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Do Korean censors disproportionately target female singers?

No, not just those shameless hussies that sing about what they’d actually like to do with their love-interests I mean, and/or dance and show some skin to that effect. Because despite some obvious exceptions, I’d wager that Korean censors are generally equal-opportunity prudes.

Rather, I also mean those female singers that promote such harmful ideas as, say, that romance involves more than just sitting around looking pretty, waiting for a guy to notice you. Or that when you’re angry with your partner, you should say so. As whatever the actual rationales given for the banning of their work, be they indirect advertising, mention of alcohol, not wearing seatbelts while driving, or alleged double entendres in completely innocuous English phrases, somehow it seems to happen to women’s songs much more than it does to guys’.

Or maybe I just get that impression because I only ever pay attention to the women’s songs.

So, starting today, and hopefully finishing over the summer break, I’m going to painstakingly go over every banned song and music video from January 1 2011, noting the whos, hows, and whys, then moving on to the next…all the way until December 31. As I finish each month, I’ll write up the results and my analysis here.

I guess the next songs I’ll be looking at will be G-Dragon (지-드래곤) and T.O.P.’s (탑) Knockout and Don’t Go Home then, banned on the 4th and 5th of January respectively (with the latter banned a second time on the 12th!). But before I do, let’s jump ahead to July, when the Youth Protection Commission (청소년보호위원회) of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF; 여성가족부) banned After School’s (애프터수쿨) Funky Man (펑키맨) for its “sexually suggestive” lyrics.

Not just because I’m a big After School fan, or because the recent news that it’s been unbanned is what finally inspired me to do this little project. But also because the muddled way the banned lyrics are being reported on Soompi (and just about everywhere else) clouds the slight girl-power theme of the song as a whole, and in turn possible — but I stress, only possible — alternate reasons for its banning.

Let me explain:

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애프터스쿨 – Funky Man by Nana/나나 and Lizzie/리지; also featuring Kyung-min/경민 of Pre-School Girl

commin oh ma funkyman uh woo 좀더 깊숙히

fallin I I I I I can break U down!

…

날 흔들어봐 빙빙 Swing Ma Boy

날 유혹해봐 Keep it 맘대로

네게 빠져들게

그래 좀 뻔뻔하게

갖고 싶다면 Ring Ring Ring My Bell

느낌이 없어 넌 좀 부족해

못 참아 지루한 건

말해봐 너만의 Slogan

Commin, oh ma funky man, uh woo deeper

Fallin, I I I I I  can break u down!

…

Shake me round and round, Swing ma boy

Try to seduce me, Keep it as you want so that I will fall for you

That’s right, shamelessly

If you want to have me ring, ring, ring my bell

I feel nothing, this isn’t enough

I can’t stand this boredom

Tell me your own slogan

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Originally, I copied and pasted the lyrics from Naver here, which still requires ID despite the unbanning. Realizing I was struggling with the translation because of the essentially arbitrary choice of line breaks made in that though, I decided to reformat them all, to better fit how they’re actually sung. And once I did, then in particular the question of who wants to have whom in line 8 — 갖고 싶다면 — suddenly made sense: if he wants to have her, the singer, then he has to ring ring ring her bell.

Also, if that “ring ring ring my bell”  is just not the random, unrelated Konglish that it first appears, but actually an integral part of the song, then that opens the possibility that some of the other Konglish may be important too. Bearing that in mind, then the “slogan” in the last line for instance, isn’t so much lame as a handy rhyming device for the “건/geon” at the end of the line that precedes it.

But in that case, what exactly does the the “try to seduce me, keep it as you want so that I will fall for you” of line 4 mean? Does it mean that, very very literally, being shamelessly dominated is what is going to ring ring ring her bell, my surprising ultimate reading of the first verse?

You can imagine that it was with some trepidation then, that I turned my attention to the chorus…

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가슴 뛰는 나를 향해

O.K 짜릿짜릿하게

그렇게 오오오 (오오오) 내게 다가와 DON`T STOP

지금 내가 원하는건

O.K 아찔아찔한 Game (어떻게)

오오오 (오오오) 어서 달려와, 소리쳐봐

난난나 Crack Crack Funky Man! 오 baby baby baby shout

난난나 Rock Rock on Funky Man! 오 내게 내게 미쳐봐

오늘밤 너와 단둘이, 너무나 달콤한 story

나만을 위해 춤추는 puppet

My heart is thumping, come to me

OK thrillingly

Like that oh oh oh (oh oh oh), come to me DON’T STOP

What I want now

OK, a dizzy game (how?)

Oh oh oh (oh oh oh), hurry to me and shout

Na-na-na crack crack funky man! Oh baby baby baby shout

Na-na-na rock rock on funky man! Oh, try to be crazy about me me

Tonight, just the two of us

[It'll] be such a sweet story

You are just a dancing puppet for me

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Great — that was the very opposite message in fact, and one which is continued in the the rest of the song too. But first, consider the way the banned lyrics are being described on Soompi:

The controversy was caused over the following lyrics from “Funky Man”:

“Oooh Ooh, a little deeper / shake me around / try and seduce me / for my chest that is pumping / OK make me tingle like that oh oh oh”

What do you think? Are the lyrics explicit?

Now that we’ve covered all of those particular lyrics, then you can see that they’re actually cobbled together from verse 1 and the chorus, whereas Soompi makes them look like a direct quotation of just two lines*. Why this difference is important, is because already they’re clearly not the only “sexually suggestive” lyrics throughout the song, which raises the question of why only those ones above were singled out by MOGEF. Let alone why this song was banned when others with equally or even more explicit lyrics weren’t.

Could the censors at MOGEF, perchance, have had different, unspoken motivations? Were they, in fact, just annoyed at how “You are just a dancing puppet for me” belittled men, and so banned it using the sexually suggestive lyrics as an excuse? Or alternatively, were they perhaps a little unsettled by what turns out to be a song not about a woman who wants to be dominated, but rather one very much on top?

Alas, all that is mere speculation at this stage, and arguably reading far too much into it — indeed, there’s been at least one occasion when MOGEF was actually quite explicit about banning a song for belittling men. Also, how much of an alpha girl does the woman in this song really come across as? Not just because of that first verse, but also because, whatever the song, being assertive and confident doesn’t necessarily mean that the woman demands that the guy come to her. Rather, shouldn’t she really be going after him herself?

*I translated “OK 짜릿짜릿하게” as “Ok, thrillingly”, rather than “OK make me tingle like that”, as quoted at Soompi. But I can’t tell if it’s an adverb or a causative, so either is possible.

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commin oh ma funkyman uh woo 좀더 깊숙히

fallin I I I I I can break U down!

…

날 바라보면 쿵 쿵 like a boom

넌 두근두근 쿵 쿵 feel so good

내게 말걸어봐

그래 좀 당당하게

날 원한다면 몸을 움직여

다른 남자는 모두 숨죽여

못참아 답답한건

시작해 너만의 Slogan

Commin, oh ma funky man, uh woo deeper

Fallin, I I I I I  can break u down!

…

If you watch me your heart will pound like a boom

You throb and beat, boom boom feel so good

Try to talk to me,

Yes, like that, confident and commanding

If you want me move your body

Other men hold their breaths

I can’t stand it, this frustration

Start, your own slogan

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Finally, there’s the chorus, the first two lines of the first verse, the third verse, then the first two lines of the first verse again. To make it easier to follow along, I’ll put them all together:

commin oh ma funkyman uh woo 좀더 깊숙히

fallin I I I I I can break U down!

…

가슴 뛰는 나를 향해

O.K 짜릿짜릿하게

그렇게 오오오 (오오오) 내게 다가와 DON`T STOP

지금 내가 원하는건

O.K 아찔아찔한 Game (어떻게)

오오오 (오오오) 어서 달려와, 소리쳐봐

난난나 Crack Crack Funky Man! 오 baby baby baby shout

난난나 Rock Rock on Funky Man! 오 내게 내게 미쳐봐

오늘밤 너와 단둘이, 너무나 달콤한 story

나만을 위해 춤추는 puppet

말해봐 boy

모든걸 보여줘

서둘러 boy

이밤이 끝나기전에

매일 꿈같은 이야기

해주고픈 이맘 Crazy

오 가져봐

오 느껴봐

commin oh ma funkyman uh woo 좀더 깊숙히

fallin I I I I I can break U down!

Commin, oh ma funky man, uh woo deeper

Fallin, I I I I I  can break u down!

…

My heart is thumping, come to me

OK thrillingly

Like that oh oh oh (oh oh oh), come to me DON’T STOP

What I want now

OK, a dizzy game (how?)

Oh oh oh (oh oh oh), hurry to me and shout

Na-na-na crack crack funky man! Oh baby baby baby shout

Na-na-na rock rock on funky man! Oh, try to be crazy about me me

Tonight, just the two of us

[It'll] be such a sweet story

You are just a dancing puppet for me

…

Try to speak boy

Show me everything

Hurry boy

Before this night ends

Everyday, a story like a dream

This heart which wants to do [that] is crazy

Oh, try to have [me]

Oh, try to feel [me?]

…

Commin, oh ma funky man, uh woo deeper

Fallin, I I I I I  can break u down!

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Did anyone else guess that the song’s actually about cheerleaders? No, me neither. And seeing as how management company Pledis Entertainment also claimed that there’s nothing sexual in the lyrics at all, then I’m not going to give much credence to that!

What I do take away from the song though, is a lack of substance and logic to the official reasons for its banning, which at least opens the possibility that the official reasons are not the real ones. And while mere possibilities are not evidence of course, if the biggest gaps between official denunciations of songs and their reality consistently occur in those about assertive females (sexually or otherwise), then, well, maybe that’s something.

Yes, I realize that that’s a little subjective, so I welcome alternative suggestions for judging this sort of thing. But either way, there’ll be far too many songs to cover to do much analysis. Instead, my aim is that all of the evidence I’ll present over the next few months will enable you to decide for yourselves.

Honestly though, as I type this I’m no longer so sure that the double-standards are quite as big as many people assume, not least myself. What do you think?

(Sources: left, right)

See Busan Haps for the full article. It was prompted by Yoo In-na (유인나) and then Kim Sa-rang (김사랑; left) endorsing Gillette razors last year, when suddenly a lot of celebrities seemed to be endorsing products not normally associated with their sex.

Granted, women have been used to sell things to men for as long as advertisements have existed. And as for using Hyun Bin (현빈; right) to advertise a tea-drink that supposedly gives you a “V-line”, that’s just common sense: not only will he appeal to women, but so too might some men be encouraged to think about their own, hitherto exclusively feminine V-lines, thereby creating a whole new market.

But still: I’d wager that there has indeed been a great deal of gender-bending in the Korean advertising industry in the last couple of years. For instance, I’ve definitely never heard of a guy advertising bras before, no matter how dishy I’m assured this one (So Ji-sub; 소지섭) happens to be:

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Was he chosen just because he’s a pretty face? Or was the reasoning much more subtle than that? I can’t say in this case. But I do know that celebrities have a much greater effect on our consumption choices than we all like to think. Please read the article for more on how and why…

For some hints, here is the interview with Fame Junkies author Jake Halpern that I refer to in it. If for some reason that the video below doesn’t immediately take you to it though (it’s at 34:30), then please click here instead:

Finally, if you’ve read this far, then I heartily recommend watching Starsuckers in its entirety. For me, it was especially what the narrator says at 45:45 that sold me on it, and which I encourage you all to refer to the next time someone accuses you of reading too much into anything you see in the media:

p.s. Sorry for sounding so mercenary, but please let me remind everyone that any donations for my writing, however small, are very much appreciated. Unfortunately though, I haven’t actually received any since January 21(!), and I don’t get paid for my Busan Haps articles!^^

(Sources: left, right; edited from originals)

Whenever someone strips for the sake of drawing attention to some cause, usually my instant, gut reaction is to dismiss it as a crass stunt. Unless it’s for Slutwalk or FEMEN, then I’m just too suspicious of their real motives, especially if they’re not already famous.

That’s why I didn’t cover this woman back in January, who wrote a message of support for jailed Naneum Ggomsuda (나는 꼼수다) podcaster Chung Bong-ju (정봉주) across her breasts; as while she was anonymous herself (ish), other men and women that followed her example certainly weren’t. Although, in hindsight, only a handful of pictures would actually be sent in, despite an audience of millions, and I overlooked that one of the men was already semi-famous as Chung Bong-ju’s photographer, at the time the podcasters’ call for more bikini shots just seemed like an invitation for a repeat of 2006 and 2010, when women vied with each other to become famous by wearing the most revealing Red Devil costumes.

But then Nancy Lang (낸시 랭) paraded around Seoul in a bikini two days before the April elections, which made me sit very uncomfortably in my seat. Because after lauding her as a “pin-up grrrl” back in November, I couldn’t be quite so dismissive this time, even though her street performance was surely just as crass, and its connection to its ostensible cause — encouraging people to vote — tenous at best. Yet other than a long history of doing similar such performances, how was she really any different from those Naneun Ggomsuda supporters that wrote messages on themselves back in January, and for whom she’d even expressed her support? How about all the other similarly-themed protests and/or pledges over the past few months too, including Kwak Hyun-hwa’s (곽현화) above?

(Sources: left, right)

So, wanting to learn more about the efficacy of such protests, and particularly how useful — or possibly counterproductive — they are in a feminist sense, I realized that “Bikini Girl” deserved a second look. Or, more specifically, what her breasts ultimately raised. For as many of you will already be well aware, the reactions of the podcasters to them, and especially their encouragement of more such pictures, was soon critiqued by many on both the Left and the Right…which in turn led to counter-critiques of those critiques, then the Right chastising the Left for not critiquing the podcasters more, and so on — it was all very confusing. What was necessary was a chronology of events, which indeed I provide below.

But think about it: when breasts become not so much a mere body part as a titillating device for political parties and media allies to score points against each other, then to put it mildly you can’t trust just any one source’s interpretation and depiction of events, and especially not just rely on those that happen to be in English. Which is just common sense, but it deserves reiterating (and for another good illustration of partisan reporting, make sure to see the Korean media’s reaction to netizen attacks on newly-elected Philippine-born Jasmine Lee). So, the other posts in what must inevitably become this series will be translations of some Korean ones, starting with this, then this, this, this, this, and/or any more I can find (and/or readers recommend).

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Still further complicating matters however, events have coincided with a potential emerging “~녀/girl” meme, in which a series of incidents involving (mostly) young women have left a host of misogynistic netizen reactions in their wake. In particular, for me personally it was this recent incident on a bus, in which a woman in her twenties — out of many angry passengers — was unfairly singled out for criticism, that signaled that something far more pernicious than simple netizen ranting was afoot, and that the backlash against changing gender-relations in Korea that led to the disparaging “beanpaste girl” (dwenjang nyeo; 된장녀) term in the mid-2000s was still very much around.

Even if, ultimately, there are no real connections, it would be strange to analyze bikini and nude protests — some of which arguably very much challenged prevailing conceptions of  “appropriate” displays of sexuality and expressions of sexual subjectivity — without also considering that a potential backlash against changing gender-relations is also occurring. Hence expect more translations about the latter also.

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On top of that, as if to taunt me, over the last 2 weeks Uniqlo Korea happened to have a “Women’s Freedom Event“, used to sell their “BraTop”. By this stage thoroughly sick of breasts (okay, not really; but I’m sure you can appreciate the sentiment), this choice of language instantly raised some alarm bells, as it reminded me of the following:

…some advertisers, aware of the objections of the feminist movement to traditional images of women in ads, have incorporated the criticism into their ads, many of which now present an alternative stereotype of the cool, professional, liberated women…Some agencies trying to accommodate new attitudes in their campaigns, often miss the point and equate ‘liberation’ with a type of aggressive sexuality and very unliberated coy sexiness (G. Dyer, Advertising as Communication, 1982, pp. 185-86; quoted in D. Strinati, An Introduction of Theories of Popular Culture, 1995, pp. 187-88)

Or indeed “freedom” rather than “liberation”. And, technically speaking, Uniqlo is simply appropriating the word in order to simply sell more clothes. But even if I have always had a fondness for the company, it did interview some genuinely cool women as part of its campaign, and, recalling the line of inquiry that started this 3-week(!) post, provides a healthy reminder to myself to: a) reconsider some of my prejudices and gut reactions to things; and b) not read too much into things.

And on that note, let me apologize for how convoluted and wooly some of my own understanding and explanations of pin-up grrrls have been in the past, and very briefly give some clarifications and further observations on those before presenting the chronology. Not because they’re the final word by any means, but more because, hopefully, they’re good things to bear in mind as you consider the events of the past few months:

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• Being a sex object doesn’t necessarily preclude one from also being a sexual subject. They are not mutually exclusive.

• However, expressions of sexual subjectivity remain a big taboo in Korea. Or in other words, we can have a 25 year-old’s S-line quite literally highlighted for a heterosexual male gaze, but heaven forbid she admit to having sexual feelings and experience herself. Certainly, this does apply to male celebrities too, but I’d argue to a much lesser extent. In turn, while this double-standard is present in other countries, it’s not difficult to think of female celebrities that thrive on challenging such taboos, whereas admissions like Lee Hyori’s seem to be few and far between among their Korean counterparts (although I’d be very happy to be proven wrong).

• While pictures (etc.) of sexually-attractive women are often framed as being exclusively for a heterosexual male gaze, there is overwhelming evidence (see Maria Buszek’s Pin-Up Grrrls, or this shorter essay) that heterosexual women can be just as if not more interested in them, finding the women — rightly or wrongly — to be confident, sexy role models. A good case in point is Girls’ Generation, who surprised many (including myself) with their huge female fan base in Japan, and who in hindsight may have many more female fans in Korea than is reported too. If that does turn out to be the case, then why the media stresses girl-groups’ “ajosshi” or “samcheon” fandom instead is an interesting topic for further investigation, and I’d speculate that it’s a side-effect of entertainment companies’ prerogative to frame that fandom as platonic (source, right).

• Nobody deserves criticism for financially benefiting from their sexual attractiveness. It is basic human nature, and applies equally whether one is a public or private figure. Moreover, while I can certainly respect those ballsy celebrities who are honest about doing so, nobody ever needs my approval for what they wear, and can give any reason they like — or indeed no reason — for their choices.

• Having said that, using self-sexualization to advance a cause is a double-edged sword, and can easily end up more distracting the intended audience than anything else. Which sounds facetious; but as we’ll see, Bikini Girl proves to be a good case in point.

• Nevertheless, it is hypocritical to criticize politically-motivated sexualization without also criticizing commercially-motivated sexualization, and betrays a political agenda. Indeed, given the pervasiveness of the latter, using skin to get attention is an obvious tool, so it’s strange that we don’t see people stripping for a cause more often in Korea.

Finally, the chronology. Sorry that the Bikini Girl protest is actually the only one that I cover in it, albeit interspersed with all the “~녀” incidents, but another purpose in all the coming translations is getting on top of all the (far less well-documented) other ones, and I’ll either update this chronology or produce a new separate one once I do:

December 26:

— Chung Bong-ju jailed (Korea Realtime)

January 20:

— “Bikini Girl” posts photo, which gains much wider public attention over the next week (DKBNews; translation via Korea Bang)

January 21, 27:

— Naneun Ggomsudua podcasters Kim Young-min and Choo Chin-woo (주진우) encourage (and receive) more bikini photos (Korea Times)

January 28:

— The Crucible/Dogani (도기나) author Gong Ji-young (공지영) demands apology and calls for the hosts to retract those statements (Korea Times):

“I’ve written a novel to call for heavier punishments for child molesters in the Republic of Korea, which is a world of male chauvinism. This is a country where those sexually assaulting a female schoolmate are released with suspended jail terms because they were drunk, the girl was insufficiently dressed, or she was deemed a slut. This is a country where 70 percent of men have bought sex, so it is natural that people’s perspective on women’s bodies is political,” she said.

— See the Korea Herald (here and here) and Modern Korean Literature in Translation for a discussion of this reaction. In the latter, author Charles Montgomery argues that “immediately [going] to ‘child molestation’ and ‘assault’ in her argument against what is essentially a bikini shot” is too much of a jump, and that with her blanket statement of opposition to them, “Gong is doing a different version of what the GNP has tried to do to her – shutting down a clever method of getting publicity.”

February 1 (source, right):

— “Nude Male Campaign Appears After Bikini Girl Protest Criticized” (Daum; translation via Korea Bang):

Nude male photos in support of the imprisoned ex-MP Jung Bong-ju from the campaigning group ‘Jung Bong-ju and Future Power’ appeared on the web today. This was in response to accusations against the bikini protest as female sexual harassment.

Choi Young-min, a professional photographer who worked closely with the ex-MP was equally famous among his followers.

Painting the message ‘I’m dead serious’ and ‘Give back my model’ on his body was to remind the viewer of his support for the ex-MP.

In his interview with Money Today, Choi argued that “the female bikini campaign to publicize Jung’s case was seen as trivializing the campaign by ‘using’ the female body. I wanted to counter those criticisms by using male nudity.”

