highly they are placed in an advertisement (see here, here, and here), having any group regularly placed lower than another in advertisements tends to be problematic in Western culture, for reasons the late sociologist Erving Goffman outlined in Gender Advertisements (1979):

Although less so than in some, elevation seems to be employed indicatively in our society, high physical place symbolizing high social place. (Courtrooms provide an example) In contrived scenes in advertisements, men tend to be located higher than women, this allowing elevation to be exploited as a delineative resources. A certain amount of contortion may be required. Note, this arrangement is supported by the understanding in our society that courtesy obliges men to favor women with first claim on whatever is available by way of a seat. (p. 43)

And also:

Beds and floors provide places in social situations where incumbent persons will be lower than anyone sitting on a chair or standing. Floors are also associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of the room – for example, the place to keep dogs, baskets of soiled clothes, street footwear, and the like. And a recumbent position is one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders very dependent on the benignness of the surround. (Of course, lying on the floor or on a sofa or bed seems also to be a conventionalized expression of sexual availability) The point here is that it appears that children and women are pictured on floors and beds more than men. (p. 41)

Granted, the Gucci and Calvin Klein examples of this above are particularly provocative, but you can see more normal ones in this “Ritualization of Subordination” category of Goffman’s framework at The Gender Ads Project if you’re interested. Moreover, in light of those, I’m no longer entirely convinced that the Korean Air advertisement isn’t still problematic despite its cultural context: after all, with the proviso that men usually look rather awkward in poses that are sexually appealing on women (as hilariously demonstrated here), I personally find it very difficult to imagine a man in place of a woman in the Korean Air advertisement, although I fully concede that that may be due to my own socialization process leading me to believe that it is more “natural” with a woman, or even simply my familiarity with the advertisement, that happened to feature a woman rather than a man. Or is it not just me?

( Source: WallyWorld )

Regardless, this is by no means the first time that Korean advertisers or advertising agencies have produced advertisements that are appropriate for and/or logical to Koreans, but completely confusing and even offensive overseas. Not that only Korean companies are guilty of doing so of course, but they are the focus here, so let me leave you with 2 examples, the most notorious of which is probably Korean cosmetic maker Coreana’s (코리아나) use of Nazi imagery in 2008, about which you can read more at Brian in Jeollanam-do here, here, and then here (and the video is still available at Adland.TV).

Next, slightly more benign, there is that for the Samsung Sens notebook computer from September last year:

The logic of those with other, non-Sens notebooks having pig noses is that Korean 2-plug electrical sockets do indeed look a little similar, and I’ve heard that that’s traditionally what they were called too (but perhaps only by children?). Regardless however, one wonders why they act like bafoons, and particularly why they’re all Caucasian when the commercial was filmed in a city as racially diverse as Sydney?

But a crucial difference between those and the Korean Air advertisement was that only the latter was intended for a global audience, and so the advertiser or advertising agency responsible should really should have known better. And now I’m curious: can anyone think of other cases where Korean advertisers or advertising agencies have made similar mistakes overseas? Alas, given the insular nature of the Korean advertising industry, probably not!

Update: Compare this advertisement for ANA airlines’ flights to Japan, from the February 2010 Hemisphere magazine (the in-flight United Airlines mag).

(For more posts in the “Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context” series, see here, here, here, here, and here)

The Grand Narrative in The Washington Post

Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

While the background will be very familiar to regular readers, I confess I was still intrigued when Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden emailed me about this last month:

With pressures high, South Korean women put off marriage and childbirth

SEOUL — In a full-page newspaper advertisement headlined “I Am a Bad Woman,” Hwang Myoung-eun (황명은) explained the trauma of being a working mom in South Korea.

“I may be a good employee, but to my family I am a failure,” wrote Hwang, a marketing executive and mother of a 6-year-old son. “In their eyes, I am a bad daughter-in-law, bad wife and bad mother.”

The highly unusual ad gave voice to the resentment and repressed anger that are common to working women across South Korea…

With thanks to Blaine Harden for asking for my input, see here for the full report, and further details are included in this similar report from the JoongAng Daily last week also.

New readers further interested in any of the issues mentioned in either, please see: #2 here for more on Korea’s extremely low score in the UNDP’s “Gender Empowerment Measure” on which I based my email statement “….despite Korean women having good health and excellent education, they still have a much greater chance of becoming a politician or even a middle manager or computer programmer in countries like Kyrgyzstan, the Dominican Republic, Botswana or Nicaragua” that Blaine Harden quoted, and here for a recent survey on the discrimination expectant mothers face in Korean workplaces, which mentions that nearly 25% of them either got fired or were forced to quit once their pregnancies were revealed. For all others, please see the list of links I provided when I was involved in a report on a very similar topic for TIME Magazine last year, and another in a more recent post on childcare and socialization.

