The Rise of Korean Feminism in the 5G Era
Layout by Elle Bixby
Some might recall Gangnam station from the old viral song “Gangnam Style.” Others who are better versed in Korean culture might picture a thriving metropolitan center full of skyscrapers, bustling people, and flashing neon signs. However, for many Korean women, Gangnam station is both a memorial of a horrible hate crime and a symbol of the Korean feminist movement.
Just as how the murder of Sarah Everard sparked the discourse on violence against women and misogynic hate crimes, the “Gangnam Station Incident” of 2016 in South Korea caused a dramatic change in the public psyche. The murder of a young woman in broad daylight by a stranger in Seoul’s richest and supposedly safest sector shocked the Korean public who grew up with victim-blaming culture and the Korean safety myth. Despite the victim’s confession of his misogynic motives, the court refused to recognize misogyny as a hate crime and instead gave the criminal a lighter sentence for alleged “schizophrenia”. This kindled strong rage and fear among young Korean women. Their organization on Twitter, later, would become the powerhouse of the Korean feminist movement that mobilized disconnected groups of women and exercised influence over various forms of media.
Before the “Gangnam Station Incident”, Korean feminist movements had been overshadowed by democratization and labor movements. The few communities that did exist were heavily centered around issues concerning childcare. However, the feminists on Twitter began to address the problems that were long considered taboo or peripheral with unprecedented force. In 2018, Korean women had been among the most fervent supporters of the #Me_Too movement, with tens of thousands of protestors gathering in the streets to demand justice and deplore the lack of legislation punishing and preventing sexual assault cases (Gibson, 2020). Previously high profile, sexual assault cases of people like poet Ko-Eun, filmmaker Gideuk Kim, politician Hee-Jeong Ahn, and playwright Yun-Taek Lee were backed by solid evidence and witnesses. However, Korean sex-crime laws complicated adequate punishment, as the law only recognizes sexual violence when extreme force or threat is involved and disregarded digital sex crimes entirely. Knowing that such laws too often silenced victims, Korean feminists allied both online and in the streets to pressure the court to acknowledge exploitation of power as well.
Along with uncovering sexual assault in the workplace, the MeToo movement in South Korea also exposed sexual exploitation in schools. #School_Me_Too was among the most searched hashtag on Korean Twitter in 2018, when victims and witnesses from hundreds of schools established a network to file allegations against the exploitative teachers (Ock, 2019). This movement revealed the long systematic abuse that lurked under Confucian patriarchy, which granted male teachers absolute power in the classroom. Furthermore, it highlighted the failure of the Korean law to protect children. Korean law set the age of consent at 13, which blocked the middle and high school victims of grooming sexual violence from seeking legal help. Although most of the #School_Me_Too cases were dropped due to the reluctance of the Korean government and court to address them, the discourse the movement sparked around the protection of adolescents led to the mass protests in 2019 and 2020.
Just as feminists organized themselves online, criminals also exploited online spaces for digital sex crimes. Especially, “digital web hards”, where users trade pirated media, and right-wing websites such as Ilbe and FMKorea encouraged users to set up micro cameras illegally and upload the footage of women in intimate situations. Despites repeated requests to shut down the sites, the government refused on the behalf of the criminals’ freedom of expression and privacy. Consequently, checking every nail hole for cameras in every public restroom became a routine. Moreover, as Korea never enforced the law against digital sex crimes, the users invented “Deepfake commissions” where they requested deep-faked sex videos of their acquaintances and used the footage to blackmail the victims. As a response, in 2019, over 100,000 women gathered in the streets to demand governmental action. It was the largest protest without a particular leader or organization, as it was organized entirely on Twitter. By employing social media as a tool to arrange and broadcast the protest, Korean women declared, “my life is not your porn.” (Choe, 2020)
Although feminism in Korea is still met with harsh backlash, change is starting to happen. The public rage around the owner of the world’s largest child pornography site, Jeong-woo Son, prompted legislation forbidding unconsented videotaping and deep fakes. While users of his “Welcome to Video” site received sentences varying from 5 years to life in the UK and US, the operator himself only served 18 months in jail and escaped US’s extradition request under the protection of the Korean court (Choe, 2020). However, the global outrage regarding Son pressured the court to consider sexual exploitation of children more seriously and the predators of the “Nth room” crime, another systematic sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, were punished severely as digital sex criminals for the first time. The two mayors of Korea’s largest cities were brought down from power after the disclosure of their sexual assaults. The persistent petitions and protests also pressured Congress to raise the age of consent from 13 to 16 and to raise the maximum sentence of severe sex criminals from 12 years to a full life sentence. Congresswomen are working to broaden the legal concepts of marriage and family to include families outside the patriarchal norms, and Korean feminists, both online and offline, are starting to step outside the discourse of safety to demand economic and political equality.
Despite the absence of strong leadership, Korean feminists have dramatically transformed one of OECD’s most patriarchal countries in just 4 years. I believe this proposes a new model of sustainable social change where the community, instead of a handful of individuals, bears the burden of burnouts and threats. (959)
References
Gibson, Jenna. “Will South Korea Finally Have Its Reckoning on Sex Crimes?”, The Diplomat, August 2020.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/will-south-korea-finally-have-its-reckoning-on-sex-crimes/
Choe, Sanghoon. “South Korea Denies U.S. Request to Extradite Operator of Child Pornography Site”, New York Times, July 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/world/asia/south-korea-child-pornography-extradition.html
Choe, Sanghoon. “Suspect Held in South Korean Crackdown on Sexually Explicit Videos”, New York Times, March 2020.
Ock, Hyunju. “Despite #MeToo, Change Yet to Come to Schools”, The Korea Herald, March 2019.