February 5:

— Naneun Ggomsudua podcasters refuse to apologize,  head host Kim Ou-joon (김어준) arguing “that their comments were not sexual harassment, nor were they intended to be” (Korea Times):

Kim said that in order for the comments to be sexually harassing, inequality of power must exist.

“The woman who uploaded the picture must feel like she would be disadvantaged if she said she was sexually humiliated. However, the woman did not feel that way and we don’t have the power to suppress her from saying it. Therefore, sexual harassment did not take place,” he said.

Kim made it clear that they would not retract or regret the comments. “The right to express a political opinion using one’s body should be recognized,” he said.

— But note that The Korea Joongang Daily provides a slightly different, more positive translation of the above (surprisingly, considering it is a conservative newspaper):

“We didn’t have any intention of sexual harassment and she [the female protestor in bikini] didn’t feel in that way,” Kim said. “She has the right to express political issues and her rights should be respected. No one can limit that right because he or she feels uncomfortable.

“It’s true that I was impressed by the biological perfection [of the woman] at first, but at the same time, I was also impressed as a political comrade by this new kind of protest,” Kim said.

— See Korea Law Today for an analysis, where author Nathan McMurray (quite presciently) noted:

I know the whole modus operandi of the creeps is to be irreverent and provocative. But irreverence is only useful when it furthers, rather than hinders, the show’s goals. I am curious if these recent events will have any impact on the upcoming presidential election, where the conservative candidate will likely be a woman (Park Kun-hye, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who I briefly mentioned here). Plus, this stuff is just not funny. If you insist on “working blue,” please make me laugh.

— Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, at best the controversy created distracted people from more important issues, whereas at worst it presaged deep divisions in the Left’s support for them, well before years-old misogynistic comments of one of them, Kim Yong-min (김용민) emerged in April.

(Source)

— On the other hand, it’s important not to judge Kim Ou-joon’s above defense in light of those comments either, or the efficacy of Bikini Girl’s and other protests. That would just be an ad-hominem attack and guilt by association respectively.

February 6:

— Three “of the nation’s liberal online communities – Ssanghwa Tea Cocoa, Souldresser, and Hwajangbal – issued a joint statement on Monday evening that they were disappointed by the reckless remarks of the liberal hosts regarding women (Korea Joongang Daily; see the full [Korean] statement here):

“Their remark related to nosebleeds means they see women with typical male-centric views, considering women as mere tools for sexual entertainment to cheer up men’s political activities,” the joint statement said. “They also fueled controversies once again saying ‘impressed by biological perfection,’ implying that its natural to view women as sexual objects.”

“The show’s hosts should realize their show is no longer a B-level alternative broadcast and has grown into a political representative if they want to become real liberals,” the statement said.

The Web site for Chung’s fan club, called Chung Bong-ju and Future Powers, was filled with posts criticizing the joint statement…

March 1

— “Swearing Woman” slapping man on Seoul subway video goes viral (Korea Bang)

March 9:

— “Hot Soup Lady” proves not to be at fault (Korea Bang).

March 19:

— “And then there was Bundang Line Smoking Girl” (The Marmot’s Hole). See especially this, this, and this commentary on that, linked to earlier, and especially this prescient one from 2010 made at Scribblings of the Metropolitician (via Gusts of Popular Feeling):

I’ve also noticed the trend of collective, public humiliation of Korean Girls Behaving Badly. That’s not to say that the women involved are innocent or that men are let off scot-free. But you definitely don’t see the same reaction when Korean men “act out of line.” There might be public criticism, to be sure, but nothing like the witch-hunts and publicity we’ve seen in the case of women….

March 21:

 — New subway swearing “Cigarette Lady” video goes viral (Korea Bang)

March 27:

— “Beer Girl” smokes on subway, pours beer on pensioner (Korea Bang)

March 30:

— “Soju Girl” debuts, same girl as “Beer Girl”? (Korea Bang)

April 6:

— Kim Yong-min, by this stage a candidate for the main opposition Democratic United Party candidate in the northern Seoul constituency of Nowon-A, was revealed to have made vulgar and misogynistic comments when he appeared on an Internet broadcast in 2004 and 2005 (The Korea Herald):

Some of his recently revealed remarks include: “If all escalators and elevators at the City Hall metro station are dismantled, (conservative) old men and women will not be able to gather around the City Hall to hold demonstrations” and “If we take all U.S. soldiers in Korea hostage and run an armored vehicle over them one by one, Bush cannot help but step down”; and “Let’s release (serial killer) Yu Yeong-cheol and rape and kill (Condoleezza) Rice and kill Rumsfeld and Bush.

The ruling Saenuri Party, women’s rights groups and even liberal figures have piled pressure on the DUP leadership to withdraw his candidacy…

— As readers will be well aware, the DUP decided to keep him, and indeed his popularity before news of these comments emerged should not be underestimated. But with the benefit of hindsight however, this decision is widely considered to have cost the DUP the election (The Korea Herald; see this [small] poll at Korea Law Today also):

…The opposition party should have withdrawn his nomination for damage control, but it did not.

The failure to act decisively against the podcaster turned moderates and swing voters against the opposition party, undoubtedly making it possible for the ruling party to win in many closely contested districts.

If it had not been for the podcaster’s nomination, the main opposition party could have won a majority of electoral districts, if not alone, in alliance with the small United Progressive Party. Instead, the DUP won 127 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, and the United Progressive Party took 13. On the other hand, the ruling Saenuri won 152 under the leadership of Rep. Park Geun-hye.

April 9:

— “Girl in bikini uses pussy to encourage voters” (Korea Bang)

April 18:

—  “Bus Girl” demands driver apologize on knees” (Korea Bang; also source, right):

As the photo went viral, other articles surfaced explaining the what presumably really happened. One such article stated that with passengers getting frustrated and the driver showing insincerity towards the situation, he was asked to get down on his knees. Another blog post claims that as the bus finally arrived at the bus terminal, the ground staff showed indifference to the passengers’ inconvenience, to which they suggested the staff get down on their knees. Refusing, the bus driver did instead. The latest “Ladygate” incident shows how just one photo can be subject to open interpretation, and how netizen opinions in Korea, no matter how far-fetched and ridiculous they may seem, are not taken lightly by news outlets – having the power to change entire news stories or even make new ones.

April 27:

— “Woman Crushes High School Girl Between Two Cars, Does Nothing” (Daum; translation via Korea Bang). The blog post translates (generally) disparaging comments from Daum of the stereotypical female driver described below, echoed by (English-speaking) commenters on the post itself:

Note: Mrs. Kim is a name frequently given to women drivers who hog the road and don’t know how to drive. perceived as a rich house wife who does nothing. Kind of like a trophy wife (but not necessarily pretty). The driver in the video is most likely NOT actually named Mrs. Kim.

— “Poo Girl” does poo on Seoul metro, netizens forgiving (Korea Bang). As The Korea Times explains:

The “poo-poo girl on the subway” incident, which created the latest online buzz, was later found that the woman was mentally unstable.

This case and several others showed Internet users are sometimes quick to harshly criticize and make comments about a situation without learning the exact details or hearing the full story….

Accordingly, the comments selected by the Korea Times do give the impression that the “~녀” meme may well be at an end. But if so, then I think something similar will soon take its place.

In the meantime, apologies for the long wait on this post, and expect the first of those translations next week soon (possibly with a Korean Gender Reader in between)!

(Source: Unknown)

If you’ve been following my The Gender Politics of Smoking in South Korea series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Newsflash, Part 4, Korea’s Hidden Smokers), you’ll know that there’s a huge stigma against women smoking here. This leads to chronic under-reporting by female smokers, which in turn leads to the government and media regularly giving female smoking rates as low as 2-4%. In reality though, best estimates put the rate amongst young women at roughly 20%, pointing to a looming health crisis.

Even if the coming presidential election brings more enlightened officials to the Ministry of Health and Welfare (보건복지부) however, which has previously overwhelmingly focused on — and been accused of exaggerating — reductions in the male smoking rate, there’ll still remain the problem of finding out how many young Korean women actually smoke.

Or will there? With my thanks, let me pass on a reader’s partial solution:

My coworker, the assistant haksaengbu (학생부) at my high school, made a list of students caught smoking. This is at a small-town girls high school, with 330 students age 15-18 in western years. So far this year (since 2 March) 14% of the students have been caught smoking, with 9.5% of the academic (moongwha; 문과) students caught and 25% of the vocational (sanggwha; 상과) students caught.

I would think that 14% would be the absolute minimum possible average in Korea, considering that we’re in a fairly conservative area and teachers can still punish students (though it’s pretty inconsistent and haphazard). Considering that those are only the ones who’ve been caught and there’s almost nothing in the way of lunchtime and after-school supervision, I’d guess that the amount who smoke on a daily basis is 50% higher and the ones who’ve tried it on occasion is double that.

In any event, if you wanted some incontrovertible statistics about teenage girls smoking in rural Korea based on a sample size in the hundreds there you go!

Later, they added:

If you’d like the breakdown it was 21 out of 226 moonghwa students and 26 out of 106 sangwha students. I believe a couple of the sangwha students have dropped out/gone awol/transferred.

What do you think? How does this compare to readers’ own schools?

(Sources: left, right)

Apologies for the irregular posting everyone — I’ve been really busy for the last month or so, and to top it all off I’m recovering from a bad flu as I type this too. But fortunately the end of the semester is close, and I’m eager to get stuck into the two blog series I plan to devote myself to this summer.

One is looking at the evidence for double-standards in Korean censorship, while this one is about examining the public and media’s policing of — and consequent narratives about — “appropriate” displays of nudity and sexual subjectivity, set against a recent potential backlash against changing gender relations. In hindsight just two different elements of the same investigation, the former focuses on K-pop in 2011 and this one on political protests in 2012.

As you’ll recall from Part 1 though, one problem with looking at anything explicitly political is that partisan reporting gets in the way, which means we need to consider as many sources as possible to be objective, and especially not just rely on English-language sources. So, let me start that by presenting my translation of a post by a blogger known as “비춤” (or on Twitter as @RainyDance01), which was originally posted on his or her blog Rainy Dance, then later reposted at Mediaus. About the photo on the right (source) of comedian turned model, singer, and actress Kwak Hyun-hwa (see Part 1 for the details), as you’ll see I think the blogger’s heart is in the right place, but unfortunately some of their reasoning dodgy at best, and evidence seemingly pulled out of thin air:

곽현화식 투표독려? 누드가 일상이 되면 식상하다  / Does Kwak Hyun-hwa’s Style Promote Voting? When Nudity Becomes Routine, it Becomes Boring

10 April 2012

국회의원 총선거를 코앞에 두고 투표율을 올리고자 수많은 유명인들이 투표 독려에 나서고 있습니다. 소설가 이외수씨는 투표율 70%가 넘으면 머리카락을 싹둑 자르겠다고 밝혔고, 안철수씨 또한 70%를 넘으면 미니스커트를 입고 율동에 노래를 부르겠다고 밝혔지요. 이렇듯 저마다 자신의 공약을 내세워 투표독려에 나서고 있습니다. 이들의 공약은 대중에게 소소한 재미와 더불어 투표참여의 의미를 되새겨주고 있는데요. 거창하진 않지만 자신만의 방식으로 사회적 메시지를 전달하는 유명인들의 모습은 새로운 문화가 되고 있는 느낌입니다.

Just before the general elections, many famous people are doing various things to encourage more people to vote. For example, novelist Lee Wae-soo has pledged to cut his trademark long hair if the voting rate exceeds 70%, while Ahn Cheol-soo has promised to dance wearing a mini-skirt (see below). While these may sound just trivial and fun, they do remind voters about the meaning and importance of voting. Also, while their ultimate impact may not be all that great, they point to a new trend of famous people spreading social messages.

그런데 같은 목표를 지향하더라도 그 방법 탓에 오히려 대중의 반감이 우려되는 경우도 있는데요, 개그우면 곽현화의 경우가 그렇습니다. 곽현화는 투표독려를 위해 자신의 미투데이에 ‘총선거 D-3, 우리가 대한민국의 주인이다! 투표로 보여줍시다’라는 내용이 적힌 종이를 들고 있는 상반신 누드 사진을 올렸습니다. 그 의도야 건설적이지만 이면에는 새로울 것이 없는, 우리의 식상해진 문화 코드가 선명하지요.

However, while they all have the same target, some celebrities’ methods may actually make voters more apathetic. One such case is that of comedian Kwak Hyun-hwa. In her case, she uploaded a photo on her me2day blog in which she is holding a sign in front of her nude upper body. The sign said “It’s 3 days to go before the elections. We are the owners of Korea! Let’s show this by voting!”. But while the intention was constructive, on the other hand this method is hardly original, and shows the paucity of our culture.

자신의 의사를 표현하는 방법에 옳고 그름을 규정하기는 어렵습니다. 하지만 그녀가 지금까지 보여온 행보를 본다면 아름다운 취지보다는 이면의 가십거리가 더욱 부각될 수밖에 없겠지요.  폭소클럽 출연당시 가슴노출이 심한 드레스를 입고 출연해 노출논란의 불을 지핀 이래로, 그녀는 꾸준히 노출의 길을 걸어왔었지요. 섹시화보가 누출되어 세간에 화제가 되기도 했으며, 지나치게 선정적인 앨범 이미지컷으로 눈총을 받기도 했습니다.

It’s difficult to judge what the best or most “correct” way of expressing oneself is. But looking at Kwak Hyun-hwa’s past history up until now, it’s difficult not to conclude that this stunt of hers was more aimed at creating gossip and attention about herself than anything noble. When she was on the comedy Foxclub for example [James — she quit in 2009], she used to create a lot of controversy by wearing a lot of revealing dresses, and since then has continued on a similar path. For instance, she has done a very sexy photoshoot, and received criticism for her provocative and suggestive images for her album.

(James: I’m not judging — and/or defending — Kwak Hyun-hwa in any sense, but just for the record: while she’s certainly done sexy photoshoots, and you can judge her album pictures for yourselves, I think it’s unlikely that she regularly wore a lot of revealing dresses on Foxclub. If she had, then presumably there’d be far more “노출” videos and photos of her on that show available than just those from one short skit back in 2008)

올 초에는 개그맨 동료들과 선정적인 포즈로 찍은 사진이 이슈가 된 바 있는데요. 비난이 잇따르자 이에 대한 반감으로 자신의 미투데이에 바나나를 먹는 야릇한 표정의 사진을 올려 더 큰 역풍을 일으키기도 했지요. 하지만 그녀는 떳떳하게 말합니다. ‘’성적인 감정을 일으켰다고 해서 지탄하는 것은 마녀사냥이다. 의도를 떠나서 개그맨 전체를 싸잡아 욕하는 성급한 일반화의 오류를 범하지 말아 달라’

Earlier this year, some pictures of Kwak Hyun-hwa in pretend sexual poses with some her comedian colleagues became an issue [James — they can be seen here]. In response to the criticism that followed, on her blog she posted pictures of herself with a perverted expression on her face while eating a banana [James — was the author too embarrassed to be more specific?], which led to even more criticism. But in response to that, she boldly replied, “Just because something is arousing doesn’t mean it should be criticized — to do so is nothing but a witchhunt. And whatever the intention(s), don’t make the mistake of making rash generalizations about all comedians.”

(Source)

과연 그녀를 바라보는 냉랭한 시선은 성급한 일반화의 오류일까요. 사실 벗는 것은 여자에만 국한된 것은 아닙니다. 남자도 벗습니다. 초콜릿복근이니 식스팩이니 하며 매력을 뽐내는 남성들도 얼마든지 있지요. 하지만 남성의 매력을 규정하는 잣대에서 ‘벗는 것’의 비중은 상대적으로 크지 않습니다. 지적인 남자, 자상한 남자와 같이 이 시대의 여성이 매력을 느끼는 아이콘은 상대적으로 많은 편이지요. 그래서 벗는 것으로 일관하는 남자는 오히려 역풍을 맞기도 합니다. 여담이지만 한때 1박2일에선 이수근이 숱한 노출을 보이며 빈축을 사기도 했습니다.

Well, is looking at her coldly and making a rash generalization really a mistake here? Of course, it’s not just women that take their clothes off — men do too. To show off their attractiveness, they expose their chocolate abs, their six packs [James - actually, those are the same thing], and so on. But relatively speaking, taking clothes off isn’t as important for men as it is for women; because in this day and age, there are many ways in which women can find their male icons attractive — they can be intellectual or kind. It would be bad if men only took their clothes off. When Lee Su-geun showed too much of his body on an episode of 2 Days & 1 Night for instance, people didn’t like it.

(James…)

반면 여성들에겐 유독 섹시미 혹은 백치미가 강조되지요. 5살 유아부터 70대 할머니까지 섹시하다는 말은 일상어처럼 사용되고 있습니다. 드라마에선 홀로 당당한 일어서는 여성의 이야기는 그다지 성공적이지 못합니다. 여전히 신데렐라의 환상이 더 잘 팔리는 시나리오지요

On the other hand, for women being sexy or being stupid but cute is emphasized. From when they are just girls of 5 to when they are grandmothers in their 70s, the word “sexy” is part of daily life for women. In dramas, the strong, confident woman that succeeds through her own efforts is never a popular story, whereas the Cinderella fantasy is a scenario that always sells well.

이 시대의 남성들은 여성의 매력을 이 한 가지로 국한하고 있는 걸까요, 혹은 여성이 자신 있게 내세울 수 있는 매력은 이 한 가지뿐일까요. 양성평등의 가장 큰 위협은 이렇듯 일방적으로 여성의 섹시함을 강요하는 작금의 문화가 아닐까 싶습니다.

Is this because men of this day and age set limits to women’s sexiness [as just showing off their bodies], or because this is the only sexiness which women can show off confidently? I think this culture of emphasizing just this one side to women’s sexiness is today’s biggest threat to sexual equality.

이 시대의 청년들에게 닮고 싶은 사람을 떠올려보라면, 남성 쪽에선 다양한 매력이 쏟아져 나올 수 있겠지요, 안철수, 안성기, 조국, 손석희, 유재석 등 다양한 분야의 사람을 떠올릴 수 있습니다. 헌데 닮고 싶은 여성상을 물었을 때 우리 사회의 한축을 담당하고 있는 여성을 얼마나 떠올릴 수 있을까요. 그 자리에 섹시아이콘만이 남아 있다면 우리사회가 얼마나 건강하지 못한지를 반증하는 것이겠지요.

(Source)

These days, when teenagers are asked who are their role models, boys mention men who are attractive in many different ways and from many fields of life, such as Ahn Cheol-soo, Ahn Sung-ki, Kuk Cho, Son Seok-hee (above), Yoo Jae-Seok, and so on. In contrast, although there’s many women to choose from, girls just name sexy icons. I think this shows how unhealthy our society is.

(James: Other than their fathers, I don’t believe for a moment that teenage boys mention men in their 50s or older as their role-models, even when they want to impress whoever’s asking)

곽현화는 좋은 취지에서 누드시위를 했습니다. 하지만 그 이면에는 이 땅에서 쉽게 주목받고자 하는 여성의 식상한 방법론이 새삼스럽습니다. 우리 사회의 쓸쓸한 단면이겠지요.

Kwak Hyun-hwa [may have?] had good intentions, but her method was unoriginal and was just a way of getting noticed. This too is a sign of how unhealthy our society is (end).

(Source)

What do you think? Again, I find the blogger’s logic — and especially notions of male and female desire — flawed, but at the very least I am now very interested in finding out more about Kwak Hyun-hwa. Not because I think she has any musical talent though (frankly, I hated Psycho above), nor because I naively think her “nude” photo was anything but completely self-serving. Rather, because:

• She deserves a lot of credit for reinventing herself as a model, singer, and actress after being best known as a slightly chubby (by Korean entertainment standards) comedian.

• Whatever her musical abilities, it was especially brave of her to even attempt to become a solo singer in her late-20s (old age by K-pop standards).

• She’s a maths graduate of Ehwa Women’s University, and has even published a textbook for middle-schoolers (see below), so she’s probably quite smart. And I’m not being facetious when I say that many men and women may not be able to see past her cleavage to realize that (related, make sure to read the classic With Great Cleavage Comes Great Responsibility).

• What solo celebrity’s public actions and statements aren’t motivated by self-interest? Which is not to say that they’re always cold and calculating of course, but still: it seems a strange criteria to dismiss someone as a person for (after all, heaven forbid that someone use their sex-appeal to advance their career), and is simply an ad-hominem method of devaluing that style of getting a political message across.

As for its effectiveness, for its stated purpose of encouraging people to vote that is? Well, determining things like that is what this whole series is about, but in the meantime let me pass on Tom Megginson’s take on a similar recent political campaign by Mexican politicians (my emphasis):

Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan is a little cynical about the use of “boobies” to get attention, but I applaud any effort in which women take back ownership of their bodies by using our primal fascination to deliver messages of solidarity for social change.

(Source)

• And finally, remember when Lee Hyori recently publicly admitted that she has sexual feelings and experience? Judging by the reactions of K-pop fans, that was quite exceptional, and indeed I joined in praising her for it in Part 1. But to take a more detached perspective, that this was news at all is really quite an indictment of the sex-only-for-display-nature of Korean entertainment. For remember that we’re not just talking about a 33 year-old woman here, but one who was also Korea’s number one sex-symbol for much of the 2000s. It simply beggars belief that she has ever had to be coy about her sexual subjectivity.

