Korea and sexism (and tech) part 2.37 of 3

by liberal japonicus

TLDR: The 2.37 means that the tech part will be a little sparse, but it is there if you somehow manage to get to the end

Previously, I mentioned this article about the effects of the IMF bailout on Korean society. While the article is about middle class families, almost all of the discussion is centered around the women in those families. This could be an artifact of the data gathered, it looks like a lot of information was gathered in interviews and discussions with women, but it is hard to imagine the authors getting the same detail if they had only interviewed men and it shows the outsized impact on the women of Korea that the Asian financial crisis caused.

While the economy recovered somewhat, I would draw strong connection from the shock of that period to the pervasive sexism that is in Korea. I thought Japan was pretty sexist, but I'm sad to say, I think Korea is quite a bit worse.

We talked about Christianity and the fact that it is a national religion has it bring the church's problematic view of sexuality front and center. Again, another previous article about the censorship of online pornography. I'd argue that if you suppress pornography, which is about sexual differences, you are actually going to have a hard time talking about gender differences. In the ostensibly more advanced West, you see the whole push towards gender-fluidity, something that I think is a much harder task in Korea.

That emphasis on femininity leads Korea to have the highest rate of plastic surgery, predominantly for women.

It’s not uncommon for high school students to receive cosmetic surgery as a graduation present, and there are numerous apps, YouTube videos and blogs available to help people select the clinic and physiological redesign that’s right for them. And while there has been a recent increase in Korean men using plastic surgery to alter their appearance, South Korea’s booming plastic surgery industry continues to largely have an impact on women. According to a 2015 survey by Gallup Korea, 14% of South Korean women have undergone some form of plastic surgery — although that statistic jumps to 30% for women in their 20s in particular.

While I was in South Korea, a film version of a book entitled called Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 was released. The title of the book is based on the most common girl's name of that period and it describes the gender hurdles the protagonist faced. It was published in 2016 and when it came out, female celebrities who praised the book on their SNS accounts were harassed and hounded. With the filming of the book, the same sort of thing happened again and the woman who played the lead role (she was the pregnant train passenger in Last Train to Busan)

This review hits a lot of the notes

Throughout the film, Ji-Young’s mother emerges as the quiet heroine in her life, someone restricted by the times—she had given up schooling in her younger days to earn money so that her brothers could attend college—but secretly desires a different future for her daughters. Though unable to speak out explicitly, she supports her daughter behind the scenes, and in a pivotal moment, chastises her husband for only ever thinking of his son. Her husband’s stunned and guilt-laden expression reveals a proclivity which, until laid bare before him, he didn’t even realize he had. Again, the film reminds us that the treachery of discrimination is how unconsciously it is often enforced.

It's been pointed out in the comments, particularly by Nigel, that the the distance that South Korea has travelled is astonishing and that change can put a lot of this in context.

The lead actress and the film were attacked in the same way that Brie Larson took flak for the Captain Marvel movie, but my impression was that it was a lot more intense in South Korea, given that there have been several celebrity suicides in Korea.

Focus points for sexism occur, unsurprisingly, in situations that are 'traditional'

At the same time, 83.4 percent of all the surveyed Koreans — 88.8 percent of the surveyed women and 70 percent of the surveyed men — said they’ve experienced sexist practices and behaviors while spending time with their families and distant relatives during national holidays.

This, coupled with the admonition to be respectful to the elderly, makes for lots of examples, like this:

The biggest proportion of all participants, 53.3 percent, said they found the common Korean practice of women having to cook and provide food for such holidays, while men usually have no such responsibilities, to be sexist.

Almost 7 percent said that at their family gatherings during national holidays, women are not allowed to share a table with male members of the family during lunch or dinner, and can only eat after the men finish their meal.

Sometimes women are only provided with leftover food, although they’ve cooked the entire meal for the family, the participants said.

But rather than simply being a problem with grandpa and the old uncle, there is also a resistance for younger Korean men to accept feminism, as can be seen with the strong resistance to the #metoo movement.

