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[Beatnik009]

~ SETTING FREE THE WOMEN

The Madonnas and the Whores - Beyond mere Sexism as we Know It, Savage Subjugation in South Korea.

(This is the third in a series of reports critical of South Korea and should be read after Part 2, Sex for Sale. A number of reports on positive aspects of Korea are available, with more in development).

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~ Shortly before 6pm today - closing time for Korean government offices - Lee Hee-Kyong became the third of her kind this day to violate an unwritten rule of Korean society. She married a foreigner.

In so doing Ms Lee was deliberately and knowingly stepping outside the often soul-destroying strictures this ancient and naive society places on its second-class citizens - women.

And unwittingly the slightly-built dress designer was contributing to a growing social problem - a shortage of marriageable Korean women for Korean men. Well, as Dr Evil would say, 'boo frikkety-hoo.'

To this writer the predicament is curiously satisfying. I have read the history, I can more or less sketch the cause-and-effect map that brings matters to this point, and I try to understand the impulse that drives Korean society to behave the way it does. In mitigation, Korea's odd, traumatic history has propelled it from the 19th Century to the 21st in a few giant leaps - leaving it too little time to metabolize the massive social shifts that came upon other industrialized societies in bite-sized bits.

But as a campaigner for equal rights, a champion of the underdog, just a regular western guy who's not a complete redneck, I do not empathize with the impending distress of Korean men. Indeed, their almost caveman-like attitudes and behaviour fill me with contempt. "What goes around comes around" I hear myself saying, "just desserts."

The short story is this: Korean men treat Korean women like dirt. Always have and still do - far, far more controlling than the western world's bad-old days.

That was okay for the boys as long as the Hermit Kingdom stayed sealed off from the world, as it was for 97 percent of its 5,000-year history. But since WWII and especially since democracy in the early '90s, the lifting of foreign travel restrictions in 1989, the advent of near universal TV and the internet, and the influx of foreigners doing business here (and thousands of other teaching English), the girls have glimpsed a world beyond the yoke and they like the look of it - big-time.

"By the early 21st Century many young Korean men won't be able to get married - at least not to Korean brides," says the Korean edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide in an article titled "Where Have All the Young Girls Gone?" It says: "A dire shortage of marriageable women is now looming over South Korea's social future. By the Year 2010 it is estimated there will be 128 single men at "peak marriage age" (27 to 30 years old) for every 100 single women at peak eligibility (age 24 to 27). And those numbers get worse every year."

What's the problem? Confucianism, that's what - at least Confucianism Korean style and a pig-headed male chauvinism that runs deep into the plasma pool. "Most families these days want only two children," states the Lonely Planet, "and one of each gender is seen as ideal. Two sons are acceptable but two daughters are not. Ultra-sound scans are used to discover the sex of a fetus, and if female she will often be aborted."

Why are Koreans down on daughters? "The answers mostly stem from the strong residual neo-Confucianism in their social mores."
Making the trend worse is the gender imbalance of marriage to foreigners. Around three Korean-alien weddings are registered with the government every day; over 80 percent of them are Korean-woman Western-male. No one has yet seriously proposed legally banning Korean girls from marrying non-Korean men, but it would be no surprise if a "social movement" discouraging those unions suddenly materialized, says the travel guide.

The Lonely Planet concludes: "Theoretically, South Korea could 'import' young women from other countries. But most of Korea's north-east neighbours such as Japan, China and Taiwan have similar problems of bride shortage. The final factor against an import solution is that few non-Korean women CAN ENDURE THE BEHAVIOUR TYPICAL OF KOREAN MEN." (caps added)

In Korea 2003 women play one of two primary roles - that of baby-minders and housekeepers, home by 10pm, prim, proper, pretty and discreet - the classic Madonna, or they are flesh for hire - whores. It's just about that blunt. (If you missed part 2, Korea has between five and ten times as many prostitutes per capita as the USA, for example).