Why do I mention that? Because despite the attention given it, Lee Hyori’s admission pales in comparison to Kwak Hyun-hwa’s stunts with bananas and her comedian friends. And recall that by my own definition, I shouldn’t have to seek-out pin-up grrrls, but rather they should do their darnedest to make me aware of them. In which case, Kwak Hyun-hwa more than qualifies!

And on that definitive note, what is coming in Part 3? Well, frankly a little disappointed with the blog post I translated, next I’ll try make sure to do something more substantial, namely this newspaper report on reasons for the recent “ladygate” phenomenon; i.e., the emerging backlash I mentioned. Thanks to Robert Koehler for the link.

(Source: unknown)

A long time ago, a Korean friend told me that banks were like a microcosm of all Korean workplaces — almost all the tellers were women, and seemed to do most of the actual work, but made the least money. In contrast, their male supervisors seemed to just sit at the back, occasionally approving a form the tellers would bring to them. But they’d probably be paid twice as much.

I don’t know how fair that portrayal was, and indeed later I befriended a Korean bank teller who didn’t think much of it, who loved her work at an all-female branch. Nevertheless, as the following The Joongang Ilbo report makes clear, the banking industry still has the largest gender pay gap, with women making an average of only 57% of what men make.

Undoubtedly, that is primarily because most of the women in banking, well, are tellers, as one banker explains below. On the other hand, it’s also true there are some deeply sexist attitudes within the industry — e.g., women lack a “competitive edge” — that underlie that gender division. For more on that, see this post on the 2009 commercial by Shinhan Bank above, which has a clear message that men should do the thinking while women should merely look good.

Also, after reading this post, compare my “University Graduates: One Woman Hired for every Four Men” one from November, where many commenters pointed out that the companies examined were most heavy industries, for which such a gender division was to be expected. This report sheds more light on that, including the surprising news that it’s actually the Hyundai Motor Group that gives the highest average salaries to women.

(Source)

7100만원! 여성 연봉 1위 기업은 금융권 아닌 / 71 Million Won! It’s not in banking that women have the highest average salary…

The Joongang Ilbo, May 25 2012

성별임금따져보니 / Let’s find out the sex difference in salaries

대기업 여성 연봉 순위는 남성 랭킹과 확연히 달랐다. 1위는 평균 7100만원을 주는 현대자동차였다. 남성 평균(9000만원)의 79% 선이다. 이 회사 남성 직원 평균 근무 연수가 17.8년으로 여성(12.2년)보다 고참이 많다는 점을 감안하면 사실상 남녀 간에 임금격차가 없는 셈이다. 현대차 허정환 이사는 “자동차 산업의 특성상 힘든 생산라인에는 여성이 거의 없고 대부분 상대적으로 연봉이 높은 사무직에서 근무하다 보니 여성의 평균 임금이 높다”고 설명했다. 현대차에서 일하는 여직원은 모두 2442명으로 이 중 생산·정비직은 184명뿐이다.

The order of companies that pay the highest average salaries to men and women are completely different. For women, Hyundai Motor Group is number one, which pays 71 million won a year. This is only 79% of men’s average of 90 million won, but when their level of seniority is taken into account (women’s average number of years worked is 12.2, men’s 17.8) then they’re not significantly different. Asked about this, CEO Heo Jeong-hwan explained: ” The car industry is unique — women do not have the strength to work on the production line, so most do office work, where they make more money than the men on the floor. Out of 2442 women working at Hyundai, only 184 work on the production line or in maintenance.”

현대차뿐 아니라 현대차그룹 계열사들은 대부분 여성의 급여가 높았다. 기아자동차(6400만원)가 88개 대기업 중 3위, 현대모비스(5700만원)가 6위였다. 삼성전자는 여성이 평균 5350만원(11위), 남성은 8860만원을 받았다. 삼성전자는 여성들이 생산 라인에서 많이 일하고 있다. 이 업체는 생산직 여성 수를 사업보고서에 기재하지 않았다.

It’s not just Hyundai Motor Group, but also in companies affiliated with the Hyundai Group in which women’s average salaries are high. Kia Motors comes in at number 3 of 88 large companies with an average of 64 million won, and Hyundai Mobis number 6 with 57 million won. At Samsung Electronics, number 11, women receive 53.5 million won and men 88.6 million won. Many women work on the production line at Samsung Electronics, although The Joongang Ilbo is unaware of exact numbers.

(Source)

전체 88개 기업의 여성 평균 연봉은 4270만원으로 남성 평균 7002만원의 61%였다. 평균 근무 연수는 남성이 12년, 여성이 7.7년이었다. 대기업 남녀 간 임금 격차에는 이런 근무 기간의 차이 때문에 생긴 부분도 있다.

All together, out of 88 large companies the average women’s wage was 42.7 million won, 61% of the average men’s wage of 70.02 million won. Most of this can be attributed to the difference in the average number of years worked, which is 7.7 years for women and 12 years for men.

성별에 따른 차이는 유통업체가 제일 심했다. 여성 평균 임금(2090만원)이 남성(3191만원)의 43%에 불과했다. 매장에서 상품 진열 같은 시급제 아르바이트를 하는 여성이 많다 보니 생긴 일이다. 최근 들어서는 특히 대형마트나 수퍼마켓에서 아르바이트를 하는 중·장년 여성들이 늘고 있다. 남편은 은퇴하고 자녀들은 청년 취업난에 좀체 일자리를 구하지 못하자 주부들이 생활비를 벌려고 나서는 것이다.

(James — There must be a typo in one of the above figures: 20.9 million won is not 43% of 31.91 million won, but 65%; and this is higher than the 61% mentioned in the last paragraph, even though this paragraph is about the lowest comparative figures. Given that, and the mention of a lot of women working part time, then I’m going to assume that it’s the average women’s salary that is the incorrect one, and that it should be 43% of 31.91 million won, or 13.72 million won)

The highest gender gap was in the sales and distribution industry, with women’s average salary of 13.72 million won being only 43% of men’s 31.91 million. The reason is that most of the women are middle-aged and late middle-aged part-time workers in sales, compelled to work in large supermarkets to make a living because their husbands are retired and their adult children find it difficult to get work.

(Source)

고액 연봉 직종의 대명사인 금융 쪽도 여성과 남성의 차이가 컸다. 평균적으로 여성(4800만원)이 남성(8460만원)의 57%를 받는 데 그쳤다. 남성 연봉 1위인 하나대투증권의 경우 여성 평균 연봉은 6200만원으로 남성의 절반이 채 되지 않았다. 성별 연봉 격차는 8200만원에 달했다. 한국스탠다드차타드은행 또한 남성은 8900만원으로 전체 순위 7위였지만 여성은 그보다 5300만원 적은 3600만원으로 51위에 그쳤다. 외환은행(차이 4500만원)과 삼성화재(4200만원)도 남성과 여성 간에 급여 차이가 많았다. 금융회사들이 남녀 임금 격차 상위를 줄줄이 차지한 것이다.

The largest gender gap is in the finance industry, with women making an average of 57% (48 million won) of what men make (84.6 million won). In the number 1 company for men, Hana Daetoo Securities, women make an average of 62 million won but men make 144 million, more than half as much again [James - That's 43% of the men; maybe that figure got moved to the wrong paragraph?]. At Standard Chartered Korea, 7th best for men, they make 89 million won, but the company is only 51st best for women, who make 53 million (a difference of 36 million). At Korea Exchange Bank, the gender gap is again high at 45 million won, as it is at Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance. Across the board, the gender gap is very high in this industry.

이에 대해 스탠다드차타드은행 홍보실 정한용 부장은 “고액 연봉을 받는 사무직이나 영업직은 주로 남성이고 여성은 대부분 계약직 창구 직원(텔러)이기 때문”이라며 “여성의 근속 연수도 남성보다 짧다는 점 역시 작용했다”고 말했다. 통신업종은 남성에 대한 여성 임금 비율이 72%로 가장 격차가 적었다.
김영민 기자

Standard Chartered Korea PR Head Jeong Han-young explained: “The reason for the difference is because in our company, it is mostly men that are involved in business and commercial operations whereas most of the women are irregular workers, working as tellers.” Also, “the male workers have been working for the company for much longer.”

The smallest gender gap was in the telecommunications industry, with women making on average 72% of the men.

Reporter: Kim Yong-Min

Update — Thank you to Sky Kauweloa, who pointed out on the blog’s Facebook page that The Korea Times produced a similar, short report. Alas, it doesn’t help resolving those typos above, but it does have information about some more companies, and also the nice graphic I’ve added on the right:

(Source: Metro, Busan edition, May 31 2012, p. 11)

One of the great advantages of Erving Goffman’s Gender Advertisements, I tell students in my lectures on gender roles in Korean ads, is that it’s not language-based. Whether the ads are from Korea, Kenya, or Khazakstan, I rhapsodize, it’s all about the pictures, making cross-country and historical comparisons possible.

In reality though, culture and language are still important. The tendency towards positioning men higher than women in ads for instance, implying their superiority (just think of the purpose of thrones), can pale against a seated matriarch’s greater social status. Also, ads may allude to popular books, movies, or songs that a foreign observer is unaware of, and/or the text make a pun about the images that a non-native speaker would struggle to understand.

In short, Korean ads can be far more subtle than they may at first appear to someone like me, let alone less gender-stereotyping.

(Source: unknown)

With that in mind, I decided to quickly re-examine K-Swiss’s “S-liner Polo Shirt” ad with Kang So-ra (강소라), that I’d previously dismissed as just yet another example of the ridiculous poses Korean advertisers put women in to show their S-lines off. After all, however unlikely, maybe she’s done a humorous Walk like an Egyptian dance at some point in her brief career (say, in the popular movie Sunny last year), and was parodying that? Or maybe there was something in the text to explain her pose?

Alas, no. Judging by the TV commercial above, the ridiculous pose and dance were definitely just for K-Swiss. And as for the text, that doesn’t redeem the ad either…although I’d have never guessed it would have taken me, my wife, and two of her friends nearly half an hour to figure that out!

It looked easy enough: “강소라” is Kang So-ra’s name, “언제까지” is “until when”, and “살텐가” is “will live”, as in the more formal form “살거예요”. But “통짜로”? Literally, it’s the adverb “wholly”, but that made no sense. So, with the logic that perhaps 22 year-old Kang So-ra formerly lacked feminine curves then, but now, as per the dictates of Korean consumerism and gender roles,  she’s compelled to show them off at every available opportunity, we decided it meant “통” as in the Hanja character that means a (usually cylindrical) container (i.e. a body), “짜” which can often mean “thing” or “person” (see pages 263 and 374 of the Handbook of Korean Vocabulary respectively!), and “로”, which in this case would mean “as”, or “in the manner of”.

Putting aside what role such exhortations may or many not have in Koreans’ intense body dysphoria for a moment (uniquely in the developed world, Korean women aged between 20-39 are becoming more underweight than obese), we were pretty proud of ourselves for figuring that out. But then my wife’s second friend arrived, who pointed out that “통짜” is actually a sort-of adjective means “fat”, as in “통짜몸메가 있어”. Specifically, after a lot of time arguing about whether it actually more meant “curved” than fat per se (recall what “통” can mean above), it means a fat waist, regardless of how curved the rest of the body is (or not — it can be used to describe me men too).

So there you have it: literally, the appalling “Kang So-ra! Until when —  fat person as — going to live?!”. But suddenly, as I type this, I have renewed doubts: was Kang So-ra considered fat previously? Even if so, surely she is indeed no longer living as a fat person, in the ad? And so on.

So by all means, I admit I may be completely mistaken, and would welcome any alternative translations and explanations of the text. But either way, I doubt it provides a very body-positive message.

Meanwhile, if it’s true that 통짜 bodies lack the shapely breasts and buttocks of an S-line, then perhaps there’s something to the photo of Uee (유이) above that show’s that there’s actually two concepts of the term? In the diagram, it says that men think it refers to the blue whereas women think it refers to the red, but the results seem pretty mixed at the original post on Facebook.

Which do you think it means?

(Source)

When I lived abroad in Korea, I spent a lot of time doing work in cafes. Probably a 100 or more during my 2 years there. As such, I eavesdropped on thousands of conversations. And nearly every one of those conversations was about two topics: complaints re studying English and complaints re losing weight.

(Patricia Park, Korean Bodega, June 15)

Maybe I’m just nostalgic for my bachelor days, but it’s conversations about “specs” (스펙) that I’ve really noticed myself. A Korean term for the criteria used to evaluate a potential spouse on, it’s also my experience that it’s almost exclusively used by women, although that may just be because there’s usually more women than men at my local Starbucks.

Either way, in February Kim Da-ye at the Korea Times argued that looking at marriage this way is a relatively new phenomenon, and that it’s “matchmaking companies that rate spouse seekers by specs [that] have fueled [such] materialism”. And, as if to bolster that point, Donga-Reuters would report on exactly the same phenomenon emerging in China after I’d already begun writing this post.

But as discussed below, matchmakers have been encouraging such pragmatism for decades, so they can hardly be described as driving that change in outlook. Rather, it’s economic factors that are responsible, as Kim later acknowledges in her article:

(Source)

…today’s buzzword “Sampo” generation (삼포세대) …indicates a 30-something who has given up dating, marrying and giving birth because of the lack of financial means…

Contrast the “880,000 won generation”, which generally refers to 20-somethings. Continuing:

….What’s interesting about such preferences for the partner’s economic qualification is that they don’t come from conservative parents or rigid social structure but independent, young individuals….

….The near obsession with fine lifestyle is a contrast to the attitude of the baby boomer generation, many of whom used to say that they can start from a small rented room….

When asked why the younger generation isn’t willing make such a humble start, Lee, a single woman in her mid-30s working at a media firm, said, “Back then, amid fast economic growth, people had hoped that they would be able to climb up the social ladder and afford a bigger place in the future. Nowadays, people feel that if they start in a small room, they will be stuck there for the rest of their lives.”

The high cost of getting married naturally leads to some couples to be heavily indebted after the honeymoon ends. In addition to the Sampo generation, another phrase linked to both the economy and marriage has emerged — “honeymoon poor.”

And Kim — whose article is very informative overall — gives several examples of engaged couples’ fights over money, some of whom ultimately break up. Yet those would not be out of place in popular discourses of marriage in, for example, the 1980s, when women’s magazines were similarly promoting the virtues of arranged ones. Presumably, at the behest of their advertisers:

(Source)

Passage Rites Made Easy [A 1982 Korean book by Ko Chonggi] describes marriage through an arranged meeting as more “rational” behavior than simply falling in love because the candidates for romance and matrimony have already been carefully scrutinized by parents and matchmakers. Korean women’s magazines also emphasize the value of prior screening in choosing a mate, suggesting by the frequency with which they address this topic that their youthful readership is by no means convinced of the merits of matchmade matrimony:

Today, with the trend towards frankness in sexual matters, talk of “arranged meetings” or “matchmade marriage” might sound excessively stale. Even so, in marriage the conditions of both sides enter into things. Matchmade marriage, where you can dispassionately investigate these considerations beforehand, has some advantages that cannot be ignored (“The Secrets of a Successful Arranged Meeting,” Yong Reidi, 3 March 1985: 347).

From pages 89-90 of Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (1996), by Laurel Kendall, the next page sounds a little ironic 18 years later:

The evolution of Korean courtship practices provides one excellent example of how notions of progress, of an enlightened “now” versus a repressive “then”, mask the particular disadvantages for women in new forms of matrimonial negotiations, be they “matchmade” or “for love” — a mask which sometimes slips in angry conversation or social satire. Through courtship and through all of the talk about getting married, notions of ideal “man” and “woman”, “husband” and “wife”, “son-in-law” and “daughter-in-law” are constructed, reinforced, and resisted….

….In Korean popular discourse, the evils of old-fashioned matrimony, in which near-children were forced by the will of their elders to marry total strangers, have been replaced by more enlightened practices. The “old days” are still on the horizon of living memory, but are recalled as from an utterly vanished time. In confessing that he never saw his wife’s face until his wedding night, the writer Cho P’ungyon states [in 1983] with a touch of hyperbole that “Today’s young people would consider this laughable and the faint-hearted might swoon away, but in my day these procedures were considered natural.”

(Source)

The difference being that in 2012, financially-strapped singles can no longer afford to be so dismissive (nor Japanese ones either). Moreover, while they’re not marrying complete strangers perhaps, many Koreans do marry people they’ve only known a few weeks, as discussed in an earlier post. Also, some mild social coercion can indeed be involved, as Gomushin Girl explained:

It’s important to differentiate between different kinds of matchmaking arrangements…lots of Koreans use services that are similar to eHarmony, It’s Just Dinner, and other similar paid and unpaid services. Just like in the US, there’s free and paid computer matching sites, and more expensive and comprehensive personalized dating services. These offer a great deal of flexibility, and allow you to reject partners at many stages of the process – the worst consequence being that the agent in charge of finding you matches will decide you’re too picky, and start sending you “lower quality” matches. You’re free to meet multiple people at once, and they’re basically meant to facilitate dating.

However, 선 (Seon) matches are pretty different. Most of the time the people proposing the arrangement are close family or friends (of your parents), and parties are expected to make up their minds pretty quickly. Delaying too long or changing your mind after the first few dates is strongly frowned upon, and may even cause major social riftts. This means that women especially are pressured to marry people before they’re comfortable with them, and even if they’re not really what they’re looking for. Seon is serious, and you’re expected to commit yourself pretty quickly.

It’s also expected to override existing social relationships. My Korean host mother once called me up to ask if I’d go down to Busan to meet a friend’s son, who was interested in a seon meeting with me. I told her I’d just started dating someone, and her response was essentially, “That’s wonderful! When can you come to Busan?”

(Source)

And on that note, let me leave you with a translation of the image that prompted this post, a poster for last week’s Slutwalk in Seoul. The slogan reads, roughly, “Let’s stop these fantasy gender roles now. Let’s play at being ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, 2012 Slutwalk Korea”; while the specs it mentions, though mostly universal, also have some quintessentially Korean ones:

For the “man” (literally, it says “manliness”):

• 키180이상 Over 180cm in height
• 전문직 A professional
• 대기업정규직 Regular worker at a big company
• 인서울4년제 Went to a 4-year university in Seoul
• 자차소유 Owns a car
• 장남아닐것 Not a first-born son
• 데이트비용 Pays for everything on a date
• 신혼집구입 Buys a home after marriage
• 사회생활잘함 Good social skills
• 성격좋음 Good personality
• 술잘마심 A good drinker
• 정력왕 Good sexual stamina

For the woman (“womanliness”):

• 키170미만 Under 170cm tall
• 몸무게50미만 Under 50 kg
• 가슴C컵이상 A C-cup or over
• 30살이하 30 or under
• 날신한몸매 Thin body
• 작고하얀얼굴 Small and white face
• 화장은기본 Always wears make-up
• 제모는상식 Shaves legs and underarms
• 명품백하나쯤 Have at least one brand-name handbag
• 애교있는성격 Have aegyo
• 시댁을부모처럼 Treats parents-in-law like her own parents
• 섹스경험없음 Be a virgin

Are there any others readers would add? Especially Korean ones?

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

(Sources — left: unknown; right)

See The Asia-Pacific Journal for the article. Covering many of the themes discussed on the blog, and much more besides, expect to see me linking to it for many years to come!

(Source)

…[the character of] Chi-Yong’s mother sees marriage as a way to achieve social advancement and material prosperity, as it was in the Victorian era. These ambitions have come to the forefront in Korea since the 1970s, due to rapid economic development and consequent aspirations to class mobility and consolidation during the last thirty years. This novel [Marriage/결혼 by Kim Su-hyeon, 1993] is a good illustration of how, given the pace of change of change in Korea, everybody has a different point of view on marriage, depending on their gender, class, and generation. The issue of communication across generations has become a serious matter. Generation is an important attribute of identity in Korea, like race in the United States. (My emphases.)

(So-hee Lee, “The Concept of Female Sexuality in Popular Culture” in Under Construction: The gendering of modernity, class, and consumption in the Republic of Korea, ed. by Laurel Kendell, 2002; page 146 of 141-164)

With apologies to So-hee Lee for variously attributing that quote to either her editor, to Hyun-Mee Kim, or to Nancy Abelmann over the years, it still very much applies 10 years later. It’s also why studying and living in Korean society can be so exciting sometimes.

For someone who’s been writing about the place for over 5 years though, it means that many of my posts need updating. Let alone mercifully deleted as reader feedback, further research, and greater use of Korean sources have exposed gaping holes in my knowledge and confident preconceptions. And from a practical standpoint too, links will die, embedded videos will get deleted, and my theme will always highlight recent posts at the expense of older ones, no matter how good they may be after going through my culling process.

With all that in mind, once a month I’ll be highlighting posts from the corresponding month in previous years. Not all of them of course (hey, I’ll still like some material to work with in September 2013 and 2014), and to some there’s no new news to add; I include them just to draw attention to for new and old readers, especially as they’ve since been slightly edited for this post with the benefit of several year’s of hindsight. Others though, I’m adding a great deal of new news and commentary below, as you’ll see.