Unfortunately, judging by the handful of news articles available on the internet, then this story seemed to get little attention in the Korean-language media, although as I type this the Washington Post article itself has prompted a couple more. But see here for the original text of the advertisements, and here, here and here for some of the original reports from October and November last year, and I’d be very grateful to hear from anybody who saw her television interviews!

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

Korean Sociological Image #31: Gender Roles & Korean Holidays

With apologies to teachers of Korean children everywhere, tired of their proclivity for repeating the nonsensical foreign words found in Korean advertisements, there is actually much to be admired in KT’s recent olleh (올레) campaign. For under the rubric da gu-rae-rul dwee-jeeb-ora (다 그래를 뒤집어라), or “turn the things that bug you on their heads,” it has a definite self-depreciating streak, poking fun at various groups of Koreans and their habits in a way that feels curiously similar to British humor (source, right: Paranzui).

Coming from a society notorious for always presenting itself in the best possible light, this is very refreshing.

Examples on TV so far have included: elderly women being encouraged not to all have the same boring, monotonous hairstyle; men to nap on travel rugs in parks with their children playing next to them rather than always lazing around at home on weekends; Koreans not to always say the same reflexive English phrases to foreigners that they learned at school; and employees to choose their own meals rather than meekly ordering whatever the boss is having.

And there are many more like it. But all pale in comparison to the directness of the latest in the series, which targets the disproportionate burden placed women during “holidays” like Seollal (설날), coming up this weekend:

Incidentally, it shows another interesting aspect of Korean society: their lack of embarrassment (some would say alacrity) in showing bodily functions. Already having rather too much of that sort of thing at home with 2 young daughters to look after though, then I’ll wisely refrain from further commentary on that here.

Instead, I’ll look forward to possibly seeing another that covers a second reason many women hate Seollal: if they’re in their late-20s or older, being pestered by their relatives to find a partner and get married, and indeed I have a 29 year-old friend and a 32 year-old sister-in-law that will be staying well away from home because of precisely that. A phenomenon hardly confined to Korea of course, as is women doing more domestic work than men, but then I’d wager that many foreign women at similar ages reading this can attest to the sheer amazement Koreans experience when they learn that they’re not married!

On that note, apologies if all this sounds familiar to many readers. But while the Korean media will be full of similar commentary this week, this is the first time I’ve seen something like it in a Korean advertisement, and as part of a particularly popular series at that. And as they say, a picture tells a thousand words…

Or perhaps there have been earlier ones that I missed, or alternatively others by different companies playing at the moment? Please let me know!

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Image series, see here)

Korean Women Angry at Being Promoted Less Than Men

(Source: TheDailyEnglishShow.com,via studio tdes)

A snapshot of some of the different forms of sexual discrimination experienced at Korean workplaces, from the January 15 edition of Metro Busan:

Women Workers’ “Promotion Grief” is Big

71% Say “Compared to Men, Promotions Come Late and with Limits”…54% Say “We Feel Inhibited From Asking for Maternity Leave”

A survey of women workers has revealed that when it comes to promotion, they still feel that they suffer from sexual discrimination.

The results of a survey of 1623 women workers by job portal site JobKorea, released on the 14th, showed that 71.4% believed that the promotion systems at their companies placed women at a disadvantage.

Asked for more information about this discrimination, 40.4% [of the 1623 women] said that “compared to men that enter the company at the same time, women have to wait longer to get promoted,” and 38.3% added that “women are excluded from some higher positions.”

In addition, 35.9% mentioned that “if we take maternity leave or time off before and after giving birth, we get lower scores on our evaluations by the personnel department,” 29% that “even if we have the same ability and practical know-how as men, we get lower scores,” and 21.8% that women simply are excluded from certain kinds of jobs.

Also, 54.7% replied that they found it very difficult to ask their superiors or coworkers for time off for childbirth, 15.8% said that they felt pressure to quit their jobs after having a baby, and finally 8.6% were aware of cases where recent mothers were indeed forced to quit. (end)

With no information given about the methodology used, then all those results should be taken with a grain of salt unfortunately.

In particular, considering that it is still common practice to fire women upon marriage, then that last figure sounds rather low to me. Also, consider that before the current economic crisis, not only did Korea already have one of the lowest women’s workforce participation rates (and the highest wage gap) in the OECD, but that those few that did work formed a disproportionate number of irregular workers. This ensured that they would be laid-off en masse last year (see #15 here also), and they are unlikely to return to work soon given Korea’s jobless recovery.

(In stark contrast, the decline in the construction industry in the US, for instance, means that for the first time in history actually more women work than men there now.)