Park and Kim are not alone. A Realmeter poll last year of more than 1,000 adults found that 76% of men in their 20s and 66% of men in their 30s oppose feminism, while nearly 60% of respondents in their 20s think gender issues are the most serious source of conflict in the country.

One advantage of traditional patterns is that they at least provide a framework for protection. The old tradition of men being women's protectors at least provides a space for women to find their niche. But now...

In her report published last year, researcher Ma said South Korea was in a time of "infinite competition where it is impossible to find a stable job." The older generation of men grew up at a time when women worked in factories, so while many saw women as weaker beings, they understood that women made sacrifices for them, Ma said. "To men in their 20s, women are seen as a competitor to overcome."
The conflict is being exacerbated by the internet, where casual misogyny is being normalized, said Ma.
Ma found that men who learned about feminism online were more likely to be anti-feminist than those who acquired information offline. She was also surprised to discover that higher-income and higher-educated groups were just as likely to hold anti-feminist views as their lower-income and lower-education counterparts.
And while their fathers saw woman as needing protection, Ma found many younger men believe it's women who now hold the power. For them, the #MeToo movement, mandatory military service, and government programs for women's advancement are signs that the playing field is tilting against men.

There is a similar resistance in Japan, but societal norms push for the avoidance of conflict, so, while the problems may be similar, it doesn't seem to be as evident as in Korea. Also, Japan had the advantage of beginning its modernization in two spurts, first Meiji, when the first wave of feminism was roiling Western societies and post WWII, when the dislocations of that war were forcing the West to accept women, after they had taken such a large role on the home front and pushed for more equal representation.

So, you have a lot more open conflict between men and women

Despite its material wealth, South Korea was ranked 118th out of 144 countries last year in the World Economic Forum's measure of equality between the sexes.
The average South Korean woman makes only two-thirds as much as the average man. Several cases have come to light recently in which companies deliberately and systematically discriminated against female job applicants, even though that is illegal. A group of male executives at KB Kookmin Bank, for instance, lowered women's scores and raised men's on a recruitment test to ensure more men were hired. The case wound up in court, but the executives received only suspended sentences; the bank was fined a mere $4,500.
Although young women are better educated on average than their male peers, many of them are pushed out of the workforce after having children, either for lack of good child care or because companies simply will not take them back.
In terms of appearance and behavior, women and men are held to wildly different standards. A news anchor caused a scandal earlier in the year when she chose to read the morning news wearing glasses, rather than contact lenses. Many firms, it subsequently emerged, had an informal ban on female employees wearing glasses. A YouTube star who used her makeup tutorial channel to announce that she was giving up makeup to join the "corset-free" movement, which challenges unrealistic beauty standards, received a torrent of online threats.
Abuse from actual or would-be romantic partners is rife. A survey by the city government in Seoul found that four-fifths of women had experienced controlling behavior, such as boyfriends telling them what to wear or whom they could meet. More than half had suffered unwanted sexual advances and nearly two-fifths outright violence. "Misogyny is still common sense in South Korea," said Yoon-Kim Ji-youngof Konkuk University in Seoul. "People do not accept that women are worth the same as men."

The Kookmin bank example mirrors some things in Japan, notably the medical school entrance exams scandals, so I'm not saying that Japan is miles ahead of Korea.

I think some of my Korean friends might bristle at this suggestion, but the making of the comfort women as a front and center issue in Korean-Japanese relations seems to me draw attention from sexism. This from the wikipedia page is of note.

Throughout modern history, South Korean women have been subjected to military sexual slavery. During World War II, thousands of young Korean women were forced to become "comfort women" for the Japanese Imperial Army. During the Korean War, the United States enlisted more than one million South Korean women into military prostitution. According to the Journal of Korean Studies authors Han and Chu, "military establishments have depended upon and justified the systematic discrimination of women by promoting gendered notions of femininity and masculinity, weakness and strength, conquered and conqueror." Han and Chu believe that military sexual slavery has contributed to the patriarchal ideologies that perpetuate gender inequality in South Korea.
Moreover, these women were victims to both violence and sexualization. In the European Journal of Women's Studies, author Yonson Ahn states soldiers of lower ranks conflicted violence in the form of sexual abuse towards the comfort women as a way to cope with the harsh treatment from higher ranked soldiers and war. To practice power and confirm their masculinity, soldiers had what Ahn terms "Shadow family." These shadow families were pregnant comfort women reliant on the soldiers to provide stability. This idea perpetuated the existing frame of gender inequality present in the typical Korean family of men holding more power with decisions and having to be the head of the family.

