Discussion #4

Essay

5. How does the Seungri scandal connect to Korean cultural attitudes about gender and other recent gender related protests and news items in Korea? How do the actions of Seungri and others connected to this scandal demonstrate the attitudes that (too many) men in Korea have towards women?

Kaylyn:

As society is growing and more women involved in the industry, the stereotype of women still happening. The increasing of the female worker does not lead to equality. Female has more disadvantaged than male in different area. For example, their workplace, wages, and even social relationship are inequality treated as male. To make gender equality throughout the country, people take action to protect women’s right.

In Korean online communities, gender inequality can be seen everywhere. Korean male even makes a post on a right-wing website called Ilbe Storehouse that talks about traits of their ideal wife. These traits included “serving her husband whenever he wants to have sex,” “being ready for physical punishment if her husband’s shirt is not ironed every morning” and “only listening when her husband speaks, without interfering or questioning” (Lee 2018). The negative comments on female reveal how male’s attitude toward female in Korea. Male put high expectation on the female but not given female enough respect. Female more sound like their follower instead of a partner. The “privilege” of female doesn’t have to serve in the military and they don't have financial pressure to support their family which makes male post misogynistic comments online (Lee 2018). Moreover, gender inequality also happens in the K-pop industry. In order to meet society’s expectation in a male-dominated country, young female idol have to perform themselves with “erotic choreography filled with sexual innuendo” (Lin & Rudolf 2017:2). Western stereotype toward Asian women as an erotic sexual object from the idea of comfort women during World War 2 or Korean patriarchy role as women are submissive and innocent maidens; it makes the attitude against women’s equality becomes stronger (Lin & Rudolf 2017:2).

Recently, the inequality of gender in Korea has been brought up to the world because Bigbang’s member Seungri involve in prostitution for businessman, sexual assault and other illegal activity. In this scandal, Seungri and his friends create private groups chat, share sex video that they secretly filmed and make a judgment on a female. Sharing porn video without consent and using drug lead to sexual assault does not make them feel any sense of guilt. They treated women as an object that they can pick. As a world-famous celebrity, his behavior is “the representative of the nation, representative of ideal behavior, and representative of performative talent, according to Dr.CedarBough Saeji (Seo & Griffiths 2019). However, he does not fulfill his responsibility as a role model but teaching the wrong idea to young people. Furthermore, his scandal reveals the current state of women’s right and makes a turning point in Korean society.

Korean start put more attention to this social issue. More victims step up and talk about their stories. The adoption of #Metoo and a large protest group called Megalia response to the misogynistic culture and try to make change in male-dominated online communities (Jeong & Lee 2018:2). People start to aware the women’s rights issues and the continuation of protest will change the Korean gendered society in a better way.

Bibliography:

Jeong, Euisol, and Jieun Lee. "We Take the Red Pill, We Confront the DickTrix: Online Feminist Activism and the Augmentation of Gendered Realities in South Korea." Feminist Media Studies18, no. 4 (2018): 705-17.

Lee, Clarie. "Misogyny in Korean Online Communities a Serious Concern: Report." The Korea Herald. July 31, 2018.

Lin, Xi, and Robert Rudolf. "Does K-pop Reinforce Gender Inequalities? Empirical Evidence from a New Data Set." Asian Women 33, no. 4 (2017): 27-54.

Seo, Yoonjung, and James Griffiths. "Big Bang Idol Quits K-pop amid Club Prostitution Scandal." CNN. March 13, 2019.

*Currently google sites do not support the hanging indent for the bibliography, we are still trying to find a way around this.