The future of South Korea’s feminist movement
The future of South Korea’s feminist movement
WRITTEN BY SHAN-JAN SARAH LIU
19 October 2021
South Korea has modernised in many ways. It is a country known for its innovative technology, as Samsung holds one-third of the global smartphone market and Hyundai operates as the world’s fifth-largest automaker. Besides its advanced technology sector, its entertainment industry is also world-leading. K-pop has become a global phenomenon in the last decade. The recent Netflix show, Squid Game, has also taken the world by storm with its enthralling story, brilliant acting, and colourful settings, which inherently contradict the violent absurdity of the game.
At the same time, South Korea lags behind its neighbours in gender development. For example, the Global Gender Gap Report identifies South Korea as one of the most dangerous countries for women, just behind India which was once ranked the most dangerous country for women in the world. South Korea has one of the lowest proportions of women in the national parliament at 17 per cent (the world average is 25 per cent), falling behind other countries in the region such as Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Significant gender gaps also exist in various forms of political participation in South Korea, such as campaigning activities and petition-signing.
While Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai-Ing Wen, has been celebrating victory with a second term, South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye, was only able to serve one term. Park was not only scrutinised for corruption but also questioned as a ‘lesbian’ by participants on Korean online forums because of her corrupt relationship with Choi Soon Shil. During the last 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LGBT+ community suffered particularly from stigma, as an outbreak was associated with gay clubbing in Seoul. Stalling gender development in South Korea is also on the rise due to the alt-right political views of young South Korean men who hold misogynist ideas about gender equality.
Gendered expectations of women in South Korea are long-established and thus make the current feminist breakthrough even more significant than it might be in western societies. Recent developments illustrate that feminism can be an empowering tool for young South Korean women to stand in solidarity with one another in fighting misogyny.
Since gender equality is often associated with development, the discrepancy between South Korea’s economic development and gender development is puzzling. Does such a discrepancy mean that there is no future for feminism in South Korea? Recent examples of misogyny make evident that South Korea still has a long way to go before achieving gender equality. Nevertheless, what is happening on the ground is promising and giving South Korean women hope.
Women Olympians with short hair are painted as feminazis
South Korean archer, An San, won three gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics this past summer. Awaiting her at home, though, was not only praise but also criticism. She was criticised for having short hair, as it led South Koreans to believe that she was a feminist, despite never having declared herself one. Feminism is seen as a dirty word and has a negative connotation in most parts of the world, including western societies. Nevertheless, feminism in South Korea has been associated in particular with being ‘anti-men’. An San’s short hair led to a backlash against her and stimulated a wave of requests to remove her from the national team and to retrieve her medals and cash awards. There was also a rumour in a male online forum about the Korean Archery Association requesting An San be stripped of her gold medals, which forced the Association to clarify that no such demand had been made.
The backlash against An San originated from a seemingly innocent interaction between the archer and a follower on Instagram in March. An San posted a photo of her new haircut, which prompted a follower to ask why she had cut her hair. While such a question may seem unbiased, it implies that women should only have long hair — a belief held by many in South Korea. An San was not the first and only celebrity demanded to be cancelled. Several years ago, Son Naeun, singer of the K-pop group Apink, was forced to delete a photo of herself holding a phone case that read “Girls can do anything” on Instagram. Like most cultures across the globe, South Korea is a patriarchal society with rigidly defined gender roles. For example, in the recent Netflix show ‘Squid Game’, male players constantly question women players’ capabilities and strengths. These gendered (mis)assumptions — women must have long hair and women are weak — illustrate that South Korea still has a long way to go towards gender equality.
Is South Korea doomed?
Although South Korea may seem like it is lacking in gender development, the country has also made major progress in the last few years. Women’s movements in South Korea originated after World War II. When people’s movements (minjung undong) blossomed, several activists also began paying attention to women’s issues. However, it was not until recently that feminism became the focus. The #MeToo movement took hold in South Korea in 2018 when young women organised and participated in mass street demonstrations to speak out against sexual harassment and abuse — not an easy thing to do in a conservative society.
The #MeToo movement was motivated by a sharp discrepancy between how police deal with sexual misconduct against men and women. In 2018 a female university student took a photo of a male model in her art class and posted it on the feminist website Womad. It took the police 12 days to investigate and close the case, resulting in a 10-month prison sentence. In comparison, it took the police 17 years to shut down Soranet, a pornography website that hosted nonconsensual nude photos of women. In the same year, police arrested two men using spycams to film 1,600 guests across 30 hotels, they now face up to five years in jail. The differing treatment of male and female victims by police has angered many. It also inspired 200 women to share their personal stories of sexual harassment in Seoul city centre for 2018 minutes to commemorate the significance of the year 2018 when #MeToo South Korea marked significant milestones in dialogues about and actions against gender-based violence.
For a society deeply rooted in patriarchy, things have begun to change for women, albeit slowly. For example, over 270,000 South Koreans petitioned to further investigate Jong-bum’s sexual assaults on Goo Hara, a K-pop star. In 2020, her ex-boyfriend was sentenced to one year in prison. Regarding archer An San, the Korean Archery Association clarified that it had received more phone calls asking them to support An San than requests to remove her membership.
A new generation of feminists are not to be ignored
Feminist movements in South Korea only began a few years ago, it, therefore, may be too early to see the effects (considering that it took 97 years for 35 US states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment). However, following the 2018 #MeToo movement, a survey by the Korea Research Institute in 2019 indicated that the majority of South Koreans approved of the #MeToo movement and saw it benefiting South Korean society as a whole. A study conducted by the Korean Women’s Development Institute in 2018 also showed that one in two women in their 20s identified as feminists. Online feminism in South Korea has also been booming — one of the reasons why men have felt threatened by women and blamed their own failures on women’s successes.
It is important to note that hostility towards feminism is not unique to South Korea but is a global phenomenon. Nevertheless, recent movements have begun to challenge long-existing patriarchal practices and customs in South Korea, a patrilineal and patrilocal society, in which the male bloodline is embraced and women are expected to help their male partners to fulfil filial duties. These filial duties include living with and supporting the male partners’ parents and upholding the family’s religious rituals. These gendered expectations of women in South Korea are long-established and thus make the current feminist breakthrough even more significant than it might be in western societies. Recent developments illustrate that feminism can be an empowering tool for young South Korean women to stand in solidarity with one another in fighting misogyny. Such power among the younger generations is also not to be ignored as they have and will continue to transform South Korea, as evidenced by various feminist movements throughout history.
Moreover, research shows that women’s movements lead to gender-egalitarian attitudes, but such an impact is conditional upon the country’s gender equality. In other words, as empowering and powerful as feminist movements can be, feminist activists alone cannot achieve gender equality for South Koreans overnight. Rather, gender equality requires a collective societal effort to address the multi-faceted dimensions of structural barriers and systematic discrimination from which women suffer. Therefore, moving forward, South Korea needs to stand behind these young women activists as they aim to improve life for women.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Shan-Jan Sarah Liu is a lecturer in Gender and Politics in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the cross-national comparison of how contexts shape the gender gaps in public opinion and political behaviour. She tweets from @DrSarahLiu. Image credit: Flickr/Terry Feuerborn.