Attacking the Japanese (who, one has to admit, have their own issues with the historical record) without considering the practice as something that went from WWII thru to the Korean war serves to push the problem outside of Korean society.

Some may find the above off-putting, but one of the features of South Korean society is that it still retains features of a nation at war. There is compulsory conscription for men and not for women, and it is no surprise to see uniformed soldiers everywhere. I was waiting for my train and a train loaded with M-1 Abrams tanks came thru. When you land at Taegu airport, you are reminded not to take photographs because the airport is also a military installation. Posters and constant video clips on trains and subways reminding people to be on the look out for terrorists. All of the subways are set up to function as shelters in the event of war, and are placed a level or two deeper than comparable subways in other cities. And in each subway, emergency supplies, including water and gas masks are stored in cabinets with instructions. Even though one gets used to it far too quickly, the threat of immediate armed conflict may act like basso ostinato that has the effect of making masculinity always preferable.

To get a bit tech-y, the molka epidemic is such that women tell other women to avoid using public restrooms

Of the 16,201 people arrested between 2012 and 2017 for making illegal recordings, 98% were men; 84% of the 26,000 recorded victims over that period were women.
The country’s president, Moon Jae-in, recently acknowledged that illegal spycam images had become “a part of daily life” and called for tougher penalties for perpetrators.

As a partner to that article, there's this one

In the conservative South, women who appear in such videos will feel deep shame despite being the victims, and face the threat of ostracism and social isolation if the videos become known to those around them.
Nearly 5,500 people were arrested for such offences last year, up 22 per cent on 2016, police data showed - and 97 per cent of them were men.
Ms Park Yu-na, 31, told AFP she now routinely avoids using public toilets "as much as possible".
"I and other women share this fear that we can fall victim to spycam crimes anytime, anywhere," said the Seongnam resident.
The KCSC task force was set up after President Moon Jae-in acknowledged the spycam issue last year, calling for tougher punishments and saying: "We as a society have failed to fully recognise the trauma and humiliation suffered by those victimised."
Filming or distributing intimate videos without consent can each be punished with up to five years' jail, but analysts say many often end up with only a suspended sentence or a fine.
"There is this tendency where watching illegal sex videos is tolerated as just another form of men's entertainment, compounded with weak punishment," said sociology professor Lee Na-young at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.

I'm not sure if 'the conservative South' refers to the country or the area. My understanding was that conservative areas are not necessarily contiguous, for example I was told that Incheon and Taegu were quite conservative. There is an southeast/southwest divide which stems some say stems from the rival 7th century kingdoms fo Baekje and Silla. Nothing says rivalry like keeping it alive for a millenium and a half.

But as you can see, it is not only the filming, it is the sharing of those films. And while this is a huge problem everywhere, it is exacerbated by a conservative mindset about roles. There are no Slutwalks in Korea.

But sexism is one of those things that crosses the liberal/conservative divide in Korea. And when I talk about sexism, I'm thinking of it as a societal problem that may manifest itself in statements and actions, but is fundamentally much deeper in society, a point difficult to make because one uses symptoms of sexism that seem to be unconnected surface phenomenon to argue for a deeper seated problem.

Other than the molka problem, it may seem like none of this is very tech-y. However, one thing that I think is often missed out with technology is that we tend to view it as something breaking down barriers because it is new where in fact, it can be just as effective in reinforcing divisions and inequality. For example, in the US, it doesn't surprise me that some of the most egregious examples of sexism come from silicon valley companies. That is because they are putting on a face that they are gender and race blind, but fail to examine how the structures that they grow out of reflect embedded sexism and racism. And these become more egregious because women and minorities enter with the idea that these newer fields might be more welcoming, and the larger numbers set a tipping point which gives rise to more intense discrimination that might be held in check in older more traditional industries. Women wanting to go into some all male field know what they are getting into, but are probably blindsided when it happens in a field that doesn't seem to have that.