In a nutshell, Confucianism is an implacable social system that sets up a hierarchy of relationships - males over females, older over younger, ruler over ruled. The implications of this run deep - power and wealth are crudely worshipped and crudely wielded. Sons inherit the wealth of their fathers almost completely, the first son especially, with daughters almost entirely excluded.

Women in Korea do not take their husband's name, but the children do. Until recently, in cases of divorce men automatically won custody, with women either flat out forbidden or strongly discouraged from maintaining ties with their kids.

And woe betide the woman who fails to bear a son. Nancy Abelmann writes in "An Introduction to Korean Culture; "As a 94-year-old woman told me in 1993, "I bore no sons, my life has no value - I should have died long ago." Nice. Oh Confucius, what have you wrought?

It is tempting to say that Korea is 30 or 50 or 100 years behind the west. The truth is that Confucianism is so autocratic and still so prevalent in Korea it is nigh impossible to make comparisons of this nature. We could just as well say Korea is 1,000 years behind.

So what, you say, look at Africa, the Middle East, everywhere but the richest western 20 or 30 nations - women are hugely oppressed there. Okay, but the curious thing for me is that Asia is home to at least three nations - Japan, Korea and Taiwan, in addition to the city states of Singapore and Hong Kong (sort of) - which are almost completely industrialized, where literacy is nigh 100 percent, health care is modern, unions are influential, communications technology is ground breaking - and where inter-gender values are pre-war. It is this combination of political, technical and economic modernity and ancient home-life brutality that is so - well, sad, and confusing.

Too many, if not most women in Korea live lives at best narrow, banal and unsatisfying. At worst they are miserable, harsh, loveless sagas of sacrifice and humiliation.

But don't take my word for it. The extent of the suffering is made clear in this letter to the Korea Herald in April this year. It's by Choi Yun-Jeong, of Seoul.
"Although it has been over two years since my sister got married, she has not had a baby yet. The problem is that her husband is the eldest son in his family, and Korean Confucian tradition dictates that women must have a son because the eldest son is crucial for carrying on the family bloodline.

The eldest son must perform the formal rites which pay homage to the ancestors. The eldest son is also responsible for serving his parents and taking care of them. In reality, however, it is the eldest son's wife who does all the work such as cooking, washing, ironing, housework and bearing children, preferably sons.

My sister's parents-in-law put pressure on my sister to have a son right after she got married. She tried to become pregnant, but unfortunately she could not conceive because of health problems. My sister's mother-in-law treats my sister badly. She is cold, critical and she compares my sister to her younger daughter-in-law who does have a son.

My sister was forced to give up a good job as a teacher to live with her parents-in-law and to serve them. She is miserable. Even though she knows this abuse is very unfair, it is hard for her to cope and she feels powerless.

Women were treated like baby machines and slaves by their families in the past. Women had no rights. Take, for example, the Confucian "Seven Reasons for Discarding a Wife": not obeying parents-in-law, not producing a son, lasciviousness, jealousy, disease, talkativeness and theft." What tragic lives women lived in the past as wives, daughters-in-law and mothers.

This past is no longer acceptable. Son-first attitudes have resulted in a situation where men now outnumber women. We live in modern society where women should not be expected to produce sons, spend their whole lives bringing up children and being servants for their families.

Mr Choi ends: "What can I do for my sister? The sad part of all this is that I am powerless to do anything. I can only hope and pray for a new world where Korean women will not have to suffer discrimination."

Which brings me to the real meat of the issue - what evidence is there that Mr Choi's brave new world is dawning? Is there any reason to hope Mr Choi's grandchildren and even great great grandchildren will not act out the curse of neo-Confucianism for another 100 years?

There is a kind of wishful thinking that mere exposure to the outside world will erode these values, and that change is already accelerating. Really? It is testament to the strength of Confucianism that more than 20 years of democracy and 50 years of more or less free market economic policies have done little for emancipation over here.

The most tangible evidence of Korean "glasnost" is Korean brides jumping ship in telling numbers, but is that enough to really rock the boat? The number of tourists and foreigners in Korea at any time is tiny - less than 300,000 in a population of 47 million and most of those rarely venturing beyond Seoul.