Please let me know what you think!

2011

• Bust Magazine on “Bagel Girls” (베이글녀)

Alas, not really my own article, but about Grace Duggan’s for Bust Magazine. While I’d often criticized the body-labeling craze in South Korea previously, I didn’t realize just how offensive this particular term was until she pointed it out (source, right):

Sexualizing young women for having childlike features sets off all kinds of alarms, regardless of whether or not they are over 18. The “bagel girl” label does more than infantilize women. It compartmentalizes them by applying two irreconcilable ideals: looking like a baby and a full-grown woman at the same time.

Granted, that may make it sound no more harmful than any other “line.” But, as I explain in a later comment, in the context of how it’s actually used it ends up sounding almost pedophilic:

…there’s nothing wrong with looking young per se.

But consider who the label is applied to: not, say, women in their 30s and 40s and older, for whom – let’s be real – wanting to look younger than they are is understandable (hell, for a 35 year-old guy like me too), but rather it’s women barely on the threshold of adulthood that are being praised for looking like children. And, not to put too fine a point on it, what the FUCK is great about a 21 year-old looking younger than she is? And when her body is simultaneously praised for being developed? That is a seriously flawed ideal to aspire to, and, moreover – as I hint at in the post – it’s no coincidence that it occurs in an environment with strong expectations of childish behavior from women too. Indeed, the end result strongly reminds me of child and teenage female manga characters, with personalities appropriate for their age, but somehow the sex drives and physiological development to act on them of women 10-15 years older.

(Source)

Meanwhile, by coincidence just yesterday I finished the excellent An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality by Jill Fields (2007), which explains how the word “glamour” — where the “gul/글” in Bagel Girl comes from — came to be closely associated with large breasts by Hollywood in the 1930s to 1950s. Something I’d previously chalked up to a Japanese and then Korean mistranslation of the word, see the above pages for more on that, or all of Chapter 3 on brassieres at Google Books here.

• Syndrome (신드롬) by ChoColat (쇼콜라): Lyrics, Translation, and Explanation / Reading The Lolita Effect in Korea, Part 5

If I do say so myself, I’m very proud of the way I describe my feelings when child singers do aegyo:

…cutesy aegyo is bad enough coming from a 21 year-old singer, but simply surreal when you see it done by a 14 year-old.

Yes, surreal, not merely awkward and inexperienced: essentially, you’re watching a child pretending to be an adult pretending to be a child.

Thank you very much.

• Getting an Abortion in Korea

Thanks again to the (necessarily anonymous) reader who wrote about her experiences, and I’ve had dozens of inquires about the Seoul clinic she used since. Please just email me if you ever need to know the details yourself.

(Source)

2010

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

Once someone points out the “head cant” to you, it just can’t be unseen. Usually inoffensive in itself though, and frequently done simply for photographic and stylistic reasons (which I’ve under-acknowledged in the past), it’s the fact that it’s overwhelmingly women it that makes it problematic. Just one of a number of typical poses for women in ads, ultimately it serves to reinforce gender stereotypes.

Probably, that’s why these recent Giordano ads stood out to me: in the example above for instance, Shin Min-a (신민아) is the one in control, staring at the viewer, while So Ji-sub (소지섭) is distracted (it’s usually the guys that are presented as more focused). And, desperately seeking examples of pro-feminist advertisements for a TED presentation I may be giving next month, in which I have to — grrr — conclude with a positive message rather than just criticize, this made me realize that feminists and advertisers don’t necessarily have to be at odds with each other. Just a sense of balance by the latter would be a huge step forward.

• “Want to Sleep With a Foreign Girlfriend?”

Really about “lewd” advertisements, 2 years later (this June) I translated another article about how their numbers had surged 3 times over the previous 12 months. With no apparent sense of irony, just about every news site that reported on that had so many examples themselves that the text was difficult to read.

• Groping in Korea: Just How Bad Is It?

One of my most popular posts, anybody (especially men) who thinks street harassment isn’t a problem should just reflect on the opening cartoon, let alone female readers’ comments about their own negative experiences.

(Source: unknown)

2009

• Korean Sociological Image #19: Gee, Gee, Gee…Using Girls’ Generation to Study Gender Roles in Korean Advertising

A short, harmless commercial for Shinhan Bank at first glance. But, once you take the time to analyze it, it has a clear message that men do the thinking at Shinhan while the women simply look good. Indeed, it’s such a classic example of gender stereotyping that I’m still using it in presentations today.

Here’s the slide I would present after providing that analysis:

But in the next presentation, I’ll be updating it with the recent news that the banking industry still has the largest gender pay gap in Korea, with women making an average of only 57% of what men make.

• No Skin Required: Healthy Images of Couples in the Korean Media

Not that I’m against skin by any means. But these remain very sweet ads!

• Korean Sociological Image #18: Sexualizing Caucasian Women

Again one of my most popular posts, ironically soon after writing it trends in the Korean entertainment and music industries meant that Koreans would replace Caucasians in many of the modelling roles that sustained those Occidentalist stereotypes. Also, in my own (admittedly limited) experience, there’s far fewer Korean male – Western (invariably Caucasian) female pairings in popular culture now, after a spate of them in the years after Misuda first appeared. (There were never very many of the opposite.)

However, of course many of the stereotypes still do remain.

(Sources: left, right)

2008

• Pregnancy, Caesareans and Body Image in Korea

When I read on Yahoo! Korea this week about pregnant Hollywood star’s “D-lines”, for a moment I did try to hold my tongue about seeing the label.

After all, this, for example, is just an advertisement for an event for expecting mothers (albeit one where likely body-shaping products are promoted); these D-line fashion shows were surely perfectly harmless; many of those Hollywood stars were indeed glowing, as was pregnant Moon So-ri (문소리) in Cosmopolitan last year; and finally, yes, I can see the humorous side — it is often applied to extremely obese men.

But although the Western media too promotes pampered celebrity mothers-to-be as ideals to follow, and I can certainly accept that pregnant women overseas may likewise feel under some indirect pressure to watch their weight, that post is about how pregnant Korean women were dieting as early as the late-1990s. One can only shudder at what things are probably like now.

Suddenly, talk of D-lines sounds a lot less funny.

• Resources on Evolving Korean Ideals of Male Beauty

One of my first attempts to grapple with the origins of the kkotminam phenomenon (꽃미남; lit. flower-beauty-man), which culminated in this piece by friend and ANU professor Roald Maliangkay 2 years later.

By coincidence, both of us will be quoted in a related news article to be published next week. Watch this space! (Update: and here it is!)

2007

• Paternity Leave in Korea from Next Year?

And indeed there was. Unfortunately however, attitudes didn’t change with it, so fathers feel compelled by management to either ignore it entirely or to come back to work early, despite it only being 3 days (source right: unknown).

Note though, that the “paternity leave” in the original article I translated was a bit of a misnomer, it really meaning time off for a child’s birth. “Real,” paid paternity leave has been available since 2001 (or possibly 1995), but sources vary on specifics. Sung So-young in the Korean Joongang Daily, for instance, wrote in April 2011 that:

According to Korean law, all employees with a child under the age of 3 are eligible to take a year off to care for their children. Up to 1 million won ($919) in salary is provided monthly.”

But that is contradicted by a slightly later report in the Chosun Ilbo, which states that:

…those on leave can get up to 40 percent of their salary, or a minimum of W500,000 and a maximum of W1 million, and parents can take leave until the child is 6 years old.

And both in turn are contradicted by Lee Hyo-sik’s earlier report in the March 4 2011 Korea Times, which says:

Regardless of income levels, both male and female salaried workers are currently given 500,000 won per month during parental leave. This is expected to go up to one million won next year.

As for the maximum age of the children in order to be eligible, the same article states that it was 6 rather than 3. This is confirmed by an earlier February 2010 article by Kwon Mee-yoo, again in the Korea Times, which stated:

The Ministry of Labor passed a revision on Wednesday to the Act on Equal Employment and Support for Work-Family Reconciliation, or the Employment Equity Act for short, which will expand the range of workers eligible for parental leave. Now parents with preschoolers under six years old can benefit.

The leave allows employees to take a certain number of paid days off from work to care for their children. The parents can also take unpaid leave if they use up all of their paid days. This includes maternity, paternity and adoption leave. Currently, at private firms only workers with children 3 years old or less qualify for the leave.

Surprisingly, parents with adopted children weren’t eligible before this revision, and still, “only those who gave birth to or adopted children after Jan. 1, 2008 [were to be allowed] parental leave,” despite those (then) 2 to 6 year-olds obviously being of age. Which all sounds very tight-fisted, although logical during the worst of the financial crisis.

Kwon Mee-yoo also notes that it was in 2008 that the government increased the age restriction for (only) public servants, allowing them “to take time off for parental purposes if their children were under 6 years old.” I’ll assume that it previously only applied if their children were under 3 years old, like Kwon notes was the case for employees at private firms.

Finally, quibbles over details aside, Sung So-young’s and Lee Hyo-sik’s articles in particular remain excellent discussions of why Korean fathers are forced to avoid taking paternity leave, despite wanting to spend much more time with their kids. Against that though, just like in most other countries there’s still a pervasive attitude that childcare is primarily women’s work, with insidious manifestations in our daily lives.

(Source)

And on that note, have a good weekend, and the Korean Gender Reader post will be up on Sunday!

(Source; edited)

If recent BBC coverage is anything to go by, marriage in South Korea is like a business. It’s also becoming a bit of an explosive topic as social mobility slows down and the traditional image of the male breadwinner becomes eroded by the increasing participation of females in the labour market. Some of the most widely publicised scandals and controversies on the Korean internet seem to have been, in some way or another, due to this intensifying gender friction.

(KoreaBANG; my emphasis)

My apologies for singling out Justin at KoreaBANG, whose post is still excellent overall. And as you’ll soon see, I make mistakes too.

But that comment I’ve highlighted? Frankly, it just infuriated me. Because even though it’s completely wrong, I seem to hear it all the time these days.

In reality, the Korean female workforce participation rate has stagnated at one of the lowest rates in the OECD ever since 1997-98, when women were overwhelmingly targeted for layoffs during the Asian Financial Crisis. Back then, the logic was that wives would be provided for by their husbands, and 20-something daughters by their fathers. And 10 years later, in the latest crisis, to a large extent this logic was reapplied, although on this occasion there was a clearer economic – not just patriarchal – logic in that women formed the bulk of irregular workers (see here, here, and here for much more information).

Or so I’ve often written. But naturally, it was difficult to find definitive statistics on that when I first reported on it three years ago. At that time, my most up to date source was my copy of Working Korea 2007, published by the Korea Labor & Society Institute. Here is my scan of page 19, which has a graph of the male and female workforce participation rate of 1970-2006:

In hindsight, although it does show a big drop in the female rate in 1997-98, it shows an equally large (even slightly larger?) drop in the male rate too. With my apologies, I’m very surprised I didn’t notice that earlier, and, although it does contradict most of the literature I’ve read about the Asian Financial Crisis, and is just from one source too, it still definitely bears further investigation.

That aside, a year later I found a source going up to 2008 (it shows a fall of 50.3% to 50.0% in 2006-2008; see below also). And today, spurred by Justin’s comment, I tried looking again, and found the following at the National Statistics Office’s website:

(Source)

The blue bars represent the economically active female population, in thousands (i.e., the first figure is 10.75 million), the pink line the female workforce participation rate. Although the choice of right scale gives the false visual impression that the rate has changed a great deal, as you can see from the numbers it has remained within a narrow band of 49% to 50.5%, last year’s rate being just lower than that of 2002. Also, clearly a 0.9% drop between 2008 and 2009 isn’t quite as big as I’ve been making out, and again is something that bears further exploration.

But still, one thing is clear: the number — well, percentage — of Korean women working has little changed in the last 15 years, and remains very very low by the standards of other developed countries. So it can not be the cause of increasing gender friction.

The perception that Korean women are making significant inroads into the Korean economy though? That’s entirely possible, and indeed I highly recommend KoreaBANG for much more on that (indeed, especially the remainder of Justin’s post), as well as many posts by Gord Sellar too (source, right).

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

Thanks to the students at Dongseo and Pusan National University for being such great audiences last week, and here is the presentation as promised. Sorry that the animations don’t work in the online version, but there weren’t too many.

For regular readers, unfortunately the slides may make little sense in themselves, but I’m happy to elaborate on any of them if you’re interested. The purpose of the first few, for instance, is not so much to illustrate the numerous subliminal sexual messages found in advertisements (although I certainly could spend an hour talking about those!), but more to make the point that nothing in an advertisement is accidental, and that it’s very naive to think otherwise. In turn, the picture of all the Korean churches is to provide a parallel to Normal Lewis’s point here, which is that if, say, my mother comes to Korea and notices all the neon crosses around, does that somehow make her a fundamentalist Christian? Or simply that there’s a lot of churches here? Likewise with noticing sexual themes in ads, no matter how perverted some people think that is.

Much better than me explaining here though, is for me to give a presentation at your own university or institution instead. Just give me a buzz — I’m pretty cheap!

(Source)

Young Korean women — not men — are the only demographic in the OECD that are getting more underweight than obese.

Call me making a mountain out of a molehill, but diet-drink companies being allowed to donate their product to teens, out of supposed concerns for their heath? And plastering their classrooms with ads of heavily photoshopped women in the process? Those may just have something to do with that:

청정원 홍초가 수험생 여러분을 응원합니다 / Chung Jung Won’s HongCho Cheers For Students Taking University Entrance Exams

by Kim Jong-hoon (김종훈), Asia Today, November 4 2012

대상은 자사의 브랜드인 ‘청정원’ 홍초가 수능시험을 앞둔 고3 수험생을 응원하기 위해 오는 7일까지 서울시내 20여개 학교를 찾아 다니며 홍초 2만여개를 무료로 나눠줄 계획이라고 4일 밝혔다.

On Sunday, Daesang’s brand Chung Jung Won [English website here] announced that to support 3rd year high school students about to take their university entrance exams, they would visit 20 high schools in Seoul before the 8th (the day of the exams) and donate 20,000 bottles of HongCho to students (source, right).

청정원측은 오랜 시험준비로 지친 수험생들이 좋은 컨디션으로 시험을 볼 수 있도록 응원하기 위한 마음으로 기획 된 행사라고 설명했다. 수능이 끝난 이후에도 홍초를 내세운 다양한 마케팅 활동으로 그간 고생이 많았던 수험생들을 지원할 계획이다.

Chung Jung Won explained that this is an event for tired students that have been preparing for the exams for such a long time, so that they can be in good condition on the exam day. Also, that even after the exams, the company plans to continue supporting those students that have suffered so much, through various HongCho marketing events.

한편, 홍초는 피로회복 등에 도움이 되는 기능성 원료인 콜라겐과 헛개나무 농축액, 그리고 식이섬유를 풍부하게 함유하고 있는 건강기능성 음용식초다.

HongCho is a healthy vinegar drink that includes collagen, liquids extracted from the Oriental Raisin Tree, and a lot of fiber, and is very helpful for recovering from tiredness. (end.)

For sure, HongCho does sound quite healthy. And, technically, it is not a diet-drink:

Diet drinks: Include calorie-free and low-calorie versions of sodas, fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks, and carbonated water, consistent with definitions reported by the National Cancer Institute and U.S. Food and Drug Administration food labeling guidelines. Diet drinks do not include 100% fruit juice or unsweetened teas or coffees.

(Source)

However, a quick perusal of the Chung Jung Won website demonstrates that it is explicitly being marketed as a “body-changing” drink, with — especially after photoshopping — exceptionally tall and skinny Jun Ji-hyun (전지현) endorsing it most recently (that’s Kim Hee-sun/김희선 from 2010 above). Also, the following website screenshot (from 2011) and commercial show that the body-changing theme is no mere Konglish accident:

(Source)

There also appears to be a sponsorship deal with the Diet War program:

(Source)

Meanwhile, girl-group Kara (카라) are promoting the drink in Japan, with much the same theme. Which is ironic, considering that these are the same women who admitted that they can’t even drink water on the (frequent) days that they’re required to wear revealing clothing:

What do you think? Have any Korea-based readers had similar promotions at their own schools? How about overseas? Are concerns and issues different there? I know that in the US for instance, it is more sodas that are the considered a problem, and that if students drank HongCho instead that would probably be considered a blessing. From TIME back in March (my emphasis):

If some public-health advocates have their way, sodas could become the cigarettes of food. Doctors already dislike the sugary drinks for their teeth-dissolving properties and for the role they may play in childhood obesity. There’s a constant struggle to get soda vending machines out of public schools, with administrators often forced to choose between losing sponsorship money from big soda companies and dealing with overcaffeinated, less healthy kids. Given the sheer size of the American soda industry — 9.4 billion cases of soft drinks were sold in the U.S. in 2009 — it’s not a war that will end anytime soon. Especially if a certain C word starts getting thrown around.

Update: From the picture, I got the impression that is was only girls’ schools that were targeted, but the advertorial (I can’t bring myself to call it a news report) only mentions 20 schools, and is repeated verbatim across newspapers. If readers find any more information though, please pass it on here!

Update 2: It’s not really related to the original post, but if you read that TIME magazine article above, you may also be interested in the recent findings that one of the main reasons for US children’s obesity is that they’re eating away from home so often, and (of course) that they’re mostly eating junk food when they do.

Related Posts:

• Korean Sociological Image #66 – Inventing Labels for Women’s Bodies
• Gender Studies 101: How the media perpetuates negative body images
• How Korean Girls Learn to be Insecure About Their Bodies

(Source)

Ga-in shared, “Our previous MVs had received R-ratings and we didn’t understand the reason why. So for my recent MV, I decided to give them one.”

(Daily K-Pop News)

And to help, she watched adult videos from many different countries, finding “that the porn from third world countries fit the most with [her] personal tastes.” Accordingly, Bloom (피어나) has many bed scenes, and — yes really — features her masturbating on her kitchen floor.

In contrast, Miss A‘s (미쓰에이) I Don’t Need a Man (남자 없이 잘 살아) speaks for itself, and the video is so family-friendly that my daughters (demand to) dance to it several times a day.* So to many, it might seem like a much more appropriate, softly-softly feminist anthem for “sexually conservative” Korea. Not least, by those who think the pornification of the media has already gone far enough, and/or that imitating porn stars isn’t something that should be celebrated.

To the latter, I would suggest that they actually take a look at the music video. Because while it is certainly erotic, it is by no means mere sexual titillation masquerading as art, nor is it provided exclusively for the male gaze. On the contrary, as Dana D’Amelio explains in a must-read at Seoulbeats (see this follow-up also):

Essentially, what Ga-in does is take female sexual desire, wrest it from the men who have manipulated it to their own device, and put it back in female hands. Ga-in’s sexuality is something that women can get behind, and that’s something you can’t much say for the rest of K-pop; that she herself is portrayed as taking pleasure as much as she is giving it is unique, fresh, and deeply relatable to female viewers.

(Source)

Dana and fellow Seoulbeats writer Mark both compare Bloom to Kim Hyuna’s (김현아) Ice Cream (아이스크림), which is just as sexually-explicit as Bloom, but strangely wasn’t banned by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Arguably, precisely because it did conform to the male gaze and pervasive double-standards of K-pop.

In light of those, the sooner songs like Bloom rock the K-pop boat, the better. And for that reason, I’m going to wager that Bloom will have much more longevity than not just (frankly) vacuous songs like Ice Cream, but also, as explained below, those ostensibly empowering ones like I Don’t Need a Man that actually seem to be about nothing but men. Yet which, unfortunately, now seem to be the dominant from in pop music worldwide:

Lucy O’Brien, author of She-Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul, thinks the continuing importance of image and presentation is to blame. The key thing that ossified gender roles, she suggests, was MTV, which changed popular culture, leaving feminist punk bands such as the Slits and the Raincoats behind. “Image became the big thing, and angry women who didn’t care about it didn’t really fit that picture,” O’Brien says. There was a brief window of opportunity for women who didn’t fit the MTV template in the early 1990s, she suggests, a time when bestselling artists such as Sinead O’Connor ripped up pictures of the Pope on TV, and Tori Amos sang about her experiences of rape (though, equally, O’Connor’s greatest success came with her most MTV-friendly moment, Nothing Compares 2 U). But then came the Spice Girls, appropriating the vocabulary of riot grrrl, and proclaiming “Girl Power”, but within the conventional model of the pop group manufactured by men for young girls. “Everything became sophisticated and sanitised after that, and the industry has never got over it,” O’Brien says.

(The Guardian, March 25 2010; my emphasis. See Mark’s post “Manufactured Girl Power: Female Empowerment in a Male-Powered Industry” for more on K-pop specifically)

(Source)

Which brings me to today’s translation, found via Lost in Traffic Lights. Here’s her summary of it (emphasis in original):

…the main difference is…while Bloom talks about how a woman views herself, free from social constructs and how people view her. However, while Miss A’s “I don’t need a man” looks like it’s gunning for female empowerment, at the end it’s still feeding into a discourse that men made for a “good girl” or a “sensible woman” in Korea.