So how does tech contribute to this in South Korea? The molka phenomenon is one, but as I've noted, the ability to track people in their choices is greatly increased in Korea and it is unrealistic that somehow, this firepower is kept in the hands of the businesses. This guardian article has this

South Korea employed a central tracking app, Corona 100m, that publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 metres of where they are. Surprisingly, a culture that has often rebelliously rejected authoritarianism has embraced intrusive measures.

The last bit is a bit off, I don't know that they have always "rebelliously rejected" authoritarianism. But you get the picture. I didn't have the Korean or the stomach to do a deep dive into what there was in terms of apps and such, but because tech didn't grow with society as it has in the West, I feel it likely that it doesn't have the minimal guardrails that are in the West.

When I said Korea is a lot worse than Japan, I may be seeing a lack of surface conflict and missing out on things. I find Japan an incredibly gendered society, with husbands going out their their buddies and wives going out with their friends. Even at uni in Japan, there is a surprising lack of mixing. In Korea, there seems to be more mixing of the genders based on the groups I saw, but it gives rise to more conflict if I am understanding what I saw correctly. But if my grand theory of Korea, which is that the leaps ahead have made the society susceptible to problems that have been dealt with over a longer period of time, is correct, then we can see the problems of sexism in that light. Some could argue that this seems like I'm dismissing the agency of males in all this. However, I don't think Korean males are worse or better, and I think that if you could run a lab experiment that had another culture go thru the same disjunctions, you might see the same thing.

Comments

[JanieM]

Too sleepy to get through all of it tonight, lj, but wow. This is one of those topics that reminds me to be grateful I was born when and where I was. The context I've lived in hasn't been perfect gender-wise by a very long shot, but my lord it could have been so much worse. This is one of the biggest reasons why I don't get sentimental about the "good old days." And yes, I'm talking about gender and not sexual orientation.

Late. Bedtime.

[CharlesWT]

lj, thanks for another interesting article on Korea.

One of the recurring tropes in Korean drama is a female character passing as male. The character is usually played by an actress so feminine that she couldn't credibly be mistaken even for a flower boy.

[CharlesWT]

...recurring tropes...

Male characters fall in love with them and are greatly troubled with doubts about their sexuality.

[Hartmut]

On the other hand, on the Shakespeare stage all female roles were played by men but women disguising themselves as men are also common in the plays (so, men playing women disguised as men).
How is that handled in Japan with the tradition of professional onnagata actors?

[liberal japonicus]

Neat stuff! I really should start doing Korean dramas, but I found them offputting. A bit chunk of my Japanese learning was Tokyo Love Story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Love_Story

Watched the drama, got the script, read the manga, dreamed of meeting Honami Suzuki. But the pace and number of characters in that drama is so small compared to the current Japanese and Korean ones, so it is much more difficult to track them. In addition, I was immersed in Japanese with no internet. But I should take a look at them.

janie's point about it could be so much worse is right, and there is a subrosa suggestion that it was better back when everyone knew their place, which is not what I think. But I think it's important to evaluate why there is nostalgia and what conditions occurred to have us think of that nostalgically. Being cis-gender white (ish) male means that it takes a big leap of imagination to put myself in other's shoes. But after my time in Korea, I do think that a society can move too quickly. That isn't saying that the problems are meaningless or that we should not want change, but societies, like people, need time and space to change and not granting them that leads to all sorts of problems.

A German teacher I spoke to in Korea who had lived there for quite a while and was married to a Korean man, said that she thought Korean society exhibited PTSD because of their wartime experiences, which I thought was an interesting observation.

Hartmut, your question is another one that is really interesting. The gender fluidity involved with onnagata(there is no question that the men who are acting as women are men and they are considered exemplars of their art) seems to give space for other people to push that envelope. Right now, Matsuko Deluxe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuko_Deluxe
is all over the TV and there are several others like him (his chosen pronoun) and I never saw anything like this in Korea. However, to be gay on Japanese TV, you really have to play up the stereotype and push the drag queen persona, so there is a kind of othering there.