Is it realistic to expect change from within - other than extremely gradually, as the generations pass? There is little sign of an empowered feminism emerging inside Korea.

Women attend university in huge numbers, are better educated and earning more than ever, divorce is skyrocketing (facilitated by that increased earning power of women), but as Mr Choi's letter reveals - women themselves are institutionally divided by the fact that mothers-in-law benefit from the first-son system of 'patrilocal' marriage. Having suffered themselves, older women want their reward of dutiful daughters-in-law. And feeling so disempowered themselves, there is a kind of inertia among women. It's tricky when your oppressor is your father, your brother, your son and/or your husband.

I strenuously disagree with the argument that outsiders have no right to meddle in any country's domestic affairs. We might just as well says nobody outside South Africa had any right to combat apartheid. Korea's treatment of women is not nearly as bad as apartheid was for blacks, but it is still a clear violation of human rights and it ought to be challenged at every turn by anyone troubled by exploitation and oppression.

Sexism, even at this intense level, is more insidious a foe than a legislated racist system like apartheid, and tackling it is far more sensitive. For my part, all I can do is tell the story, and keep telling it. A report like this is just a drop in the ocean, but together with myriad small acts, many small drops, maybe the rate of change can be meaningfully accelerated.

It was important for South African blacks to know they had the weight of righteousness on their side, and that forces outside the country were gathering against their oppressors. Korean male society will scarcely tremble at letters like Mr Choi's and reports like this, but I feel it's important to let Korean men know that there are people here who know what's going on, who bear witness and who will speak out.

In the next instalment of the "S" list: Suffering, Shame, Stress and Soju - Four Cornerstones of the Modern Republic.

[Goodgoings]

40 reads and no reply...hmm....well I hope the unfavorable conditions improve soon.

[William Beckerson]

I think it may be because it comes across as a foreign know-it-all telling us what's wrong with the country.

[Butterfly]

[On the other hand]

Beatnik:

The comparison to apartheid South Africa is ridiculous hyperbole. Okay, a Korean woman who marries a foreigner might get ostracized by her family. That is indeed tragic, and does not speak well of her family, or of the society that condones this bigotry. But, one may ask, how does it comapare to an Afrikaaner woman marrying a black man under apartheid? The question is hypothetical, because under apartheid interracial sex was a crime punishable by a prison sentence. And, you can bet your bottom dollar that the boyfriend wouldn't get to the airport to do his midnight run.
Korean feminists sometimes find themselves bashing their heads against the proverbial brick wall trying to reform society. Well, anti-apartheid activists often found their own heads being bashed against REAL brick walls by the South African police. Korean feminists find their protests are ignored by the authorities. Guess we can't accuse the SA police of ignoring the protestors at Sharpeville, now can we?
All racism is wrong, but there is a qualitiative difference between a hidebound ideology which is nevertheless followed voluntarily(ie. Korean Confucianism), and a hidebound ideology whose precepts are enforced by the brute violence of the state.

[Beatnik009]

Butterfly, in response to Part 2, "Sex for Sale," you claimed that prostitution in the USA is as bad as it is in Korea, and then promptly posted a link to a report that put it at ONE PERCENT of American women. Studies in Korea show that it's running at about TEN PERCENT - 260,000 women excluding "independent operators," bringing the total to around 500,000. It is precisely the scale of the phenomenon in Korea, compared to other places - and in light of women's lot generally in this country - that makes the point which you so glibly overlook.

Today you write: "If the outside world is to interfere with how Korea treats women, don�t you think we ought to tackle female circumcision in Somalia, the stoning of adulteresses in Nigeria, almost institutionalized rape in Zambia, Morocco, prostitute trafficking on a biblical scale from Congo, first? And that�s just Africa."

Good points all, and yes, we ought to interfere in each and every case, and to some extent are "interfering." You evidently believe that because there are abuses in every country we might just as well do nothing about any of them. Absurd.

Korea is not doing "just fine." What an utterly asinine remark. It is widely acknowledged that women's rights in Korea are abysmal. You provide no evidence, no comparative reports to make your case. Doing "just fine" by what measure, compared to what?