I see this a lot actually. On the internet, there’s always a guy-or a male figure-who argues that “all women do is buy luxury bags and leech off men blah blah blah” and the women are like “but we don’t. A lot of us don’t. I am special because I’m not like those other girls. I don’t buy luxury bags, I pay for my own stuff” and so on. But at the end of the day though, isn’t that gunning for another gold star from the men who criticize us?

For much more on that theme, see Nabeela’s review of the song (and especially the comments), and — for starters! — here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for more information about the “beanpaste girl” (된장녀/dwenjang nyeo) and “ladygate” discourses being referred to.

As for the translation, frankly I and my long-suffering wife found it exhausting, and there were many parts we found difficult — we apologize in advance for any mistakes. Also, there’s much to query in both the author’s generalizations and his details, starting with the confusion in the first part as to whether he’s talking about the music video (far above) or a stage performance (e.g. below, on SBS a few days before the article was published), and indeed I can’t find the part where she supposedly pretends to look into a mirror in either. But these don’t detract from the author’s main points, and I hope you all agree that comparing Bloom and I Don’t Need a Man is very valuable and worthwhile.

가인이 피워낸 100%짜리 여자의 욕망 / 100% Women’s Desire Blooms With Ga-in

Naver News, October 17 2012; 강명석 칼럼 / Column by Gang Myeong-seog (two@10asia.co.kr; Twitter).

붉은빛 스웨터를 입는다. 다리에는 가터벨트를 착용한다. 혀 끝으로 입술을 핥는다. 가슴을 내민다. 의자에 앉은 채 허리를 뒤로 젖힌다. 손이 온 몸을 훑는다. 가인의 신곡 ‘피어나’의 무대는 남성들에게 온갖 야한 상상을 불러일으킨다. 그러나, 정작 무대 위의 남성 댄서들은 무표정하다. 그들은 로봇처럼 동작을 소화할 뿐 가인의 춤에 반응하지 않는다. 가인은 그들과 한 번도 정면으로 눈을 맞추지 않는다.

She wears a red sweater. On her legs she has a garter belt. She licks her lips with the tip of her tongue. She sticks her breasts out. She arches her back while sitting in a chair. She touches her whole body with her hands.

Ga-in’s new song “Bloom” provokes all sorts of bawdy male fantasies. But those men actually on the stage with her are expressionless, behaving like robots that don’t even notice her dance. She, in turn, never looks any of them in the eye.

대신 가인의 시선은 무대 정면을 향한다. 정면을 바라본 채, 가인은 다양한 포즈들을 취한다. ‘피어나’의 안무는 동작과 동작을 하나의 흐름으로 연결하지 않는다. 대신 섹시한 느낌을 주는 각각의 포즈들을 취할 수 있도록 구성됐다. 댄서들이 사라지고, 가인 혼자 정면을 바라보며 여러 포즈를 취하는 무대 후반의 구성은 가인의 시선이 누굴 향한 것인지 짐작케 한다. 남자들이 사라져도, 가인은 자신의 섹시함을 표현하는 것을 멈추지 않는다. 마치 거울 앞에 선 자신을 보는 것처럼.

Rather, Ga-in looks directly at us, while adopting various poses. In “Bloom,” the choreography isn’t seamless. Instead, each scene is defined by and constructed around a different pose, each providing a very sexy, sensual feeling.

Later in the performance, in which Ga-on looks ahead while continuing to do various poses, making people wonder who she is actually looking at. Then, the dancers disappear again, but Ga-in doesn’t stop expressing her sexiness. She continues as if she’s looking at herself in the mirror.

Caption: 가인은 남자들의 판타지를 자극하는 방식의 ‘피어나’를 통해 오히려 가장 주체적인 여성상을 그려낸다 / Rather than stimulate male fantasies, Ga-in provides a very independent symbol for women in “Bloom.”

가인, 타인이 아닌 나를 위한 섹시 / Ga-in: The Sexiness is For Me, Not For Others

거의 모든 여성 가수에게 섹시한 댄스는 타인의 시선을 끌기 위한 장치다. 걸그룹이 곡에서 악센트를 줘야할 부분마다 다리를 벌리는 춤을 추곤 하는 것이 그 예다. 섹시함이 콘셉트 그 자체라 해도 좋을 ‘피어나’도 당연히 시선을 끈다. 그러나, ‘피어나’는 특정 동작을 강조하며 시선을 끄는 포인트 춤이 없다. 대신 모델이 계속 포즈를 취하는 듯한 동작들이 이어진다.

Almost all female use a sex dance as a means to attract people’s attention. For example, girl-groups will often emphasize spreading their legs apart in their dance routines. Naturally, “Bloom” could also be seen in this vein. However, “Bloom” doesn’t have ‘point dances’ which are only used for the specific purpose of getting people’s attention; instead, the poses adopted are more similar to the ones real models use.

가인의 소속사 로엔엔터테인먼트 관계자에 따르면 ‘피어나’의 안무에도 원래 포인트 춤이 포함돼 있었지만, 그 포인트를 빼고 지금처럼 다양한 포즈 중심의 안무를 요구한 사람이 바로 가인이었다. 그 결과 ‘피어나’의 안무는 타인에게 어필하는 것이기도 하지만, 그 이전에 여성이 섹시한 표정과 포즈를 마음껏 해보는 구성이 됐다. 또한 ‘피어나’의 뮤직비디오는 황수아 감독이, 가사는 작사가 김이나가 맡았다. 두 여성은 그들의 시선에서 섹시함을 표현한다. 뮤직비디오에 가인의 베드신이 등장하지만, 가인과 관계를 갖는 남자의 얼굴도 제대로 안 나온다. 대신 카메라는 희열을 느끼는 가인의 표정을 잡는다. <김이나의 가사로 표현한다면, 남자는 ‘내가 선택한’ 존재고, 그가 사랑스러운 것은 나를 ‘high’하고 ‘fly’하도록 만들었기 때문이다. 남자가 어떤 매력을 가졌는지는 묘사하지 않는다. 중요한 것은 남성이든 섹시함이든 여성 자신의 욕망이 선택한 결과라는 점이다.

According to a representative of Loen Entertainment, originally the choreography did have point dances, but these were removed and replaced at Ga-in’s insistence. As a result, the choreography appeals not just to other people [men?], but has as many sexual poses and expressions as it could have too [James - That sentence sounds strange in Korean also]. Also, the director of the music video, Hwang Su-ah, and lyricist, Kim Ee-na [both women], express sexiness from their own perspectives. In the music there is Ga-in’s bed scene, but we can’t really see the face of the guy she’s with [James - The screenshot below would be the closest you get]. Instead the camera focuses on her expression of joy and ecstasy. According to Kim Ee-na’s lyrics, “This is the guy I chose,” and the reason is because he makes Ga-in “fly high.” Crucially, why she finds the man attractive is not described; rather, the important thing is that it’s her sexual desire that is paramount here.

(Source)

전체적인 윤곽은 남성의 판타지를 충족시키지만, 그 디테일은 섹시함이 ‘(타인의)시선 따윈 알게 뭐니’라고 노래하는 여성의 욕망을 드러낸다. 이 절묘한 공존은 이 곡의 구성원들의 독특한 조합 때문일 것이다. 안무, 가사, 뮤직비디오는 여성이 주축이지만, 프로듀싱과 작곡은 각각 남성인 프로듀서 조영철과 작곡가 이민수가 맡았다. 이들 중 가인을 제외한 네 명의 남녀는 아이유와 브라운 아이드 걸스를 제작한 바 있다. 아이유는 귀여운 여성에 대한 남성 판타지의 극단이었고, 브라운 아이드 걸스는 섹시함에 터프함을 가미한 강한 여자들이었다.

While the whole character of this song fulfills men’s fantasies, contained in the details is a depiction of sexiness and women’s desire that poses the question, “Who cares about the gaze of others?”. This exquisite coexistence is the result of the unique combination of the people involved in its production: the choreographer and lyricist are women, but the producer, Jo Yeong-cheol, and the composer, Lee Min-su, are men [James - What happened to the director Hwang Sun-ah?]. Moreover, in addition to Ga-in’s songs, these men and women have produced songs for the IU and the Brown Eyed Girls. IU projects a cute image that is an extreme men’s fantasy [James - Actually, this cute image is exaggerated and/or very outdated], while the Brown Eyed Girls’ image is a mixture of tough and strong women.

(Source)

가인은 이 네 남녀의 정확한 한가운데다. 남성들에게 확실히 어필할 수 있는 섹시한 콘셉트는 남성 스태프가 짠 틀일 것이다. 그러나 여성 스태프는 그들의 시선으로 섹시함을 표현했다. 여성도 성관계에서 오는 육체적, 정신적 쾌감에 대한 욕망이 있고, 그 욕망을 드러내자 가인은 가련한 소녀도, 남성의 시각적 만족만을 위한 쇼걸도 아닌 무대를 지배하는 주인공이 된다. ‘피어나’는 주체적인 여성에 대한 시각을 무엇을 보여주느냐가 아니라 어떻게 보여주느냐로, 바깥의 시선에서 내면의 욕망의 문제로 옮긴다.

Ga-in is positioned firmly in the center of these 4 men and women. Her sex appeal, which definitely appeals to men, would have come from the male staff; the women’s perspective on sexiness, from the female staff. Women too, find sexual relationships physically and mentally pleasurable, and here Ga-in owns the stage with that desire, rather than being turned into a miserable girl or a showgirl for the male gaze for it.

“Bloom” moves the question of what are independent women from not what they show, but how they show it. Or in other words, from outside appearances to inner perspectives.

미스에이, 타인이 만들어놓은 좋은 여자의 기준 / Miss A Conform to the Standards of Good Women Defined by Others

그래서, 미스에이의 ‘남자 없이 잘 살아’가 ‘피어나’와 완벽한 대비를 이루는 것은 흥미롭다. 박진영이 작사한 ‘남자 없이 잘 살아’의 여성은 ‘내 돈으로 방세 다 내’고, ‘내 차 내 옷 내가 벌어서 산’다. ‘남자 믿고 놀다 남자 떠나면 어떡할’거냐는 걱정을 하기 때문이다. 가사만 보면 ‘남자 없이 잘 살아’는 주체적이고 독립적인 여성을 칭송하는 것처럼 보인다. 그러나 남에게 폐 끼치지 않는 인생은 남자 역시 필요하다.

So, “Bloom” and “I Don’t Need a Man” provide a perfect, very interesting contrast. The lyrics to “I Don’t Need a Man”, written by JYP, say “I pay the rent with my own money,” “I bough this car and these clothes with my my own money,” and that “If you trust and fool around with a man and then he leaves, what will you do?”, which is a constant worry of women.

If you only look at the lyrics to the song, they do praise self-reliant and independent women. [Although] men, too, need a way of life that isn’t dependent on others.

(Sources: top, bottom)

Caption: 반면 ‘남자 없이 못 살아’를 발표한 미스에이는 타인의 시선에 의해 결정되는 여성의 단면을 보여준다 / On the other hand, with “I Don’t Need a Man,” released by Miss A, they show a side of women defined by others

그리고, 이런 경제생활이 당당한 여성의 기준은 타인의 시선이다. ‘남자없이 잘 살아’의 뮤직비디오에서 멤버들이 콧수염을 붙여보거나, 이두박근을 강조하는 것은 우연이 아니다. 미스에이가 노래하는 독립적인 여성은 사실상 남성들이 요즘 ‘개념녀’라고 말하는 이상적인 여성이다. ‘피어나’가 남성들에게 어필하는 코드로 여성의 욕망을 말한다면, ‘남자 없이 잘 살아’는 당당한 여성을 어필하면서 ‘된장녀’와는 정반대인 ‘개념녀’라는 남성의 욕망을 말한다.

Also, these financially confident women are conforming to the standards of others. In “I Don’t Need a Man,” it is no accident that the members of Miss A stick on a fake mustache or emphasize their biceps. The independent women that they are singing about are actually the gaenyeomnyeo, or “good girls,” that men say are their perfect women these days.

While “Bloom” appeals to men while also articulating female desire, “I Don’t Need a Man” provides an image of confident women and also the good girl image that males desire, an opposite of the dwenjang-nyeo, or “bean-paste girl” one.

(“miss A I Don’t Need A Man Chibiby,” by jinsuke04)

‘피어나’는 타인의 시선 대신 내면의 욕망을 더 적극적으로 드러내는 여성의 목소리를 반영하고, ‘남자 없이 못 살아’는 남자, 또는 사회가 원하는 좋은 여성의 기준을 더욱 더 강화한다. 출산과 결혼을 선택하지 않는 여성에 대한 논의가 사회적 화두로 떠오르고, 인터넷에서는 남녀가 수많은 문제들로 논쟁을 하는 이 시점에서 두 곡의 등장은 어떤 징후처럼 보인다. 많은 남자들은 명품 백을 사느냐 마느냐에 따라, 결혼할 생각이 있느냐 없느냐에 따라 ‘개념녀’와 그렇지 않은 여성을 가른다.

Rather than emphasizing the male gaze, “Bloom” reflects more the inner desires and voices of women, whereas “I Don’t Need a Man” does more men and/or society’s standards for women. These two songs are a reflection of how many women choosing not to get married and/or have children has become a hot topic of debate in Korean society, and of the discussion, arguments, and problems as many men and women discuss that on the internet. In which many men are dividing women into good girls or beanpaste girls, or who want to get married or not, [simply] according to whether they buy brand-name bags or not.

반면 많은 여성들은 타인에게 폐 끼치지 않는 한 돈을 쓰고 싶은 곳에 욕먹지 않고 쓸 권리와 결혼과 출산을 하지 않을 자유에 대해 말한다. 주체적인 욕망과 타인의 시선이 정한 기준 안에 들어오는 것 사이의 대립. 남녀 모두 주체적인 여자에 대해 말하는 것 같지만, 그 층위는 전혀 다르다. ‘피어나’가 예상치 못했던 카운터펀치인 이유다. 인터넷에서 끝없이 반복되던 남녀의 가장 중요한 논쟁점이 흥미로운 방식으로 수면 위로 떠올랐다. 그것도 모두가 답 없는 논쟁을 할 때, 여성의 욕망을 놀라울 만큼 잘 드러내면서 남성도 즐길 수 있는 판타지의 접점을 만들면서 말이다.

(Source)

But as long as women do not trouble others with their spending choices, then they have a right not to be sworn at and criticized by others, and the freedom not to choose marriage or children. [However], there is a contradiction between the desire for self-reliance and the standards set by the male gaze. Men are women are talking about the same self-reliant women, but the amount of what they say about them are totally different.

This is the reason why “Bloom” has a surprising counter-punch. The most important thing men and women are unceasingly arguing about on the internet [James - What is that?? Sex?] arose in an interesting and amusing way. That is, in an argument which has no answers, this song provides a rare point of contact in which women can enjoy their desires just as much as men have their fantasies fulfilled.

강하거나, 세거나, 독특한 여성 걸그룹들의 노래들이 하나의 흐름을 형성한 지금, ‘피어나’가 대중음악 시장에서 얻는 반응은 지금 이런 목소리에 대한 수요를 알 수 있는 척도가 될 수도 있을 것이다. 그것은 반대로 ‘남자없이 잘 살아’에 대한 반응도 마찬가지일 것이다. 지금 우리는 주류 대중음악, 또는 걸그룹으로 대표되는 아이돌 시장에서 여성을 표현하는 방식이 아주 조금은 달라진 순간을 보고 있다. 그게 결과적으로 누구의 목소리가 더 크게 멤돌지는 알 수 없지만 말이다.

Now, bold, strong, and unique girl-groups are forming a new trend, and how well “Bloom” does commercially will demonstrate how much of a demand there is for this new voice. The same goes for “I Don’t Need a Man.” Now, in popular music, we are seeing the beginning of a new phase in the way women express themselves. Ultimately, whose voice will be loudest? (end)

(Source)

*Truth be told, I let my daughters watch Bloom as well, which isn’t that explicit really; they really like the song and colors, and at 4 and 6, they’re much too young to understand what’s really going on anyway. And I hope that their happy childhood memories of it spur a renewed interest in it much later, just like mine of She-Bop (1984) did for me!

Update: While I’m at it, see here for 10 more songs about female masturbation.

Related Post(s):

• Lee Hyori: Korean Pin-up Grrrl #1?

(Source)

“Building a Body” isn’t my favorite track off Marnie Stern’s third LP, but I think it’s one of the most important.

It plays with the idea that a woman’s body is a canvas; a thing that is often viewed or regarded as a tool, an asset, a means to an end. Still. There’s the acknowledgment that we can choose how to construct our own image. However much anxiety is involved in the process.

($30 Project)

As often discussed on TGN, Korean beauty, dieting, and clothing companies are constantly promoting idealized body shapes for women to aspire to. And, although these companies are just following the universal logic of creating new perceived wants and needs in the minds of consumers, their alacrity — and audacity — in doing so can be nothing short of remarkable sometimes.

With new “lines” appearing almost as quickly as the girl-groups used to endorse the ensuing products or services though, it’s easy to lose sight of the utilitarian, utterly reductionist view of women that this alphabetization process relies on.

This post is about some recent stark reminders of both. Easy to dismiss as frivolous, or mere semantics, it’s also about what’s occurring in Korea today nevertheless has strong historical precedents in North America and Europe in the 1920s-1950s. Which, as Jill Fields explains in An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality (2007, pp. 80-81), “not only affected women’s everyday experience of their bodies, but also transformed the construction of feminine identity,” sparking public discourses and expectations surrounding women’s bodies that endure to this day.

(Sources: left, right)

What’s more, not only is what’s best for women never the main concern —

There is ample feminist discussion about shifting cultural definitions of what the female form is supposed to look like in order to be the most appealing to a (predominately) male gaze….intimate apparel was often marketed as scientifically advantageous to women’s health, but the sexual function of breasts was always the bottom line. Binding them down, lifting them up, pushing them together – none of this had anything to do with encouraging the natural state of a woman’s breasts. No wonder women’s liberationists threw their bras in the trash can.

(Nursing Clio)

— but the Korean case also coincides with a rapid increase in (overwhelmingly female) objectification in popular culture; and highly visible, palpable resistance from men against (largely only perceived) increased economic competition from women. Bearing a striking resemblance to — à la The Beauty Myth (1991) — what occurred in North America and Europe in the 1980s, the combination is as fascinating as it is frightening.

A Woman’s Body as a Canvas

The first reminder comes from Rob Walkers’ discussion of what makes Hello Kitty so attractive to consumers, in his book Buying In: The secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are. Because however indirect, if you replace “Hello Kitty” with “women’s bodies,” and “consumers” with “advertisers,” an eerie — and disturbing — parallel emerges (2008 ed., p.18, emphases added; source, right):

A perceptive study of the Hello Kitty phenomenon by Tokyo-based cultural scholar Brian J.McVeigh suggests an interesting theory that is implied by his paper’s title: “How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool, and Camp.” While he notes factors like “accessibility” and consistency, the most compelling factor he isolates is “projectability.” Hello Kitty’s blank, “cryptic” simplicity, he argues, is among her great strengths; standing for nothing, she is “waiting to be interpreted,” and this is precisely how an “ambiguous”—and, let’s be frank: meaningless—symbol comes to stand for nostalgia to one person, fashionability to another, camp to a third, vague submissiveness to a fourth….Belson and Bremner return to this theme repeatedly in their book on he business of Hello Kitty. “What makes Hello Kitty so intriguing is that she projects entirely different meanings depending on the consumer,” they write. The cat is “an icon that allows viewers to assign whatever meaning to her that they want.”

If that parallel remains too indirect for some however, recall Dramabeans’ comment (#21 here) about the “Love Your W” event in 2008, “W” being one of the numerous letters used for women’s breasts. The similarities are obvious (emphases added):

…while this practice is seemingly frivolous on the surface, it actually belies much more pernicious trends in society at large, when you have celebrities vocally espousing their alphabet-lines and therefore actually objectifying themselves as a conglomeration of “perfect” body parts rather than as whole, genuine people. You wanna know why plastic surgery is such a big deal in Korea, why actresses don’t eat, why there’s an obsession with thin? It’s because we’re all just Latin letters waiting to be objectified as a beauty ideal rather than living, breathing people with flesh on our bones and brains in our heads.

Why, Oh Why, Does it Need to be Called a “Y-line”?

The next reminder (hat tip to @holterbarbour) was by learning of the simply absurd “Y-line,” via Mundipharma Korea’s ads for gynobetadine, a vaginal cleanser:

Mundipharma Korea are a little coy about what a Y-line is exactly, placing Choi Yeo-jin (최여진) in several Y-shaped poses, and with copy and advertorials speaking of bold, confident — “당당한” — Y-lines. But given the product, and that all those “Y”s center at her crotch, then it’s safe to say that, yes, the term does indeed refer to a vagina.

Which sounds like something from The Onion.