[JanieM]

...but societies, like people, need time and space to change and not granting them that leads to all sorts of problems.

TL;DNR [I mean what follows, not lj's post]:

Meanwhile, granting them that perpetuates all sorts of other problems.

*****

I think I get what you're saying, lj, and in fact have talked with friends and acquaintances about this whole complex of issues endlessly for most of my adult life. Notably, I listen often these days to a couple of younger, straight white cis guys who are at times in nostalgic rebellion, if not against other people having a place in the sun, then at least against being incessantly made the villains of the piece.

This topic is way too big, which is why I have never come close to trying to address it here. But I did want to chime in and point out that if not granting [which deity is it that does the granting, btw? there's no agent in your formulation] societies the time they need to change gracefully causes problems, it's important to remember that granting them the time they need to change perpetuates a different set of problems.

Which, in the absence of the aforementioned deity, tends to consist of the change not happening at all, or not happening for generations. And meanwhile the groups on the short end of the stick are still on the short end of the stick, lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation. People wake up and say hey, this is my only life, I'm not waiting.

The meta problem is that there's no gods-eye view of how to change a "society" with the minimum of pain. As it is, we're all "flawed" (or just real, and human), and someone's likely to get hurt (or stay hurt) no matter what.

I had lunch maybe 25 years ago with a straight white Canadian guy who was a friend from the "essential peacemaking: women and men" workshop world I frequented for a few years. He was moaning rather self-pityingly about how his son wasn't getting some sort of opportunity or other because preference was being given to First Nations people in whatever context it was.

What he said was, "We can't balance three hundred years of injustice on the backs of one generation of young white people" -- meaning his son, whose expectations had been shaped by being in the top dog group, and were now having to be . . . adjusted.

I tend not to think of the thing I want to say until three days later, so three days later what I wished I had said to him was, "But it's okay to balance another three hundred years of injustice on the backs of First Nations people, just to make sure no white people have to adjust too fast?"

Bottom line: I think you're right about the problems, lj, but as I learned when I was involved in campaigns for "gay rights" and SSM, you go to life with the human race you've got, and there's no all-knowing, central-planning deity in charge with the power to make it all go optimally.

[Girl from the North Country]

Another completely fascinating piece, lj.

Nothing says rivalry like keeping it alive for a millenium and a half.

This made me laugh, but is so very true. I couldn't help thinking of the (imperfect) example of the Middle East, where it's not a question of rivalry so much as a land claim based on keeping alive a two millenia old biblical story. (Not trying to threadjack here to ME politics!)

[wj]

societies, like people, need time and space to change and not granting them that leads to all sorts of problems.

The challenge is figuring out how much time is "enough." Because people, in general, dislike change in general. (Kids tolerate it, because it's all they know, or can know. But by their early 20s, most people are comfortable -- at least in their social context. Even if they wish to move within that context.)

As a result, any amount of time to adjust to change will be perceived as "not enough" by many, perhaps by most. A better approach may be to work on ways to help people adjust. Admittedly a nontrivial problem.

[CharlesWT]

"'One daughter is equal to 10 sons,' was the message desperately being promoted by the South Korean government.

It was some two decades ago and gender imbalance was at a high, reaching 116.5 boys for every 100 girls at its peak. The preference for sons goes back centuries in Korean tradition. They were seen to carry on the family line, provide financial support and take care of their parents in old age.

'There was the idea that daughters were not regarded as part of their own family after marriage,' says Ms Park-Cha Okkyung, the executive director of the Korean Women's Associations United.

The government was looking for a solution - and fast."
100 Women: How South Korea stopped its parents aborting girls: For every 100 baby girls born in India, there are 111 baby boys. In China, the ratio is 100 to 115. One other country saw similar rates in 1990, but has since brought its population back into balance. How did South Korea do it?