Compared to the African countries you mention, yes, Korea is not as oppressive, but none of them are industrialized democracies. And if I was living and teaching in any of those countries, and if there was an active internet forum about the pros and cons of that society, I would probably write about that and other problems in that place. It is what journalists do.

Korea is "just fine" compared to the USA and Europe, which you also mention? Surely not even you contend that women in the US and in any western European country share the miserable lot of S. Korean women. Try to make that case - I challenge you.

You say there are "no statistics and very few named sources" in my report. Not so - I quote statistics and reportage from the Lonely Planet, a telling quote from "An introduction to Korean culture" and the letter from Mr Choi about his sister. Do you argue they are also "biased and subjective"?

Agenda? You bet I have an agenda. Hatred? No, but anger certainly, indignation, empathy and a determination not to imply consent through silence. Okay, so I am a foreigner, but of what relevance is that, and in any case the letter writer is not. Do you genuinely believe that the experience of his sister is rare, that relatively few women in Korea suffer from the system of marriage and child rearing that is so common here?

Your glib rejection of the entire argument cheapens a sincere contribution to a serious debate. If there are holes in the argument, as indeed there may be, set about exposing them diligently and persuasively. Your entire case appears to rest on the idea that because other places also have problems there is no point in drawing attention to the form and scale of the issue in the country that is the subject of this forum, and where we now live.

[Beatnik009]

Oh dear.

On the Other Hand, the comparison between South African apartheid and Korean neo-Confucianism was made to highlight my argument that outsiders most definitely DO have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. There was nothing either directly or indirectly implied about the consequences of marriage in each country.

And, for pity's sake, I acknowledge that the scale of the oppression is not the same. Viz:
"We might just as well says nobody outside South Africa had any right to combat apartheid. Korea's treatment of women is not nearly as bad as apartheid was for blacks, but it is still a clear violation of human rights and it ought to be challenged at every turn by anyone troubled by exploitation and oppression."

Korean Neo-Confucianism and its system of so-called patrilocal marriages where the eldest son and his wife often live with his parents, and where the wife often serves them hand-and-foot, is not legislated as apartheid was, but for some women it might just as well be. If they choose not to marry by 35 or so, often as young as 30, they run the risk of being dismissed as "old virgins" and condemned to a spinster life, with all the dishonour that implies.

And - AS THE REPORT STATES - woe betide them if they don't bear a son. At the time of marrying they can't know whether or not they can bear children, and if nature takes its course and they are all daughters, oh shame on you.

[The King of Kwangju]

The gist of your post - which is too long and too condescending - is that women in Korea are oppressed and that it's the white man's burden to bring them up to speed.

This is an easy assumption and an easy conclusion. I'm assuming this is being printed somewhere else besides this forum, so I have a few points you've overlooked before you publish:

1) On a lot of fronts, Korea has indeed come a long way in a short time. It's proven it can re-invent itself when it needs to. Maybe you need to cut them a little slack here: we still don't have equal pay for equal work in the west, and we invented women's rights. Korea's trying to reconcile itself with its very very old history. Give them a chance and a little time.

2) On the surface, women in Korea have a tough lot. But as anyone who's seen the inside of a K family knows, wives have a lot of power behind closed doors. The situation isn't as clear-cut as you make it out to be.

3) Hierarchy and confucianism have their benefits. One of them is that you always know where you stand. This is reassuring. Why are Koreans so nuts over uniforms? It makes you instantly recognizable and people know how to treat you. We don't have this in the west, and it causes its own problems. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, just that if you're trying to write a balanced article, you should explore it more.

4) The Lonely Planet isn't great source material. Dig a little deeper.