But to play Devil’s advocate, is it merely a euphemism, rather than a line per se? The ad is, after all, just for a cleanser, not — thank God! — labiaplasty (NSFW) or anything like that. And if so, is it really all that different to similar terms and usage in, say, English-speaking countries? For, as recently explained in “The Myth of the Vajazzled Orgasm”at Nursing Clio (emphasis added):

The popular emphasis on the vagina is certainly on the rise. The explosive popularity of the Vagina Monologues, now regularly performed on college campuses, made many more comfortable with the V word. Social critic Naomi Wolf has recently argued for the existence of the “mind-vagina”connection. Commercials coyly refer to the letter V for various feminine products and sitcoms and singers laud their own embrace of the vajayjay as a way of indicating equal sexual footing with men. “Designer” vaginas are also part of this new emphasis. Cosmetogynecology is one of the fastest growing types of cosmetic surgery.

On top of that, the Y-line appears not to be an invention of Mundipharma Korea at all, as this cartoon (at least) predates its August ad campaign:

(Source)

Yet while acknowledging those, you also have to acknowledge the context. Because whoever was ultimately responsible for the term, it’s safe to assume that they were influenced by the alphabetization trend. And it’s clearly in that commercially-driven, objectifying sense that the term is being used here.

Moreover, just like all the other lines, bear in mind that it’s just one version of the Y-line that has been co-opted by one company (and perhaps others) to sell its product, against which it must compete with other versions used by other companies to sell their own.

But which version — if any — will stick in consumers’ minds? And, like the “V-line,” will it ultimately become so normalized a part of popular culture, so accepted an expectation of women, that one day classrooms will be full of girls working on their own?

(Sources:left, right)

The contenders include, first, a Y-line lift promoted by a hospital specializing in the procedure (as either a compliment or alternative to the V-line — it’s a little confusing sorry):

(Source)

Next, as breasts, from the line between them. I’d previously assumed that it was invented by the lingerie company Yes’, but it’s also used by others, as well as by cosmetic surgeons:

(Sources: left; right unknown)

As the crotch:

(Source)

As the back:

(Sources: top-left, top-right; bottom unknown)

And finally(?) the buttocks.Now, forgive me if it sounds facetious, but I’ve stared at many examples, and never once seen a “Y” in them. Again, you really have to wonder at the mindset of companies — and consumers — that do:

(Source)

And here’s part of a show episode devoted to nothing but, well, that Y-line butt:

Historical Precedents

(Sources: left, right)

Did I say only two stark reminders of the absurdity and audacity of the Korean alphabetization trend? A third was discovering all those other ludicrous examples of Y-lines. Yet, however natural it may be to mentally assign something so absurd and asinine in another culture as distinctive to it, by no means is this trend only Korean, or even East Asian. Rather, as numerous examples from An Intimate Affair make clear, in fact they’re almost as old — and universal — as mass-production, mass-media, and marketing themselves.

While I can’t begin to do justice to those examples here, two are particularly illustrative, and will hopefully encourage you to purchase your own copy of the book(!). First, the figure classification schemes invented by corset manufacturers in the 1920s (a scan; click to enlarge it):

Fortunately, the next page is available at Google Books:

This strongly reminded of the following video on how “pear”-shaped women should dress to look like they actually have hourglass-figures, spawning 159 comments at Sociological Images (also see here on subtle Korean encouragements through hourglass-shaped drink bottles):

In turn, that video gave me the impression that Western beauty, dieting, and clothing companies are more concerned with extorting women to conform to a narrow range of preexisting, publicly accepted body types rather than creating their own, then demanding that they aspire to gain those instead. Can any overseas-based readers confirm? And/or recommend books and websites, so that a male reader, 13 years based in Korea, can find out?

Despite that particular, potential difference however, from the 1930s to the 1950s Hollywood, the fashion industry, and — to a lesser extent — economically-threatened men would all influence the second example of “glamour” for their own ends, with the ensuing popular notions of the concept displaying a malleability and responsiveness remarkably similar to that of modern Korean lines. Indeed, although the English definition of the term has continued to considerably evolve since, ironically it’s (the main) one of those from that era — glamour as large breasts — that would enter the Korean lexicon as “글래머,” from which the appalling, infantilizing term “Bagel Girl/베이글녀” derives.

(Sources: left, right. Surely not a coincidence, does anybody know who chose Ga-in’s wardrobe for Bloom?)

Again only snippets which can not do the book justice, but which probably already exceed what counts as fair use for a website nevertheless, here are some selected excerpts to give a hint of all that. First, from page 105, about the context of assuaging the fears of un(der)-employed men during the Depression, and then of soldiers during World War Two:Next, from page 109 on the quite literal embodiment of glamour in breasts (and why I mentioned Lana Turner in my recent Busan Haps article on Ga-in’s Bloom):

Next, although frankly I don’t fully understand the final paragraph here, hopefully page 110 gives you an impression of how glamour came to shift from body parts to inanimate items of clothing (hence “Sweater Girls“) and so on, as also revealed in the illustrations below:Update: Given my love for Maria Buszek’s Pin-up Grrrls (2006), it seemed a pity not to add the conclusion to the chapter on the next page (actually page 112) also:

An advertisement for a Sweater Girl course(!) from 1954:

(Source)

Glamorous glasses?

(Sources: left, right)

Conclusion: The Korean Beauty Myth?

With my new copy of The Beauty Myth arriving at my door literally as just before I type this, I should wisely reacquaint myself with it before proceeding further. But, of course, others have already made the same connection(s) that I have, including  Tess Hellgren in her (oft-quoted by me) 2011 Exposé piece “Explaining Underweight BMI and Body Dissatisfaction among Young Korean Women” (pp. 7-8):

…recent gendered shifts in Korean society offer another potent explanation for the trend in female body image. In the past thirty years, Korean society has undergone significant political and economic transformations, democratizing and industrializing at an incredible pace — and offering an extreme expansion of societal opportunities for women.19 Specifically since the 1980s, Korean women have seen an important increase in university attendance; today, 72% of South Korean women attend college, the highest rate of any country. According to feminist theory, this recent upsurge in female societal empowerment may be associated with an oppressive backlash in media portrayals of gender ideals. As explained in the work of Jaehee Jung and Gordon Forbes, historical data suggest that societal shifts toward gender equality are often accompanied by increased media portrayal of unrealistic gender norms as a reactive “tool of oppression” by mainstream society. Jung and Forbes cite the examples of both Europe and the United States: In the 1870s, it was during Europe’s industrialization and nascent women’s movement that accounts of anorexia nervosa first appeared, and the thinnest women in American fashion magazines appeared at the same time as momentum built for women’s rights in the 1920s and the 1970s. According to these scholars, the case of Korea is particularly striking due to the restrictive patriarchal nature of the country’s traditional Confucian culture, in which women’s familial and societal subordination is rigidly emphasized. Linking media portrayals to South Korea’s recent expansion of overall female opportunities, this feminist argument offers another potential explanation for the rise in body dissatisfaction and low BMI among Korean women in recent years.

Is something along these lines the only way to account for the combination of both an increased alphabetization/objectification of and backlash against women in the 2000s? Or is it that simply imposing a convenient narrative where none really exists?

(Sources: left, right{NSFW})

Please let me know what you think. And, as a reward to Seoul-based readers who have read this entire post, let me give you advance notice of a presentation I’ll be giving on this topic for the 10 Magazine Book Club on Sunday March 10, the weekend following International Women’s Day. As I type this there’s only 22 more seats available, so please put your name down if you’re (fairly) certain you’ll attend, and I look forward to carrying on this conversation with some of you there! :)

Related Posts:

• Bikinis, Breasts, and Backlash: Revealing the Korean Body Politic in 2012
• Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 2: Kwak Hyun-hwa (곽현화), Pin-up Grrrls, and The Banality of Sex and Nudity in the Media

(Sources: left, right)

The JoongAng Ilbo reports that having a full rack is seen as a disadvantage for women in North Korea.

This is in marked contrast to the South, where a thin figure and big breasts have become symbols of beauty.”

According to defectors, if a woman appears well-endowed in the North, people think she is intentionally and lewdly stressing her femininity, and she can easily come to be regarded as a slut. You have an atmosphere that doesn’t allow women to wear revealing clothing, and the North is still a male-dominated society.

One defector from Hoeryong said she had a work friend with large breasts who often ate chives because she’d heard they make your boobs smaller. She added that she was surprised upon learning that women in the South actually have operations to make their breasts bigger.”

(The Marmot’s Hole)

Alas, The Joongang Ilbo provides nothing to verify those claims. But, I see no reason why the defectors would lie, and negative stereotypes of large-breasted women are by no means confined to North Korea. Also, who would ever question that “a thin figure and big breasts have become symbols of beauty” in the South?

Fortunately though, Liminality did, who in a must-read response shows that however much the Korean beauty industries and media promote such an ideal, and however much East Asian-women may have a genetic predisposition towards small breasts, female cosmetic surgery patients at least hardly consider themselves lacking in that department. In fact, quite the opposite:

• Per capita, far more breast surgery operations are performed in European and North and South American countries than in Korea (or Asia)
• Despite having the highest per capita number of cosmetic surgery operations overall, Korea only came 22nd in the number of breast surgery operations performed per capita
• Of those operations, Koreans had slightly less augmentation and lift operations than their counterparts in the US and Brazil, and slightly more reduction surgeries (source, above; reproduced with permission)

Similar attitudes may exist in Japan too, where even lingerie maker Wacoal was surprised by the number of women who told told them they wanted a bra that made their breasts look smaller, and then by the huge popularity of the — yes, really — ‘Bra That Makes Big Breasts Look Small’ one they developed in response. Also, Japanese mail order fashion magazine Bellemaison has developed a ‘Chest Line Cover’ (see second image below) that “promises to be a cool alternative to wearing a real camisole as Japan prepares for another hot summer made even hotter with another year of power rationing,” which I’m sure readers of both sexes can confirm would probably be just as big a hit in Korea.

(Source)

But readers don’t need me to tell them that showing cleavage is still a big taboo in Korea, or that there’s a big disconnect between ordinary Koreans’ — and even models’ — attitudes to fashion, body image, and sexuality and what you may see on Korean TV. And I can’t claim any special expertise on ordinary North Koreans’ attitudes either.

However, when I read that original post at The Marmot’s Hole, by coincidence I’d also just finished The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s by Susan M. Hartmann (1983), in which she explains that the massive social dislocations of that decade — in particular, women suddenly entering the workforce in large numbers — were responsible for big changes in women’s fashion there, as well as preferred breast sizes. And, as it happens, North Korea is also going through a very turbulent period at the moment, with power relations between the sexes undergoing especially dramatic change:

Imagine going to work every day and not getting paid. Then, one day, you’re told there’s no work to do — so you must pay the company for the privilege of not working.

This is the daily reality facing Mrs. Kim, a petite 52-year-old North Korean. Her husband’s job in a state-run steel factory requires him to build roads. She can’t remember the last time he received a monthly salary. When there are no roads to build, he has to pay his company around 20 times his paltry monthly salary, she says.

“He had to pay not to work for about six months of last year,” Mrs. Kim told NPR, sighing. “You have to pay, even if you can’t afford to eat. It’s mandatory.”

So she is the one who must keep the family alive, as her husband wrestles with this state-sanctioned extortion.

Welcome to the Orwellian world of work in North Korea. In this reclusive country, profound social change is happening beyond the view of the outside world. The demands of politics have dramatically redrawn gender roles, forcing women to become the breadwinners.

(National Public Radio, December 28; hat tip to Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling)

(Source)

The NPR goes on to mention that one major consequence of that emasculation is skyrocketing domestic violence, against which speculating about ensuing changes in fashions can admittedly sound frivolous. But those have changed regardless — indeed, by state decree. First, in July last year:

Supreme leader Kim Jong-un appears to be loosening the government’s grip on how women dress by allowing them to wear pants, platform shoes and earrings, ABC News reported.

Previously, pants were only permitted as uniforms for females in the factories or the fields — and not for making a fashion statement.

“If caught, sometimes they would cut your pants right there in public to make it into a skirt,” Park Ye-Kyong, who defected to South Korea in 2004, told ABC News.

That doesn’t mean North Korean women don’t enjoy preening, Park added.

“Yes, we were hungry but desire to look beautiful lies in any woman,” she said.

In addition, the next month a 20 year-ban on women riding bicycles was lifted. Ostensibly imposed for women’s safety, numerous sources also mention its supposed incompatibility with juche, related educational television promoting “the idea of a woman wearing a skirt while riding a bicycle [being] contrary to socialist custom.” (See NK News {source, right} for more on North Korean ideals of women). Moreover, in 2009 Human Rights Watch also noted that:

…the ban on pants and bicycles for women is symptomatic of a range of other, often-overlooked, problems.

Across North Korea’s conservative, male-dominated society, there is discrimination against women, a knowing disregard for the consequences of such policies, and an opportunistic manipulation of power by police officers trying to make easy money by preying on an undervalued and underprivileged population.

In light of that, most likely the lifting of the bans was mainly simple populism on the part of a new leader, as well as — despite those state gender ideologies described above — a reluctant concession to the new realities of female breadwinners. Sure enough, in typical North Korean fashion (pun intended), just 5 months later the ban on women riding bicycles would actually be reinstated. Also, while technically they can still keep their pants on, in practice opportunities for women to beautify themselves remain limited, with both sexes punished for straying from officially-sanctioned hairstyles; sharp divisions in what is permissible for married and unmarried women; and a general lack of (beauty-related) resources overall, including such simple things as hairdryers.

Perhaps, things are not changing in North Korea as much as they first appear?

(Sources: left, right)

Yet in South Korea at least, it’s true that the last 15 years have seen a vast increase in the numbers of women competing with — and increasingly displacing — men for irregular and part-time work, despite the (extremely low) overall female workforce participation rate remaining unchanged. This has spawned quite a backlash, and — à la The Beauty Myth (1991) — a rapid increase in (overwhelmingly female) objectification in popular culture. So, while again I stress my ignorance and lack of knowledge with anything North-Korea related, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that, surely, the sudden large influx of women into the workforce may also be having some sort of impact there.

Either way, reading about similar experiences elsewhere can inform an understanding of what’s happening in both countries. So, with the obvious — but still necessary — caveat that of course both countries are very different to the US in the 1940s, for the remainder of this post let me try to pass on some of what I’ve learned about what happened there.

First, it’s important to get a sense of the numbers (pp. 77-8):

• The female labor force grew by 6.5 million during the war
• In 1944, 37% of all adult women were reported in the labor force, but nearly 50% of all women were actually employed at some time during that year
• The greatest changes took place among married women
• 1 in 10 married women entered the work force during the war, representing over 3 million of those 6.5 million new female workers (3.7 million, according to Marilyn Yalom in A History of the Wife {2002; p. 320})
• 2.89 million were single, the rest widowed or divorced
• So, for the first time in US history there were more married women than single women in the workforce.
• Note however, that the war resulted in many more marriages than there would have been normally — approximately 1 million more, according to Yalom. Moreover, wives of absentee husbands were twice as likely to seek jobs, with half of all servicemen’s wives being in the labor force
• The percentage of wives that worked grew from 13.9 in 1940 to 22.5 in 1944 (Yalom says 15 in 1940 to over 24 in 1945)
• The percentage of women with children that worked grew from 7.8 in 1940 to 12.1 in 1944
• By 1945, half of all working women were over 35; slightly more than 1 in 4 were 45 or older
• The typical female worker had shifted from younger and single to older and married, a pattern which was maintained in the postwar years

As Hartmann elaborates throughout her book, these figures represent an ensuing era of relative opportunity and freedom for many women (including sexual freedom; see Pin-Up Grrrls {2006} by Maria Busnek, pp. 213-224; see below also), even if it was usually simple economic necessity that compelled them to work in the first place (and usually at tedious, menial, and unfulfilling work at that). Accordingly, it definitely set the stage for second-wave feminism in the 1950s and ’60s, and deserves the place it’s gained in the Western historical imagination.

However, it’s also true that despite the huge public and private need for women to enter the workforce, that need was still considerably tempered by both sexes’ preexisting gender and racial ideologies, with both official propaganda and popular culture glamorizing women’s work and stressing its patriotic importance on the one hand, yet emphasizing its strictly temporary nature on the other. Not least, to nervous male workers and servicemen, who: lacked our knowledge that the war would lift the US out of the Depression (source, right); were very much judged by their ability to provide for their families, in an era where many simply couldn’t (note that one big difference between the Depression and the current financial crisis is that many people were literally starving during the former); and who sometimes had genuine difficulties with employment after demobilization, particularly in the shrinking war industries in which the women had been recruited (Hartmann, p. 63).

Buszek summarizes the contradictions of this era well (pp. 214-5):

And in particular:

• Despite the huge demand for workers, and the ultimate, relative flexibility both employers and male employees would demonstrate in incorporating Caucasian women into their midst, African-American women remained largely unwelcome (e.g., 10 months after Pearl Harbor, there were fewer than 100 out of 3000 women in Detroit war industries). So, while the numbers of them working did increase from 1.5 million in 1940 to 2.1 million in 1944, their share of the female labor force actually dipped from 13.8 to 12.5. By 1950, their employment patterns were very similar to those of 10 years earlier, albeit partially because by then their husbands were making more money. (Hartmann, pp. 60, 78-9)

• Partially, the huge numbers of wives that entered the workforce is because there were previously bans against them by many companies, let alone being against social convention; even schools discriminated against them. It’s amazing how quickly bans were dropped once the need for labor arose though, with some previously hostile managers coming to express a “preference for married women as more stable and conscientious than their single sisters” (pp. 59-60). And this provides encouraging news for Korea, which unfortunately still largely retains those conventions, and where as recently as 2009 I was working for a company that — yes, really — fired women upon marriage (source, right).

• Nevertheless, there remained extreme public and private ambivalence about working mothers. Officially seen as more of a social problem than something to be encouraged, officials did recognize “that financial need compelled some mothers to work and that in localities with severe labor shortages production goals would requite the employment of mothers,” and urged employers not to discriminate against them (p.58). But on the other hand, the government would also constantly remind them that homestay mothers were essential for children’s development; popular culture was full of stories of child neglect; and daycare provision, while expanded, was ultimately completely inadequate, paling behind that which was provided in the UK, and prompting frustrated managers of some defense plants to set up their own (Yalom, pp. 324-6).

(Source)

But, lest we forget, this post is about breasts. And changes in women’s fashions which came with the contradictions involved with entering the workforce, with women having to confront rampant sexual harassment on the one hand, and often being blamed for the “distraction” they posed, but on the other relishing their newfound freedoms (Buszek, pp. 216-7):

However, the combination of war-time shortages and women’s entrance into the workforce meant that people suddenly became used to women in functional, masculine clothing and with more practical hairstyles, and that women’s fashions became more simplified, comfortable, less overtly sexual, and changed less frequently than before. So, when you learn that popular culture stressed the exact opposite, for example…

• That female workers were still “glamorous” and feminine despite their new roles (Hartmann, p. 199)
• As were female sport stars, women’s sports enjoying a lot of popularity while their male counterparts were occupied (p. 194)
• Lingerie manufacturers coped with wartime shortages and new demand by producing much practical bras, yet these coincided with pinup photographs that emphasized their subjects’ breasts (Jill Fields, An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie and Sexuality, 2007, p. 106). As explained in Part 3 of this series, this ultimately led to the fashion for large and uplifted breasts that remains to this day.

…then it is very easy and natural — indeed, this is my very strong impression from the books discussed here, although exact page references are suddenly proving maddeningly elusive(!) — to argue that this alternate ideal was imposed by, for want of a better word, the patriarchy, to encourage women to enter the workforce yet at the same time remind them that their place there was unnatural and temporary. And, to be clear, not for a moment am I arguing that this wasn’t very much the case (source, right).

However, as Hartmann explains on p. 198 below (echoed by the other sources), it’s also true that women themselves were just as passionate about preserving their femininity (indeed, they would understandably revel in impractical but much more feminine fashions once war rationing ended):

In particular, and especially in light of the new opportunities open to them as mentioned, I think it’s both overly dogmatic and patronizing to dismiss choosing to use those feminine adornments as mere false consciousness and women’s own mindless incorporation of patriarchal values. Also, although it’s true that the period was rife with pop psychology theories (it was conveniently claimed that women like boring, monotonous work much more than men for instance) it’s very unlikely that men and women rationalized and articulated their choices and concerns in such patriarchal terms. Even if those did operate on a subconscious level, and patriarchy is still the only thread which can bring otherwise disparate developments in the period together, surely men did not think, for example, that if they saw more big-breasted women in popular culture, emphasizing the differences between the sexes as increased use of lipstick did in the workplace, that this would make them feel more secure in their jobs.

In addition, while changes in attitudes were certainly quick, they didn’t happen overnight, Jill Fields (p. 106) noting that “uplift” and “separation” trends in bras for instance, which accentuated the projection of the breast silhouette, had actually already started back in the 1930s. Finally, if you’re confused like I am, because I just noted above that bras actually became more practical during wartime, and am now stating that women could simultaneously be censured and praised for wearing distracting clothes, that’s because contradictory and competing trends coexisted simultaneously, the 1940s being just as messy, complicated, and contradictory as modern life.