Meanwhile, the effects of all the above on Korea’s low birthrate have also been somewhat predictable, now the world’s lowest for the third year running. But never fear, for the Korean Broadcasting Advertising Corporation (KOBACO) is on the case:

(See here {Korean} for more on the making of the campaign)

In KOBACO’s defense, the first women featured does actually have a job. Is it churlish of me to point out that she still goes home early to cook while her husband burns the midnight oil…?

Update 1: Lest the commercial not succeed though, then the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs (보건복지가족부), in charge of raising the country’s birthrate, is insisting that its employees go home at 7:30 pm on the third Wednesday of each month, all the better to have sex with their partners and have more babies.

No, unfortunately I’m not making that up.

Update 2: This satire of that is so good, it’s difficult not to believe that it’s the real thing!

Korean Sociological Image #24: Childcare is Women’s Job

(Source: 제동환 via Photo and Share CC)

For traveling parents, this is a godsend:

Asiana’s mother-friendly services have been gaining enthusiastic reviews from those who have been through the ordeals of traveling with infants.

Through the recent launch of “Happy Mom Services,” the airline has been providing exclusive check-in counters for mothers at the airport, breastfeeding covers and baby slings free of charge for travelers with babies.

It gets even better:

In response to the enthusiastic reception, Asiana will extend the “Happy Mom Services” to 66 airports internationally. Also, they will lengthen the age limit from 24 months to 36 months old…

….Passengers with infants will also receive a “Priority Tag” on their checked baggage. Arriving passengers with infants will now be able to quickly retrieve their baggage without the hassle of caring for their infant while waiting at baggage claim…

…For larger infants traveling on children tickets, Asiana is providing free installation of baby safety seats upon reservation. Asiana hopes the service will negate the need for passengers to bring along their own baby seats.

And considering the discriminatory hiring practices of its main rival Korean Air, which refuses to hire men for its cabin crew (see #2 here), then it seems somewhat picky, almost churlish to find any fault with Asiana’s initiative.

But still, “Happy Mom Services”?

(Source: Travel Story)

Yes, easy to overlook, unfortunately we are already barraged with signals that encourage and/or reinforce the notion that childcare is primarily women’s responsibility. For instance, wherever you are in the world, note the warning signs the next time you step on an escalator: only very rarely will you see child stick figures being protected by a male or gender-neutral one rather than a female one. Or, closer to home, consider Seoul Mayor Oh Se Hoon’s recent “Happy Women, Happy Seoul” plan involving the provision of such things as more women’s toilets and the now notorious pink parking spaces: as I point out here, providing larger spaces for those with children and pushchairs to unload is all well and good…but not if fathers are not allowed to use them. And I could go on with many similar examples.

Granted, probably none are confined only to Korea. But in the country with:

the lowest birthrate in the world
the lowest female workforce participation rate in the OECD
uniquely, less female university graduates working than female high school graduates
such inadequate maternity leave provisions that only 0.46% of mothers take it
and where – surprise, surprise – one-off cash payments for the birth of children are not encouraging women to completely give up their careers…

…then one suspects that greater attention should be paid to the grass-roots origins of those issues, which unfortunately Asiana’s choice of name only adds to.

Having said that, they’ll still easily be my first choice for traveling with my two young daughters from now on. And if it would be effective, I’d consider writing letters to both English and Korean-language newspapers to draw Asiana’s attention to the problem, hopefully persuading them to change the name to “Happy Parents’ Service.” What do you think?

(For more posts in the Korean Sociological Images Series, see here)

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고용불안 속, 직장내 성희롱 위협 커져

In the midst of employment instability, the threat of workplace sexual harassment increases

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Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. Source: cutilove.

Source: Naver Movies.

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(Sources – left: GR X Hermark; right)

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(Source: Somang Cosmetics, 2003)

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(“What? Sexual Harassment at Samsung Electronics?? Heaven Forbid!”. Source.)

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Article source: Metro, Busan edition, 8 July 2010, p. 3.

People Would Consider Quitting if Cigarettes Cost 8500 won a Packet

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( Korea is 4th from right; source )

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( Businesswoman by the_toe_stubber )

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(Source: anja_johnson)

(For another post: the impact on sisters and girlfriends of conscription? Movie poster for The Longest 24 Hours, (기다리다미쳐, 2007), a lighthearted look at military service from the perspective of conscripts’ girlfriends; also known as Crazy4wait. Source)

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(Source: Focus Busan, June 9 2010, p. 6.)

Will Photos Be Removed From Resumes?

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( Park Soo-ae {박수에} in A Family {가족; 2004}; source )

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KOREAN AIR: How May We Service You?

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( Source: WallyWorld )

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Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

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(Source: TheDailyEnglishShow.com,via studio tdes)

(See here {Korean} for more on the making of the campaign)

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(Source: 제동환 via Photo and Share CC)

(Source: Travel Story)