[liberal japonicus]

Janie, you are absolutely right and it all depends on whose ox gets gored. But I do think that there is too slow and too fast: Finding just right is what makes things so difficult.

One of the (now) worst things about writing something like this is that I want to refer to something else that I read and can never find it. Frex, I read an article about how Scandanavian countries were, at the turn of the century, some of the most unequal on the planet and how they reversed that. Of course, what do I find but:

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-swedish-face-of-inequality

What does inequality look like? In Sweden, rising inequality can be easily detected in data on income distribution. According to the latest available comparable data, no other country has seen a faster increase in inequality since the 1990s.

But income data reveal just part of the story. Over the past few years, a number of policy changes have enabled dramatic inequalities in lifestyles to emerge in Sweden. The result is that the rich lead increasingly different lives. In a society which once was a symbol of equality, the changes are staggering.

Charles, really interesting article, which makes me wonder how Japan was able to avoid this. Japan does have abortion as a quasi legal operation, but I don't believe that they ever had the push to have male children.

[wj]

"'One daughter is equal to 10 sons,' was the message desperately being promoted by the South Korean government.

It was some two decades ago and gender imbalance was at a high, reaching 116.5 boys for every 100 girls at its peak. The preference for sons goes back centuries in Korean tradition. They were seen to carry on the family line, provide financial support and take care of their parents in old age.

As you note in passing, China has had a similar problem. Especially as a result of the One Child Policy. An amazing number of people seem unable to do simple math: if you (and everyone else) doesn't have girl babies, your sons won't have wives and so your family line dies out with him.

[CharlesWT]

"Most Americans are aware of China’s one-child policy, the population-control rule that from 1979 to 2013 sharply limited the number of Chinese births. Less well known outside China is an offshoot campaign currently being run by the government that targets and shames sheng nu (leftover women) for the "crime" of being an unmarried educated professional woman older than 27.

The systematic disparagement and discrimination these women face is the subject of Leftover Women, an affecting new documentary by Israeli filmmakers Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia which had its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week."
'Leftover Women' Documentary Chronicles the Story of China's Attack on Unmarried Professional Women: China's gender imbalance -- 30 million more men than women -- is the reason why being single and older than 27 has become a social crisis.

[nous]

Not much to add, other than that I see these dynamics playing out among my Korean-American students as well (since many of them have spent time in Korean schools while growing up).

Also, regarding inequality in Sweden (and other Nordic countries), there's also the deep cultural value of "jantelagen" to contend with:

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191008-jantelagen-why-swedes-wont-talk-about-wealth

[liberal japonicus]

nous, I'd be interested to know if the Koreans you are seeing are Korean-Americans whose families have relocated, or are Koreans who still have their father living in Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gireogi_appa

[nous]

It's not always clear to me which ones are which. The only ones that I can say with any certainty have a father in Korea are the ones who write about how hard it was to return to Korea for HS and who have had to go through their mandatory service. It's usually clearer with my male students than with my female, since I inevitably end up having conversations about military stuff with them once they find out that is one of my areas of study.

But then I also have students whose parents are here but who were sent to religious schools in Korea to avoid all of the loose behavior of American schools, so...

[Nigel]

Western society is not exactly perfect, either.
I found the numbers in this story on sexual violence quite shocking:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51967295

[CharlesWT]

"Advocates for same-sex marriage in South Korea, and many of its East Asian neighbors, remain mostly on the sidelines of national debate. South Korea’s vibrant online culture, however, offers a forum to challenge views on a range of gender-related issues, from same-sex relationships to the pay gap for women to the definitions of beauty promoted by the country’s huge cosmetic-surgery industry."
These South Korean women went abroad to get married. Then one spoke out at home, and the backlash began.

[JanieM]

In relation to CharlesWT's link -- let's not forget that we're at most a decade or two past that kind of homophobic BS being the norm in public contexts here.

I still have folders stuffed with newspaper clippings from the nineties and onward, in which gay people are referred to as sinful, subhuman, bestial, a threat to the purity (!) of family life, and so on, not to mention the precious notion that SSM will destroy the institution of marriage.