And on that note, thank you very much for bearing with me in this admittedly equally messy, complicated, and contradictory post, the result of me personally trying to understand what patriarchy means in practice as well as theory. And, with the proviso that my relief — and frankly joy — at discovering historic parallels (and especially English-language historiography!) to modern North and South Korean developments should make me wary of projecting too much, and not blind me to the significant differences, I’m very happy to have pointers towards further study, and very much welcome readers’ own suggestions! (source, right)

Related Posts:

• Bikinis, Breasts, and Backlash: Revealing the Korean Body Politic in 2012
• Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 2: Kwak Hyun-hwa (곽현화), Pin-up Grrrls, and The Banality of Sex and Nudity in the Media
• Revealing the Korean Body Politic, Part 3: Historical precedents for Korea’s modern beauty myth

As Noface-nameless explains:

Students at Sungkyunkwan University has created this poster, among many others to point out all the gender discrimination happening with common phrases said between friends and colleagues. The centered text in red reads “WHY do we have to listen to these things” / “WHY do we have to deal with these phrases” (translation open to interpretation)

some of the background text deals with homophobia, rape culture, negative gender stereotypes and heteropatriarchy.

Every time I the conversation of feminism or conversation of gender and sexuality in Korean, it makes me feel good. Because my Korean is very limited, I love adding new words to my dictionary, especially about these things.

Just recently I learned that the Korean translation of Women’s studies is 여성학.. I havent found the equivalent translation for Women’s and Gender studies but Im leaning towards something like 성(sexuality)과 여성학 .?

still learning….

Via: Tales of Wonderlost

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

• Suzy (18): Innocent.
• Song Joong-ki (27): Chic.
• Kim Yoo-jung (13): Young.

Three celebrities, three natural labels.

After all, Kim Yoo-jung is young. Song Joong-ki is chic, or at least compared to us mere mortals. And as for Suzy’s innocence? Well, she is simultaneously the baby, the designated cute member, and the most ‘visual member’ of the girl-group Miss A, all standard archetypes for cookie-cutter K-Pop groups. So, perhaps it’s no wonder she’s become known as ‘The Nation’s First Love’ (kookmin chotsarang;국민 첫사랑).

As such, she’s:

• displaced even Girls’ Generation members to become the 2012 “CF Queen“
• become a major earner for label JYP Entertainment in the process
• and been accused of completely overshadowing the other members of Miss A

Still, seeing this picture of Suzy every commute gets me all hot and bothered. Specifically, because it raises several questions about just how “natural” that label is, which I’d love to hear your thoughts on (source, right):

1) In Korea, has a male celebrity in his late-teens (or older) ever been explicitly marketed as innocent?

To be clear, I’m not saying that their image can’t be innocent. For instance, as described by Bethany at Seoulbeats, this has certainly been the case for Lee Taemin (and, at 19 now, is something he’s trying to shake off):

Many K-pop fans probably also remember cutie pie Taemin debuting at the age of 15, all fresh-faced and adorable. But while he was the youngest member of SHINee, he also boasted the slickest dance moves onstage and in their music video for “Replay,” which still remains my favorite SHINee song to date. Taemin has been pegged as the cute member of SHINee since his debut days, and even though he has taken on a sexier, more mature look in “Lucifer” and more currently, “Sherlock,” noona fans still remember the days of innocent Taemin. It’s lucky that Taemin had such good hyungs who took care of him so diligently — looking at you, Key. He also graduated high school not long ago…

(Source)

And, of course, such innocent images have indeed been exploited and/or manufactured by advertisers; in Taemin’s case, by cosmetic company Etude House for one, with appropriately cutesy taglines. But explicitly identifying a young male celebrity as innocent, to the extent that there’s a “soonsoohan;순수한” next to his name like next to Suzy’s? Although I’d be happy to be proven wrong (and I do acknowledge the over-generalizations I may be making in this post), I have the strong suspicion that’s a gendered divide which advertisers and the public simply aren’t prepared to cross.

To buttress that point, consider the following thought experiment:

2) Can anyone imagine the sexes reversed in the opening ad?

Alone or with other women, it goes without saying that women are indeed regularly depicted — or explicitly described — as chic in advertisements. Or, in any one of any number of other mature, positive terms. But mix the sexes up, and the tendency is to reaffirm gender stereotypes and roles.

Usually, this is subtle, like in the ways described in my Gender Advertisements in the Korean Context posts. In the opening ad though, it is explicit, the young and innocent females providing the binary opposite to the man’s chicness, thereby affirming his greater sophistication (for a similar example, see this vintage lego ad that is ironically usually lauded for its gender neutrality). Which is fine in itself, but to see the sexes reversed is so uncommon as to be jarring, and all the more memorable for it.

Like in this 2011 Missha advertisement for instance (source), with then 41 year-old Kim Hye-soo and — albeit not exactly innocent-looking — 25 year-old Jung Yun-ho and 23 year-old Shim Changmin of TVXQ. Personally, it reminds me of “Jane Bond” a little:

(Source)

3) Is this gender stereotype more prevalent in Korea than elsewhere?

With the provisos that (sexual) innocence will always be treasured more in females than in males, as the latter will always have concerns about the paternity of their children; and that, as Brian in Jeollanam-do put it, everything in Korea “tries to be cute, in the same way everything in the States is “Xtreme” and too cool for school,” this does indeed appear to be the case. Consider how:

• Stressing the cuteness, innocence, and (supposed) asexuality of young female celebrities is the modus operandi — i.e., key to deflecting criticism — of “ajosshi fandom” and “uncle fandom.”
• Through young, overwhelmingly female celebrities, Korean girls are heavily socialized to use infantilizing aegyo
• Not only is there also a “The Nation’s Little Sister” out there in addition to Suzy being “The Nation’s First Love,” but: a) There are no male equivalents; and b) Technically, Suzy is actually the third first love!, with JYP, well-known for experimenting until a concept is shown to work, arguably more responding to this clear media-driven and/or public demand for one rather than deliberately over-promoting Suzy per se.

As a commenter at Netizen Buzz explains (my emphasis; source, right):

ppl always complaint that Suzy get too much spotlight, too much articles. But it’s funny that when there’re some articles/ objects about other members, nobody cares. I think it’s not Suzy’s fault to make other members become underrated. it’s just that fans ( specially K-fans) don’t love them enough. If everybody don’t love Suzy so much, she won’t be get so many CFs, drama invitations. You have to understand that they want Suzy to be in their dramas, CFs, not others. So we can’t say “Instead of using Suzy, why don’t we use Min/Jia/Fei?” And JYP can’t do nothing with it. And why ppl kept hating on her? She has to work with a murderous schedule, but she never complaint about anything. Just keep working so hard and share her money to her unnies, but still she get so many hates. You guys always think that’s not fair for others but I think that’s not fair for Suzy too.

And on that note, again I acknowledge any generalizations I may have made in this post (difficult to avoid with something ultimately based on just one ad!), and am happy to learn of exceptions. But even happier though, to learn of your own thoughts on those questions!

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

(Source)

Hello everyone, I’m James. I’m 37, male, and heterosexual. And I love pink.

It started innocently enough. As “The Korean Gender Guy” (TM), some splashes of it seemed appropriate here and there. Hence the pink hyperlinks and image borders on the blog in recent months (update: and, in November, a change to an all-pink theme).

Then, as a father of two young daughters, I realized I needed to embrace it for their sakes. On the one hand, to demonstrate that it’s not just a girls’ color, so they in turn would be more open to the blue side of the toy aisle. On the other, to make it so uncool, unfeminine, and/or ugly in their eyes that they’d be put off it for the remainder of their childhoods and adolescence, with all the gender socialization that comes with it.

Mostly this meant things like fighting over rare pink game tokens, and drawing a lot of pink planets and rockets for “Extra Burn!” (TM) our own hand-made, much improved version of snakes and ladders. Later, whenever it was an option, pink would also become the default choice for things we bought when out shopping together, like a kitchen tray, or Xylitol gum that came in a pink shiny bag.

Still, there was nothing that couldn’t be forgiven for a guy living with three females. But done so often, it soon became automatic, even for things just for myself. Before I knew it, I’d be leaving for work with my cute pink umbrella, pink socks under my black work pants, pink-tinted sunglasses still in my bag (bought in New Zealand, but which I’d been assured were “just too dam gay” to wear there); pink folders for my class plans; phone with pink cover, and neon-pink headphones for my MP3 player. On the subway, I’d take advantage of the wifi to check on the delivery progress of a pink suitcase I’d just bought online, rationalizing that the color would make it easier to spot at airports.

So, when the inevitable confrontation came, from a visibly uncomfortable male friend, I admit I shared his double-take. In my case though, I realized I looked…well, just fabulous actually, and wondered what else I could add.

Something drastic had to happen soon. Otherwise, who knows what depths of depravity I would have sunk to?

Fortunately, a reality check was recently provided by Lotte Chilsung through Song Hye-Gyo, who reminded me that I was the wrong sex to enjoy “Icis 8.0,” their latest bottled water…

(“Healthy under-eye areas? Pink! Healthy cheeks? Pink! Healthy fingertips? Pink! Healthy lips? Pink! So…how about healthy water? Invigorating pink energy! Icis 8.0!”)

Squarely aimed at women in their 20s and 30s, alas, I’ve been unable to find a source explaining the rationale behind its pink-centered marketing campaign, and am especially confused about how a pH of 8.0 would be pink exactly (my understanding is that it would actually be blue?). However, I did find the following article on very similar examples of gendered marketing, which I think provides some insights. That is to say, it’s clearly an advertorial on the one hand, but on the other I think no exaggeration or misrepresentation of their marketers’ rationales either, the sheer bullshit required to sell something like water to just one sex being nothing short of astounding. Yet, in hindsight, utterly predictable too.

“여자들만 드세요” 여성전용 식음료 제품들 ‘눈길’ “Women Only”: Eye-catching food and drink products exclusively for women

Betanews, 14/09/2009, 이직 기자 (leejik@betanews.net)

여자의 손길을 얼만큼 많이 받느냐에 따라 생사여부가 결정되는 곳이 식음료 시장이다. 관련 기업들은 여성의 감성을 자극하기 위하여 장동건, 정우성, 알렉스 등 한 시대를 풍미하고 있는 ‘훈남’들을 광고 모델로 내세운다. 하지만 정작 여자의 마음은 남자보다 여자가 더 잘 아는 법이다. 이를 반영하듯이 최근 ‘I’m Woman!’을 선언한 여성전용 컨셉 제품들이 잇따라 출시되고 있어 눈길을 끌고 있다.

The food and drink marketplace is where products with a woman’s touch will succeed or fail. Some companies have used currently popular handsome men like Jang Dong-gun, Jung Woo-Sung, and Alex Chu to appeal to women. However, in real life, women know women’s hearts and minds much better than men. With this in mind, several companies have launched products following an “I’m a Woman!” concept.

(Source; sources far above — unknown)

파나블루 ‘슈어’ – 피부에 좋은 미네랄 성분, 여자 손에 맞는 용기 디자인, Pink & Purple 컬러.

Panablu’s “Sure” — [A water drink] with mineral components good for the skin, and in a pink and purple container that fits perfectly into women’s hands.

국내1호 해양심층수 기업 파나블루(http://www.panablu.co.kr / 대표 설동환)는 올 여름 여성을 위한 뷰티(Beauty)워터 ‘슈어(SURE)’를 출시했다. 슈어는 물의 성분부터 용기 디자인까지 철저하게 여성을 형상화 한 제품이다.

Panablu is the first domestic company to sell mineral water sourced from the ocean depths, with company representative Sol Dong-Hwan explaining that Sure was launched this summer for women’s beauty. From the mineral components to the container design, it is a product thoroughly designed for women.

[James: Panablu wasn't the first -- Lotte Chilsung was using Olympic swimmer Park Tae-Hwan to sell "Bluemarine" at least a year before the first news reports about "Sure" I can find.]

슈어는 세계 최고 깊이인 수심 1500m의 해양심층수로 여자 피부에 좋은 미네랄이 일반 먹는샘물 제품 보다 10배 이상 함유되어 있는 ‘여자의 물’이다. 용기 디자인도 여성의 S 라인과 바다의 물결을 형상화 한 아름다운 곡선이 물병 전체를 감싸고 있다. 하지만 이 곡선은 단지 미(美)를 표현한 것만은 아니다. 신비스러운 여자의 신체 비밀도 담겨 있다. 이 물결 무늬는 20~30대 여성 300명을 대상으로 실시 한 ‘보틀 핸드프린팅 테스트(bottle hand printing test)’의 결과로 여자 손에 가장 편안한 그립감을 안겨줄 수 있게끔 디자인 된 것이다.

Sure water is taken from a depth of 1500m under the sea, the greatest depth of any mineral water source, and this “women’s water” contains 10 times more minerals that are good for women’s skin than regular bottled waters. Also, the curve of the bottle beautifully captures both the swell of sea waves and women’s S-lines. However, it doesn’t just visually capture their beauty — it also holds the secrets to their mysterious bodies [James: *Cough*, *Splutter*]. It was tested on 300 women in their 20s and 30s in a “bottle hand printing test,” and they selected it as the most convenient and comfortable to grip and hold.

파나블루 마케팅팀 이만 팀장은 “먹는샘물 시장 조사 결과 휴대용 물을 구입하는 소비자 가운데 80% 이상이 여성이었다”면서 “이에 맞춰 슈어는 여성 몸에 꼭 맞는 물의 성분과 그립감 뿐만 아니라 기본 색상도 그동안 생수 제품에 많이 사용되어 왔던 블루(Blue)계열 대신 핑크앤퍼블(Pink & Purple)톤을 채택하게 되었다”고 말했다.

Panablu marketing team manager Lee Man said, “The results of a survey of the bottled water market showed that over 80% of consumers were women,” and that “Sure is not just a product with a grip and components perfectly designed for women’s bodies, but so too were the colors pink and purple chosen rather than the blue which most bottled waters have.”

[James: Strangely, hourglass-shaped bottles have also been claimed to be the perfect shape for women's hands, and indeed Icis 8.0's ribbed bottle too.]

(Sources: left, right)

하이트맥주 ‘S’ – 여자를 위한 저(低)도수, 저칼로리, 식이섬유 첨가로 장 운동 촉진까지

Hite “S Beer” for Women — Low alcohol level, low calories, added fiber, designed to aid bowel movements

하이트맥주는 올 여름 여대생 홍보대사를 대대적으로 모집하는 등 ‘여성’과 ‘S라인’에 컨셉을 맞춘 여성전용 맥주 ‘S맥주’의 마케팅 활동을 대폭 강화했다. S맥주는 식이섬유 첨가, 저 칼로리, 저 도수, 매혹적인 에메랄드 빛깔 용기, S라인 모양의 전용 잔 등 여러모로 여성을 닮은 맥주다.

This summer, Hite Beer recruited female university students on a grand scale to market “S Beer,” a beer designed for women combining the concepts of “woman” and “S-line.” S Beer as added fiber, low calories, low alcohol content, a seductive emerald bottle, with glasses in S-line shapes that resemble women’s bodies in many ways.

[James: These are the glasses referred to (has anyone seen one in real life?). In contrast to those claims about them, much of the early marketing for the product -- when this article was written -- seemed to center on how much women's bodies could resemble the bottles rather than vice-versa, such as on the left above.]

S맥주에는 여성에게 꼭 필요한 식이섬유가 다량으로 함유되어 장 운동을 촉진시키고 체형관리에 도움을 준다. 칼로리도 100ml당 40~50kcal인 다른 맥주와 달리 30kcal로 낮춰 다이어트 하는 여성도 부담 없이 마실 수 있도록 했다. 평소 술을 잘 못하는 여성을 고려해 알코올 도수도 4.0%로 낮췄다.

S Beer has a large amount of the fiber absolutely essential for women, and through aiding bowel movements helps them to maintain their figures. Whereas most beers have 40-50 kcal per 100ml, this has been reduced to 30 kcal in S Beer, allowing even women on diets to drink it freely. Also, the alcohol content has been reduced to 4.0%, making it suitable for women who can’t usually drink.

이 외에도 국내에서는 처음으로 용기 전체에 매혹적인 에메랄드 컬러를 적용해 세련된 느낌을 표현했다. 가장 눈에 띄는 것은 S맥주의 전용 잔으로 ‘S라인’으로 날씬하게 굴곡진 여체를 형상화 한 점이 특징이다.

In addition, S Beer is the first domestic beer to have a seductive, emerald-colored bottle, giving off a sophisticated feeling. But the most notable thing are the exclusive glasses, slender and curved in the shape of a woman’s S-line.

(Source)

파리바게뜨 ‘로얄푸딩’ – 작고 투명한 유리병이 핸드백에 쏙… 휴대성 높이고, 칼로리 낮추고

Paris Baguette’s “Royal Pudding” — With a small, clear glass container, just drop it in your handbag…high portability, low calories

파리바게뜨는 2030 여성들을 위한 유럽식 프리미엄 디저트 ‘로얄푸딩’을 출시했다. ‘로얄푸딩’은 신선한 우유와 달걀, 카라멜 시럽이 독특한 맛의 조화를 이루는 제품이다. 입안에 넣는 순간 여느 푸딩에서 맛 볼 수 없는 부드러움과 달콤함을 느낄 수 있다. 하지만, ‘로얄푸딩’은 달콤한 맛에 비해 칼로리는 낮다. 80g 제품 한 개 당 칼로리는 140kcal로 일반 테이크 아웃 카페라떼의 칼로리(300kcal) 보다 저 열량을 자랑한다.

Paris Baguette has launched its premium, European-style desert “Royal Pudding,” aimed at 20 and 30-something women. Royal Pudding is a product with a taste that has achieved a unique harmony of fresh milk, eggs, and caramel syrup. Unlike most puddings, you can taste the softness and sweetness as soon as you put in your mouth. Yet despite that sweetness, it is low in calories. It boasts only 140kcal per 80g, whereas a takeout cafe latte has 300kcal [James: Granted. But how big would that latte be?].

‘로얄푸딩’의 용기는 작고 귀여운 숙녀를 닮았다. 그래서 여성들의 큰 호응을 얻고 있다. 한 손에 잡히는 투명하고도 깜찍한 용기는 시각적 만족감과 함께 핸드백 속에도 부담 없이 들어가 휴대의 편리함을 높였다.

The Royal Pudding container resembles a small, cute lady, so it has a wide appeal to women. Conveniently fitting in one hand, the small, cute container is highly portable. It can be simply dropped in a handbag and carried without a thought.

(Source)

대상웰라이프 ‘닥터클로렐라S’ – 여성전용 클로렐라 제품, 복용 간편하고 변비와 피부미용에 효과

Daesang WellLife “Dr. Chlorella S” — A chlorella product for women, an easy, effective medicine for constipation and skin beauty

대상웰라이프의 ‘닥터클로렐라S’는 외부 이동이 많고 바쁜 커리어 우먼을 위한 여성전용 클로렐라 제품으로 성분부터 형태까지 여성을 중심에 두고 만든 건강기능식품이다. 닥터클로렐라S에는 ‘락츄로스’가 첨가되어 직장인 여성에게 많이 나타나는 스트레스로 인한 만성 소화불량과 변비를 해소하는데 도움을 준다. 또한 각종 식물성 영양성분을 비롯한 식이섬유질이 들어있어 업무에 지친 직장인 여성들의 피부 건강을 회복하는데도 효과적이다.

From its mineral components to its shape, Daesang WellLife’s Dr. Chlorella S is a chlorella product with many health functions centered on career women who are often on their feet. Dr. Chlorella S contains added lactulose, which helps relieve the stress and chronic digestion problems and constipation which many career women suffer from. It also has many vegetable nutrients and added fiber which is effective for recovering the health of tired women workers’ skin.

닥터클로렐라S의 포장은 개별 낱개 형식으로 가볍고 부피가 작아 여성들이 시간과 장소에 구애 받지 않고 복용할 수 있도록 구성되어 있다. 또한 제품의 형태도 목 넘김과 소화 시킬 때 부담이 적고 장에서의 흡수가 빨라 여성들이 선호하는 과립형으로 만들었다.

Dr. Chorella S consists of small, light pills that are easy to take wherever and whatever you’re doing [James -- It also came in powdered form]. The shape makes them easy to swallow, with the granules inside, which are quickly absorbed in the intestines, making them women’s preferred choice.

[James -- Judging by the lack of news articles and blog posts after 2009, Dr. Chlorella S was a failure. I'm guessing, because it wasn't pink? ㅋㅋㅋ]

파나블루 마케팅팀 이만 팀장은 “전통적으로 여성 소비자들에게 성공한 브랜드는 향후 브랜드 확장을 할 때 비교적 쉽게 안착할 수 있었다”면서 “식음료 시장에서 브랜드 확장이 활발하게 이뤄지고 있다는 점을 감안한다면 여성전용 식음료 제품은 앞으로도 꾸준히 출시 될 것”이라고 말했다.

Lee Man, the Panablu marketing team manager, said “Brands that were traditionally successful with female consumers could relatively easily reach them when they wanted to expand,” and that “In the food and drink product, many brands are actively considering women-targeted products. Expect to see many more of them in the future.” (End)

(Sources: left, right)

Before I forget, sorry again for the slow posting everyone, but I was very busy at work, and caught a frustrating, lingering cold. Meanwhile, have any readers encountered similar gendered campaigns for unisex products, in Korea or overseas? Also, how do any parents among you deal with your children’s attitudes to pink and blue? Please let me know!

p.s. I wasn’t joking about my own, “pink strategy” in the introduction, or about any of my purchases. I really do think I look fabulous with them! :D

Update: I forgot to mention these his and her “V-line” face-shapers, the ads for which can be seen almost on every other website at the moment (if you live in Korea).

