South Korea finds itself embroiled in an all-out gender warfare – and it retains getting worse.
The animosity between Korean women and men has reached some extent the place some ladies are outright refusing so far, marry and have youngsters with males – a phenomenon often known as the 4B motion.
As a Korean feminist scholar residing within the U.S., I’ve adopted this gender warfare from afar as I carried out analysis on modern Korean gender politics.
Nonetheless, I additionally grew to become embroiled in it myself after my analysis on Korean masculinity was printed by CNN.
The article described overseas ladies who traveled to Korea after turning into enamored of the concept of relationship Korean males from watching Korean tv dramas. I identified that for the reason that vacationers’ fantasies have been primarily based on fictional characters, a few of them ended up upset with the Korean males they dated in actual life.
The article was about racial politics and the masculine beliefs. However some Korean readers thought that I used to be merely criticizing Korean males for not being romantic and good-looking sufficient. One enraged Korean man commented that I used to be an “ugly feminist.”
However this was tame compared to what ladies residing in South Korea have endured in recent times.
Excessive misogyny and a feminist backlash
Over the previous couple of a long time, there have been flash factors on this gender warfare.
In 2010, Ilbe, a right-wing web site that traffics in misogyny, began attracting customers who peppered the boards with vulgar posts about ladies.
Then in 2015, a web-based extremist feminist group named Megalia arose. Its purpose was to battle again by demeaning Korean males in ways in which mirrored the rhetoric on websites like Ilbe.
A yr later, a person who had professed his hatred of girls murdered a random girl in a public rest room close to a Seoul subway station. He was ultimately sentenced to a long time in jail, however the strains have been rapidly drawn. On one facet have been feminists, who noticed misogyny because the underlying motive. On the opposite facet have been males who claimed that it was merely the remoted actions of a mentally sick man. The 2 teams violently clashed throughout competing protests on the web site of the homicide.
A backdrop of digital intercourse crimes
Nonetheless, none of those occasions have elicited as a lot public controversy because the steep rise in digital intercourse crimes. These are newer types of sexual violence facilitated by know-how: revenge porn; upskirting, which refers to surreptitiously snapping pictures below ladies’s skirts in public; and hidden cameras used to movie ladies having intercourse or undressing.
In 2018, there have been 2,289 reported circumstances of digital intercourse crimes; in 2021, the quantity snowballed to 10,353.
In 2019, there have been two main incidents that concerned digital intercourse crimes.
In a single, various male Ok-pop stars have been indicted for filming and circulating movies of girls in group chatrooms with out their consent.
A couple of months later, Koreans have been shocked to find out about what grew to become often known as the “Nth Room Incident,” throughout which a whole lot of perpetrators – largely males – dedicated digital intercourse crimes on dozens of girls and minors.
They tended to focus on poorer ladies – intercourse staff, or ladies who wished to make a couple of bucks by sharing nameless nude pictures of themselves. The perpetrators both hacked into their social media accounts or approached these ladies and supplied them cash, however requested for his or her private info so they may transmit the funds. As soon as they obtained this info, they blackmailed the ladies by threatening to disclose their intercourse work and their nudes to their family and friends.
Since intercourse work and posting nude photos of your self on-line are unlawful in Korea, the ladies, fearing arrest or being ostracized by family and friends, complied with the perpetrators’ calls for to ship much more compromising photos of themselves. The boys would then swap these photos in chatrooms.
And but a 2019 survey carried out by the Korean authorities discovered that giant swaths of the inhabitants blamed ladies for these intercourse crimes: 52% stated that they believed sexual violence happens as a result of ladies put on revealing garments, whereas 37% thought if ladies skilled sexual assault whereas drunk, they’re partly accountable for his or her victimization.
In different phrases, a big share of the Korean inhabitants believes that feminine sexuality is the issue – not the sexual violence.
Authorities coverage lays the groundwork
Digital intercourse crimes are too widespread to put the blame on the ft of a handful of unhealthy actors.
To me, a part of the issue stems from the lengthy historical past of “gendered citizenship.”
Korean feminist scholar Seungsook Moon has written concerning the methods through which the federal government created one observe for males and one other for girls because the nation sought to modernize within the second half of the twentieth century:
“Males have been mobilized for necessary navy service after which, as conscripts, utilized as staff and researchers within the industrializing financial system. Ladies have been consigned to lesser manufacturing unit jobs, and their roles as members of the trendy nation have been outlined largely when it comes to organic copy and family administration.”
Though these insurance policies are not formally carried out, the underlying attitudes about gender roles stay embedded in Korean life and tradition. Ladies who veer from being moms and housewives expose themselves to private and non-private backlash.
The federal government has created gender quotas in sure industries to attempt to unravel this technique of gendered citizenship.
As an illustration, some authorities jobs have minimal gender quotas for brand new hires, and the federal government encourages the non-public sector to implement comparable insurance policies. In traditionally male-dominant industries, corresponding to building, there are quotas for feminine hires, whereas in traditionally female-dominant industries, corresponding to training, there are male quotas.
In some methods, this has solely made issues worse. Every gender feels as if the opposite is receiving particular therapy as a result of these affirmative motion insurance policies. Resentment festers.
‘The technology that has given up’
At present, the sense of competitors between younger women and men is exacerbated by the hovering value of residing and rampant unemployment.
Known as the “N-Po Technology,” which roughly interprets as “the technology that has given up,” many younger South Koreans don’t suppose they’ll obtain sure milestones that earlier generations took as a right: marriage, having youngsters, discovering a job, proudly owning a house and even friendships.
Though all genders discover themselves discouraged, the act of “giving up” has prompted extra issues for girls. Males see ladies who forgo marriage and having youngsters as egocentric. And after they then attempt to compete towards males for jobs, some males grow to be incensed.
Most of the males who’ve grow to be radicalized commit digital intercourse crimes to take revenge on ladies who, of their view, have deserted their duties.
In the end, the aggressive dynamic created by the Korean authorities’s embrace of gendered citizenship has stoked the virulent gender warfare between Korean women and men, with digital intercourse crimes used as ammunition.
The 4B motion, whereby Korean ladies forgo heterosexual relationship, marriage, and childbirth, represents a radical escalation of the gender warfare by in search of to create a web-based and offline world devoid of males. Moderately than participating in altercations, these ladies are refusing to work together with males, interval.
Digital intercourse crimes are a worldwide drawback
To make certain, digital intercourse crimes are usually not distinctive to Korea.
Once I train my school class on digital intercourse crimes within the U.S., I’m stunned by what number of of my college students admit that they’ve been victims of digital intercourse crimes, or knew of it taking place at their excessive colleges. And on the Nationwide Ladies’s Research Affiliation’s annual convention in 2022, I watched feminist activists and students from all around the world current their findings about digital intercourse crimes again house.
Since every nation has its personal cultural context for the rise in digital intercourse crimes, there isn’t a single answer to resolve the issues. However in South Korea, persevering with to unravel the system of gendered citizenship might be a part of the answer.
Min Joo Lee is a Postdoctoral fellow, Indiana College.
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