It's especially rich to recall how much of this slosh was being written and said out loud by the priests and bishops of the pedophile protection racket otherwise known as the Catholic church.

Bah.

I've never had any strong faith that what I consider to be our progress won't be undone. It's not like everyone has really gotten on board, it's more like the usual suspects have just concluded that they should quiet down for the time being.

[wj]

I've never had any strong faith that what I consider to be our progress won't be undone. It's not like everyone has really gotten on board, it's more like the usual suspects have just concluded that they should quiet down for the time being.

Changing individuals' views is chancy. But in the long run, what makes a difference is that what people feel free to say in public changes. As a result of which, the next generation grows up with views which are different; at minimum, far less strongly held, and thus more likely to change further.

Views on homosexuality among my generation have changed astonishingly. But not as much as what people casually say on the subject. And the polls reflect both those things. But what will make a long-term difference is today's kids growing up thinking it's no big deal. Here, as in Korea, those who came out first caught a lot of flack. Or worse. But they were the reason that things changed.

Korea sound like it's several decades behind on the subject. But are they in the 50s or the 80s?

[Nigel]

Korea sound like it's several decades behind on the subject. But are they in the 50s or the 80s?

As lj points out, Korean society can move very fast indeed in some ways, while other things don't seem to move. But I don't think either.

In the same way, it's a nation where democracy seems pretty firmly embedded, but at the same time, former dictator Park Chung-hee is regularly polled to be the greatest president South Korea has had.

My impression is that the attempt to draw a direct parallel with us in either period is probably misconceived.

[CharlesWT]

A parallel can be drawn between South Korean presidents and Illinois governors. Many of them end up in prison...

[wj]

My impression is that the attempt to draw a direct parallel with us in either period is probably misconceived.

I was thinking quite narrowly of the single issue of homosexuality. Probably because I hard recently seen this.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-korea-same-sex-marriage-gay-lesbian/2020/03/22/2890df14-61f6-11ea-912d-d98032ec8e25_story.html

[liberal japonicus]

I hesitate to make this a front page post, but I learned a lot about that aspect of Korean society from a colleague at the university who married his partner while I was there and then went to bangkok. To roughly sketch some things out.

Because of the geography of Korea, where you have a huge population concentration of Seoul and less populated areas, you have vast gaps in the ways homosexuality is considered. Because you have a lot of foreigners working in Korea, you have quite a vibrant gay scene in Seoul, but people in the outlying regions living like it was the 50's. Because you have such a strong nationalistic impulse, you have divisions in the groups that support gay rights, with some groups being Korean only. Some of this is unavoidable with the language barrier, organizing volunteers and then having to translate things into English for people who want to participate but don't speak Korean, and a piling up of this, along with arguments over tactics, leads to arguing for a korean only approach. And foreigners can think that what is done in their home countries is the 'right' way, which can cause conflict. So my answer to the question 'Are the in the 50's or the 80's?' is yes, they are...

[Girl from the North Country]

you have quite a vibrant gay scene in Seoul, but people in the outlying regions living like it was the 50's

Forgive me, but sometimes I think that if you substitute "Seoul" in the above phrase with "NY, LA, Chicago" and other large cities, you might have some corresponding situation in the States. And the party affiliation or voting records would tend to support that. But I would say that, wouldn't I, equating anti-homophobia, ease with SSM, feminism etc with the Dems and progressive politics generally.

[liberal japonicus]

That's true, and certainly the rhetoric about 'real Americans' live outside of urban centers is reflective of the tensions. Korea is different because it is one urban center. Also, in the US, you have pockets (often centered around universities) so it's not as evident, while in Korea, that isn't as common.

In the city I was in, the foreigners had their scene and Koreans, from what I understand, confined themselves to membership clubs. This reinforced the image that this was a foreign phenomenon as well as giving rise to the nativist impulse.

[Girl from the North Country]

Thanks lj, for serious reply to snarky comment.

[liberal japonicus]

Actually, I think that the overwhelming weight of London has a similar effect in the UK, not necessarily in terms of gay rights, but the ability for the Tories to make such progress notions like Brexit (hey, remember that? Seems so quaint now!)