Also, management company E-tribe contracted their girl-group Dal Shabet to endorse the product. Such endorsements by Korean Wave stars likely play a strong role in the propagation of Korean beauty ideals overseas:

Related Posts:

• Korean Sociological Image #64: Hourglass-shaped Drink Bottles
• “Body Changing” Diet-Drink Generously Donated to High School Students
• Korean Sociological Image #54: Sex & Drugs
• Gender Advertisements: What, boys can drink girly drinks now?
• Korean Photoshop Disaster #8: The 100% Korean Lady Burger
• Korean Sociological Image #15: Gendered Health Drinks
• Korean Sociological Image #2: Son Dambi’s Corset
• Gendered Tea-drink Advertising in South Korea (Updated)
• Gender Socialization (Category)

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

(Source)

Has it been a year already?

Sorry for the slow posting everyone — I’ve had a bad cold for over two weeks. But, serendipitously, it’s a great time to be thinking about Miss A again, their second album Hush being released just a few hours ago.

Sure enough, I’ve just learned about the connections between their 2012 song I Don’t Need a Man and Independent Women by Destiny’s Child, through translating the following music column. I completely overlooked them when I compared Miss A’s song to Bloom by Ga-in, and it’s made me keen to learn more about the genealogy of the seven new songs coming up too, especially as JYP is no longer composing them.

Unfortunately though, letting us know about those connections proves to be just about the only thing of interest in the column, and in hindsight they were also pointed out by many other commentators last year, who discussed them in much greater depth. So, after I post my translation, I’ll do my best to sum-up that earlier commentary, for the sake of readers like me who are also only just now learning of the ties to Destiny’s Child.

But first, to refresh your memory (with just the Korean, Romanized, and English lyrics):

The music video itself:

Here’s Destiny’s Child Independent Women:

Here are the lyrics alone:

Technically, those last two were Part 1, and here’s Part 2 below, which is why (duh) Miss A’s mini-album was called Independent Women Part 3. But beyond this sole video, I’ve been unable to find any more information about Part 2 specifically, so would appreciate it if any readers can help out.

Finally, here’s a video of Destiny’s Child reuniting to perform the song at the last Superbowl. Also, see Sociological Images for a response to misguided complaints of Beyoncé’s (alleged) sexual objectification in her performance, which I applied to K-pop here:

Which brings us to the (curiously-titled) column:

고민없는 이야기는 고민없이 들어야 할까 / Do We Have to Listen to a Story Without Worry…Without Worry?

Ilda Women’s Journal, 6 October 2013

– 음악칼럼 ‘블럭의 한 곡 들여다보기’가 연재됩니다. 필자 ‘블럭(bluc)’님은 음악웹진 스캐터브레인의 편집자이자 흑인음악 매거진 힙합엘이의 운영진입니다. [편집자 주]

– This is the music column “Let’s Check out a Song with Bluc.” Bluc is a writer for webzine Scatterbrain and the manager of black music magazine Hiphop LE.

데스티니스 차일드의 오마주 / A Homage to Destiny’s Child

“남자 없이 잘 살아”는 2012년 10월에 미스에이(Miss A)가 EP(Extended Play, 미니앨범) [Independent Women Part III]를 발표하면서, 첫 싱글로 선택하여 활동했던 곡이다. 곡은 나쁘지 않은 흥행 성적을 거두었고, 생각보다 크지는 않았지만 가사 내용으로도 나름의 주목을 받았다.

In October last year, “I Don’t Need a Man” was released as the lead track of Miss A’s extended play mini-album, “Independent Women Part III.” It was moderately popular, and the lyrics also received some attention, although not as much as I expected.

음반 보도자료에서는 이 곡을 “당당하고 독립적인 여성상을 그린 서던힙합 곡”이라고 소개했다. 근데 정말 이 곡은 홍보 내용 그대로일까?

The music media portrayed introduced the song as “Southern [US] hip-hop style with bold and independent women.” But do the contents live up to the PR hype?

(Source)

우선 앨범 제목(Independent Women Part III)이 다소 뜬금없이 파트 3으로 건너뛰는 이유에 대해서 찾아보니, 이전에 미국 3인조 알앤비 걸그룹 데스티니스 차일드(Destiny’s Child)가 “Independent Women” 이라는 이름의 곡을 Part 1과 2라는 이름으로 발표한 바 있다. 말하자면 이번 앨범의 컨셉을 데스티니스 차일드의 오마주 격으로 쓴 것이다. 전후 이야기를 알고 보니 원곡들의 가사와 의도를 따라 “남자 없이 잘 살아”라는 곡을 만든 이유, 동시에 타이틀 곡으로 밀게 된 이유를 어느 정도 짐작할 수 있다.

Frist, the album title — Independent Women Part III — comes a little out of the blue. Researching the reason for it, I learned it came from the “Independent Women” Part 1 and Part 2 songs of Destiny’s Child, a former US girl’s R&B group — this album concept was written as a homage to them. From this, I was able to make a guess as to why Miss A followed the lyrics of the original Destiny’s Child song(s) and why they made “I Don’t Need a Man” the title track.

그러나 미안한 이야기지만 데스티니스 차일드의 원곡은 그렇게 감수성을 지닌 곡이 아니다. 2000년에 발표된 영화 <미녀 삼총사>의 OST인데, 영화는 세 명의 천사라고 불리는 사립탐정들이 사건을 해결해 나가는 내용이다. 극중 세 여성은 당당하고 진취적인 캐릭터이다. 그런 맥락을 따라 OST 중 하나로 “Independent Women”이라는 곡을 쓴 것이다.

However, although I hate to say this, the original Destiny’s Child song is not very inspiring or moving. It was made in 2000 for the movie Charlie’s Angels, about three private detectives who solve crimes. Their characters are all bold and take the initiative, and the song “Independent Women” followed accordingly.

(Source)

영화 자체가 할리우드 특유의 가부장적 남성성이나 여성의 시각적 상품화를 벗어난 것이 아니기 때문에, OST 수록곡 역시 영화가 지닌 감수성에서 크게 벗어나지 않는다. 그나마 강인한 캐릭터에 어느 정도 틀을 맞춰가다 보니 “남자 없이 잘 살아”와 비슷한 내용의 가사가 나오게 된 것이다.

Because the movie just has the typical Hollywood patriarchal male sexuality and visual objectification of women, likewise the songs in the soundtrack don’t stray very far from that vibe. Nevertheless the lyrics of “Independent Women” do match the actresses’ strong characters and the later lyrics of “I Don’t Need a Man” to a certain extent.

(Source)

“당당하고 독립적인 여성상”이란 무엇일까 What is the form of a bold, independent woman?

사실 원곡의 가사와 비교해보면 “남자 없이 잘 살아”의 절반 정도는 번안에 가깝다. 원곡과 이 곡 모두 들었을 때 뚜렷한 상이 떠오르지 않는 일차적이고 추상적인 문구들로 채워져 있다. 그래서 가사는 다소 유치하게 느껴진다. 그리고 “나는 함부로 날 안 팔아”, 혹은 “잘나진 않았지만 자신감은 넘쳐”, “남자 믿고 놀다 남자 떠나면 어떡할 거야” 등 한 발짝 빼는 듯한 뉘앙스로 수세적인 표현들이 이어진다.

About half of the lyrics of “I Don’t Need a Man” closely follow those of “Independent Women.” When you listen to both songs, no clear images emerge, as they are full of vague, abstract lines. So, to a large extent the lyrics sound childish. Also, lines like “I won’t sell myself short,” “I’m not the best but I’m full of confidence,” and “If you just mindlessly attach yourself to a man, what will you do if he leaves?” and so on stand out for their defensiveness.

그 결과, 곡은 독립적인 여성을 표방하려는 시도는 좋았으나 일종의 편견을 드러내고 있다. 남녀간의 관계만이 ‘관계’인가? 하는 질문부터 해볼 수도 있겠으나 생략하고, ‘독립적인 여성상’이라고 했을 때 단순히 경제력만 이야기하고 있다는 점, 동시에 그 경제력이 남성에 비해 낮다는 전제만을 깔고 있다는 점에서 그러하다. 남자가 작사해서 그렇다고는 말하지 않겠다. 혼자 작사했는지 혹은 멤버들의 의견이 반영되었는지도 모르는 일이고, 그렇게 생각하는 것도 일종의 선입견이 될 수 있으니까.

As a result, although it’s a good attempt at propounding the notion of independent women, it shows certain biases. First, are relationships between men and women the only ones to be concerned about? I could start with that question, but will pass. Instead, also note that when the song talks about independent women, it’s simply in terms of their economic power, and moreover this economic power is always compared to that of men’s and implied to be lower. I’m not saying that this is because the lyrics were written by a man, as we don’t know if he wrote the song alone, or if he incorporated the group members’ opinions. But either way, it does show this bias.

(Source)

아쉬운 것은, 별 고민이 느껴지지 않는 가사이다. 우리 사회 전반적인 인식의 수준에 비춰보았을 때 이 곡은 큰 문제는 없지만, 나름의 반향을 일으킬 수도 있을 것이다. 그러나 그것은 정확한 위치가 없는 반쪽짜리 반향일 뿐이다. 독립적인 여성상을 메인 테마로 세운 것은 좋았다. 흔히 가부장제 사회에서 이야기하는 ‘수동적, 피지배적, 감정적, 도구적’인 여성에서 벗어난 것도 좋다. 하지만 자신감 넘친다고 말하면서도 어딘가 부족해 보이는 자존감이 아쉬운 것이다. 어쩌면 ‘남자 없이 잘 사는 여자’ 역시 성공과 물질, 외적 조건을 중시하는 기존 사회가 요구하는 여성상의 변형 판이 아닐까.

Unfortunately, the lyrics prove to be shallow. If you consider our society’s general knowledge [of feminism, the position of women etc.], this is not a big problem, but it does mean that the song, which was intended to rock the boat, only caused a few ripples.

[Still],it is good that it ran with the theme of independent women, and challenged common images of passive, controlled, sensitive, and objectified women in our patriarchal society. Also, it puts a spin on societal norms that require women to emphasize success and consumption. However, while it is good that the lyrics were overflowing with confidence, at the same time the protagonist(s) don’t have enough self-respect.

마지막으로, 이 곡은 서던 힙합(미국 남부에서 발생하여 유행하는 곡 스타일) 곡이라고 하기에는 다소 무리가 있다. 물론 서던 힙합이라고 할 수 있는 BPM(음악속도)과 분위기를 지니고 있기는 하나, 풀어내는 방식은 팝 곡이라고 할 수 있다. 안무 속에 잠시 남부에서 유행했던 춤 스타일들을 차용하였기에 서던 힙합이라고 했을 가능성도 크다. 그러나 이 춤도 사실 2000년대 후반에 유행했던, 시기가 좀 지난 춤이다. 개인적으로는 이래 저래 아쉬움이 많은 곡이다.

Finally, it is difficult to claim that this is Southern US Hip-hop. Certainly, it has the atmosphere and BPM of the genre, but it comes across as pop — there’s a strong possibility that it’s called hip-hop only because of the style of dance (and, being popular in the late-2000s, that would make the dance style in the video quite old). [Either way], personally I have a lot of regrets about this song. (End)

(Source)

And now on to (hopefully) more incisive commentary. But first, a reminder of what made Destiny’s Child — and still makes Beyoncé — so distinctive:

This hardworking act of [Destiny's Child] could be guaranteed a fair share of [their huge sales] because Beyoncé took a major role in songwriting and production. On The Writing’s On The Wall, for instance, she wrote and co-produced 17 tracks with beat architects Shek’spere and Timbaland, helping to create the Destiny’s Child trademark sound of bass rhythms, baroque samples, and daring vocal harmonies, a cross between TLC and Kraftwerk. By the time of 2001′s Survivor, Beyoncé had graduated to sole producer on most tracks. Despite disruptive line-up changes, the group remained consistently at the top of the charts. Much of this was due to Beyoncé’s leadership and innate sense of what was appropriate for them….

….Within a few years Beyoncé had ‘done a Diana Ross’ and embarked upon a widely successful solo career…I wasn’t surprised — the young woman I met [in 2000] was determined and focused, her single-minded approach tempered by a Southern-style grace….

…Second singer Kelly Rowland didn’t fare too badly either…Destiny’s Child had learned from the experience of their idols The Supremes, retaining control and living out the message of independence that they preached in their songs.

(Lucy O’Brien, She Bop: The Definitive History of Women in Popular Music (2012), pp. 249-250; my emphases. Source, above)

As such icons, I’d really like to like their music. Alas, I don’t, and glossed over references to them a year ago because I much preferred to read about Miss A and Ga-in instead. Also, because what girl-group with a bit of spunk isn’t glibly compared to one from the ‘girl-power era‘ these days?

Indeed — seriously — I found one in the very next tab I opened as I typed that:

The front woman of 2NE1, the undisputed queens of the wildly popular Korean subgenre known as K-Pop, CL (aka Chaelin Lee) launched her solo career this summer with the single “The Baddest Female.” The lithe and spunky ballerina–meets–Fly Girl careers in and out of English and Korean, rapping and singing about gold chains, B-boys, and private planes. The accompanying video racked up around 1 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours, but despite that success, CL vows not to Beyoncé her bandmates to the curb, citing personal exploration as the impetus for stepping out on her own. Where have we heard that one before?

(Source. In fairness, I too just compared Ailee to Beyoncé in my latest K-pop review for Busan Haps. But I can — and will — justify that in a later post!)

That aside, I’m certainly paying attention now. While I can’t pretend that the following is an exhaustive look at the debates about both songs, from what I have read I’ve found that people who compare them generally make one of two arguments.

The first, is that any sense of feminist empowerment gained from Miss A’s song is a form of false consciousness. After all, you cant help but note it was written by a man, namely JYP himself; that it seems to be about nothing but men; and, some claim, that it even seems to be directed towards men too. Whereas men are only notable for their absence in Independent Women.

In particular, one anonymous commenter lays the blame for this squarely on the male-dominated idol-system as a whole:

The main obstacle to real female empowerment messages in Kpop is that these “feminist messages” are coming from idols whose every statement, performance and lyric comes from the minds of men. All the directors of note are men, all but a slight few of the songwriters are men, the entertainment companies are all run by men. See the trend? I wonder right now, honestly, if a strong-willed Korean girl who wants to write songs and speak out on gender inequality in her country would even be heard — that is just wrong.

2NE1 is a group I respect very much because a lot of their music comes from a place of female empowerment, not specifically male bashing or placing too much emphasis on others instead of self. I like that, and think it is the right way to go — but if that message stopped selling records, would they tell YG to shove it and keep screaming female empowerment because they believe strongly in what they are doing and their message? More importantly, would they be ABLE to keep going without Teddy Park writing those messages into their songs?

The start isn’t going to happen until someone starts caring more about the message than being a world famous idol. Somebody has to lay the groundwork in Kpop for real empowering feminist theory — not just sing a half-feminist message without knowing a God damn thing about the subject in order to sell records. Otherwise, all we’ll ever see from Kpop is a girl group come out with a song like this one every now and again…

And, expanding on that last in a later comment: (source, right)

Less hollow girl power anthems targeted at consumers, and more sincere female empowerment statements are needed for Korea. Especially if an artist is going to scream female empowerment on one single, and then go right back to dropping a feminist message to go to whichever new message their writers deign to have them cover on the next. Consistency is needed so much more than a girl power message that is just going to get lost as soon as a group moves onto the next promotional cycle.

I make many of the same points about the need for a consistent feminist message in my Who are the Korean Pin-up Grrrls series, and couldn’t help but note with sadness that 2NE1 are the only girl-group that come close to having one among the 14 most popular girl-groups at the moment.

That said, the second argument often made is that Miss A’s effort is actually very apt for, and even radical in its Korean context, where unmarried women tend to have much more restricted, much more dependent lives than their Western counterparts. Rebecca at Kpop for Noobcakes has written a lot about this, and is especially good — see under the screenshot — at linking it to specific scenes in the music video:

…family approval is…extremely important in finding a suitable life partner, and surely contributes to the aspirations to date a wealthier or more influential man.

Taking this in mind, this music video really goes against what Korean culture has to say about dating, while still maintaining the values of Korean society as a whole. Koreans are very work focused, and believe that the only way to be successful is to work hard. This music video’s goal is to tell women that as long as they work hard they should feel good about themselves. The first few lines of the first verse are about how proud she is about living paycheck to paycheck providing for herself, and paying her own rent.

She goes on to talk about how most Korean women (and men) live with their parents until marriage. That’s certainly true, although also note that Korea has one of the highest rates of growth of single households in the world (with more of them now than in both the US and Australia), albeit most of them being middle-aged men and elderly women rather than Sex and the City-esque singles (my emphases):

Since it’s so hard to rent a space by oneself, many young men and women live with their parents. This is acceptable in Korean society, because like other Asian societies, Korea has just recently transitioned from a “clan” or “family” first mentality. As a result, young women have a tendency to rely on their parents for the purchase of items, as shown in Jia’s first verse. The girl with the Kangaroo card [above] keeps sucking up to her father to get items that she wants…

…As media themselves, Miss A go in a Lipstick Feminism direction, and don’t give up traditionally feminine items throughout most of the music video as they are allowed to wear dresses and makeup. They even have giant beauty products dispersed throughout the video. It’s their lack of reliance on a man to purchase items for themselves and their disinterest in the dating scene that goes directly against the theme of most Kpop music videos and Korean dramas.

(Source)

So, is I Don’t Need a Man by, about, and for men, or is it Independent Women’s kid-Korean cousin? Both arguments have merits really, and they’re not mutually exclusive either. But I’m tending towards the latter view, as it centers on Korean women’s increasing financial power and reflection of that in their consumption choices, for which they’ve been victims of a popular social and media backlash ever since the 1990s, and especially from the late-2000s (see my Revealing the Korean Body Politic series — Part One, Two, Three, Four; also here and here — for more information).

Gomushin Girl’s comment to my post on Bloom illustrates this well:

I think that there’s an effort to portray Miss A’s members as criticizing feminine consumption in Korea (note that they’re lecturing the ladies getting their hair done, etc., and are always positioned well ahead of background couples and women who are actually engaging in consumption) in “I Don’t Need a Man.” I don’t know that it’s visually as clear and effective as it could be, but it *is* there.

Which is also, as noted above, a problem – it positions Miss A as “good” through their disengagement in feminine habits, while “bad” women allow men to support them and fund their consumption of material goods. It also doesn’t acknowledge that many women (and men) *enjoy* getting their hair and nails done, dressing stylishly, or shopping, in a way that is independent of how it equips them for the male gaze…It also gets a little confused in its capitalist critique, constantly mentioning that it’s better to have a small salary from satisfying work than lots of money through other means, but also mentions things like owning ones own car, which for most young Koreans would be a bit of a luxury purchase. Even a decent used car will probably cost you more than many luxury handbags (which you can also get used).

To be clear, I don’t think that Miss A’s song is a fantastic manifesto, but I don’t think it’s nearly as problematic as [another commenter was] making it out to be. Particularly in a place like Korea, where marital/dating status really does define women, singing clearly and distinctly about financial emancipation from (male) lovers and parents is . . . well, kind of awesome. And I don’t think in Korea that a song that did not relate that emancipation to gender would be either convincing or very meaningful. That particular kind of *not* needing is significant (source, above).

I would just add that my impression is that people are more critical of I Don’t Need a Man than Independent Women because it seemed have a greater emphasis on consumption. So, it was with a certain surprise and irony that I read the following at Snippets of Stories, albeit written by someone who is also a complete beginner on Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child:

I am extremely ignorant when it comes to Beyoncé, especially compared to most of y’all reading this, but the thing I find most fascinating about her work is the materialism of it. Pretty much every song I can think of off the top of my head — again, we’re talking the most frequently played songs, my knowledge is pretty shallow — relies on very specific, recognizable details of ownership and consumption to get the message across. Such as the car keys and suitcases in “Irreplaceable,” the “come pick up your clothes” line* of “Me, Myself and I,” the discussions of what can and can’t be bought in “Independent Women (Part I)” and “Bills, Bills, Bills,” the Dereon jeans in “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” and “Tennis shoes, don’t even need to buy a new dress” in “Crazy in Love.”

(Source)

And on that note, let me again defer to readers — probably most of you — more knowledgeable than myself. Also, my apologies to any of you that expected a post on Hush — I too would have preferred to complete this one two weeks ago (sniff!), and I’ll try to give their new album a proper look soon. But first, my promised post on A’s Doll House!

Update: Aaaaand…as I searched for that final illustration above, I discovered I’d completely missed the excellent “Is this feminism? A critical look at miss A’s I don’t need a man” at J-Popping, which references and considerably expands upon “[Op-Ed] Questioning miss A’s ‘I Don’t Need a Man’: Are They Truly Independent?” at allkpop. Enjoy!