While the policies of Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, and the Korean government have aimed to create a balance between life and work, it has failed to meet this objective, due to a lack of support from companies, and men's participation in child care and domestic work. Korean women have nowhere near the same opportunities as a man in terms of careers, institutional and party politics, and business opportunities. In fact, Koreans still regard merit-based entry requirements as the fairest process. For example, women perform very well, better than their male counterparts, in many qualifying exams, currently. Yet, Korean young women are still very frustrated, that no substantial changes have been made in gender relations. A new form of feminism at the grass-root level has emerged recently and throughout the whole history. South Korean women have recently been taking a leading role in challenging cultural norms that impede gender equality. We are dealing with history of feminism in South Korea here. As we learned in the previous lecture, the period of 1920s to 30s was introduced as the harbinger of feminism in Korea. The feminist movement in Korea came to the forward in the late 1980s. At that time, vigorous democratization movement against the military authoritarian regime was sweeping the whole county. The women's movement was not considered as an independent movement, but rather as being under the progressive democracy movement. This mainstream perception argued for the integration of a feminist movement into the democratization movement, whose success will inevitably make a way to women's right and gender equality. The women's movement, women's liberation, whereby, women laborers and marginalized people, ‘minjung’ in Korean, at the center stage, to unite with other women in struggling against a ruling class in achieving liberation. That is, the site of class struggle was the only legitimate political field, where women's experiences acquired meaning. However, mid to late 1990s witnessed an increasing emphasis on gender identity politics in women's movement, away from coalition politics with the male dominant progressive movement group. This is an outcome of increasing number of individuals and groups, who criticized the allocation of women as the Other in society, and advanced and regain women's self-respect and autonomy. New group of feminists was born on campus, by those who studied feminism in universities. In 1990s, many universities opened up feminism lectures, which brought feminism to popular discourse in Korea. Campus feminism began to spread and this trend created the so-called young feminists in the middle to late 1990s. These new, young families led cultural movements of their own independent from of those of male, progressive activists. They established issues of sexuality, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and date rape as a prominent agenda to be talked of. Their catchphrase was “politicization of everyday life”. They actively manifested about sexuality by expressing resistance and desire coincidentally. One legacy of the cultures the Young Feminists movement created, that leads on until today is using nicknames and losing honorifics in conversing with the members of their organizations. This new cultural cause aims to resist organizational hierarchy, and authoritarianism in Korea, that was sustained by the Korean language's unique use of honorifics and forms of address. This culture rejected patriarchal family relations that psychologically oppressed women, by skipping the last names, and age in addressing others. Now young feminists could be emancipated from the authorities embedded in patrilineal lineage and seniority. Many women's organizations were also established in 1990s. They challenged patriarchy with well-structured social movements. Some of the success of campaigns and projects are the following. First, among the activities are the movement of the repeal of the Hoju System, which designates and registers male family head. Coalition and collective efforts, led by the women's organization, successfully abolished this Hoju system in year 2005. Secondly, the litigation of over the extra point system. This extra point system runs on additional 5% in points to the man who has completed the military service towards government service employment examination for low to mid-level positions. Most men considered this system as an obvious and justified reward to the sacrifice in the army, while the families and women argued against the systems inequality and inequity, along with its effectiveness in evaluating job seekers, capabilities, and merits. Also, other cultural movements were initiated, supported by their vibrant activism. One such example could be Anti-Miss Korea pageant. While the pageant continues through to this day, more public discourse about objectification of women is heard these days. However, feminist women meet harsh backlashes from the mid-2000s in Korea, where misogyny was growing expansively. As mentioned earlier, the feminist movement in Korea abolished extra point system. The constitutional court of Korea found that, providing advantage points of a maximum 5% in recruitment examination, to those who served the mandatory military duty was unconstitutional in 1999. This ruling emotionally united Korean men. Those who completed military and men in general shared their outrage on the ruling, in the early online communities of late 1990s, which led into diverse forms of cyber-terrorism against women. The argument that women are taking away men's advantages they rightfully owned, began to gain strength. Then all fingers pointed at feminists, who were the cause of all troubles. This form of misogyny continued up to the new millennium, and spread its target to women in general in South Korea. Men felt that males' established this position, and vested interest as taken away by a growing number of successful women. They were no longer to be guaranteed of their breadwinner position in this neo-liberal, competitive economy, which made them anxious and insecure. Also, as more women hold the consumption power, men became also objectified and commercialized in the image market, which reversed the conventional male-female positions. This unfamiliar trend was making men become uneasy with women's growing prominence in Korean economy and society. If the form the previous feminists fought was patriarchal Korean structures, today's feminists are fighting a war against the misogyny and similar sentiments erupting in South Korea. Since 2015, feminism spread rapidly as a popularized movement among young Korean women. In June of year 2015, a group of young feminists called Megalia appeared online. Wikipedia Korea defines Megalia as a website created in opposition to misogyny. The founders coined this site after the title of Norwegian feminist novel, ‘Egalia's Daughters’, also creating Internet forum called MERS Gallery. Netizens who criticized misogyny in male-dominant Internet communities started to directly mimic the misogyny, reversing the attacks on men as a strategy for social movement. Such a strategy is known to be Mirroring. The Megalian takes direct action as ethics of the opposing power. The fixed prejudice on traditional gender roles, hatred, belittlement, negligence and threats, which had been monopolized among men against women, were deployed strategically in this movement. This mirroring by women exposed the misogyny and backwardness of Korean's patriarchal culture. By adopting their sexist languages to belittle women, this new feminist movement not only ridiculed and criticized men's behavior, but it popularized new type of feminism grounded in a direct action oriented movement. Empowered by this side, members posted sticky notes in public spaces defending women's rights and released identities and private information of the murderer who killed an innocent women near Kangnam subway station. Young feminists against the pornography and sexual violence say these behaviors as home-grown acts as a fraternal complicity of sexual abuse, misogyny and gendered crimes. These activists led a successful campaign in shutting down Sora-Net, a representative pornographic website in South Korea. Megalia feminists have been criticized by some people for mimicking male aggression to empower women. Nevertheless, the rise of this grass-roots feminism reflects the severity of sexual abuse, sexual violence, and gender inequality against women, despite South Korea's unprecedented economic growth and democratization. For more information, check these materials.