[On the other hand]

Beatnik:

Sorry. I misinterpreted your writing "sexism, even at this intense level, is even more insidious a foe than a legislated system like apartheid" to imply a moral equation. But, of course, "insidious" means "slowly and subtly destroying", so your description of a non-legislated but socially endorsed Confucianism could be accurate.
Unfortunately, in your response to my post, you DO seem to treat the two systems as equivalent, when you write that for some women, the patrilocal marriage system "might as well be" legislated "like apartheid was". Yes, women over a certain age find it difficult to get married in Korea. But, in some western countries, people suffering from extreme obesity have difficulty finding marriage partners at ANY stage of their lives. Does this mean that they "might as well be" living in a society where their right to marry is denied by force of law? And, should people from cultures which do not discriminate against the obese launch crusades against cultures which do?

[Starperson]

Maybe women do have some 'power' in their families. So what. What does this get them? How much to spend on groceries? Where they should go for holidays? Aren't we talking about issues such as self-determination, the freedom to make decisions about one's life without being criticised or ostracised by the majority of society?

As for bringing up the other problems in the world. This is an attitude which goes with inaction. I've been guilty of it. Why sponsor one child? What difference will that make? I can't decide which politician to write to, so I won't write anything. Aren't the positive changes in the world brought about by people dedicating themselves to a cause at a particular time, or for their whole lives?

I don't agree that the comparison with black rights in South Africa was 'ridiculous hyperbole'. I understood it to be making the simple point that it's fair for 'foreigners' to get involved in social justice issues.

It's a good thing to discuss and noone needs to give meticulously exact references to bring it up.

[Gord]

Too many metaphors, slippery slope arguments, general "everything is like this" with false comparatives for dramatic affect to shore up arguments as actual fact is often missing.

Plus the whole amateurish writing style leaves much to be desired. It's like reading something written by someone in the eighth grade who is trying to use comedy and metaphores to make up for the lack of research.

[Starperson]

'On the other hand' - how can you even compare women's rights with 'obese rights'? Would I be off the mark in pointing out that nobody is born obese? Perhaps there are some who are very large no matter what they do, and yes, there is a problem with discrimination there. But really. I don't believe your comparison was relevant.

[Starperson]

Gord, would you prefer that I use a more academic writing style?

[desultude]

I've liked your postings so far, and find this one to be only slightly hyperbolic- in other words, it is well written and a little exagerated to make you point.

For those who think that the confucian attitude is not well and alive in the younger generation, you may be mistaken. We were playing desert island in my university speaking class the other night. The question to the groups of students was " if you are stranded on a desert island, what 10 things would you want to have with you?" It turned out to be an incredibly instructive exercise- for me.

The most remarkable list (from three male students) included: a woman and a volleyball. The students had to defend their choices. The guys told me that they wanted to have a woman there to have children to carry on the family bloodline. The volley ball was for friendship (think Tom Hanks). They said that they would procreate with the woman, and converse with the volley ball! Three woman came up with a list that included: a hairdresser, a plastic surgeon, a personal trainer and a dress maker. Oh, and their three boyfriends. I asked them why they needed all of the cosmetic help if there were no other women on the island to lure away the boyfriends. They did not quite understand my question.

Those answers could be metaphors for this island of Korea (it might as well be an island). The guys can treat the girls like brood mares, and hang out with their male friends, (or volleyballs?), and the girls, who are outnumbered by the guys, who have no place else, really, to look for mates, still kill themselves to be beautiful for them. When the women collectively understand the situation, I think that things will change, albeit slowly.

My way of being a bit subversive about the situation is to find opportunities to bring up discussions of the gender imbalance here, or maybe in China. I point out to my woman students that if they really want to have successful careers, they may consider postponing marriage and children. They do fully understand the consequences of marriage and children to their futures, and seem to be weighing it a bit.

My hope is that when the imbalance becomes severe enough, the treatment of woman will change. But, as they say, hope springs eternal. And Confucianism runs very deep in this culture, where even my hippest students bow to me when they leave the class or pass me in the hall.

(By the way, other responses on the list include: a pregnant dog (for a food supply!), a tiger (for friendship and protection), and, of course, a cellphone, and the more astute students included a solar battery.)

[indiercj]

Beatnik, how many korean male friends do you have? What can i say... maybe you've been with your female students for too long. Nice long piece of.... speculation.