Tag: Korean women

South Korean Group Protests the #metoo Movement as Gender Discrimination

| September 25, 2019

Here is the latest on the gender wars in South Korea:

On the same street corner in Seoul where 10,000 South Korean women rallied last October to demand an end to spy cameras and sexual violence, the leader of a new activist group addressed a small group of angry young men.

“We are a group for legal justice, anti-hate, and true gender equality,” Moon Sung-ho boomed into a microphone to a crowd of a few dozen men waving placards.

As feminist issues come to the fore in deeply patriarchal South Korea, there’s a growing discontent among young men that they’re being left behind. Moon, who leads Dang Dang We, a group “fighting for justice for men,” is one of them.

He started his group last year after a 39-year-old business owner was sentenced to six months in prison for grabbing a woman’s buttocks in a Korean soup restaurant. The case provoked outrage that a man could be convicted on no evidence beyond the victim’s claims.

CNN

You can read more at the link.

More Females Are Serving in Leadership Roles in the ROK Military

| September 13, 2019

It is good to see that more women are able to advance their careers in the ROK military:

Lt. Cmdr. Yang Ki-jin of the Republic of Korea Navy who with about 1,580 flying hours became the first woman to head a naval aviation unit deployed with the 30th Cheonghae Unit mission that departed for the Gulf of Aden last month, according to the ROK Navy. ROK Navy

When it comes to promoting gender equality in military barracks, some might think it is about giving preferential treatment to female personnel. 

Kang Seo-yeon, a chief petty officer of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy, realized this after an article spotlighting her service received comments to such effect online. 

“After all, we are all service members whether we are male or female,” Kang said. “Female NCOs in the military can often be seen as a special case when they should rather be seen as competent, just like their male colleagues.” 

For Navy service personnel, serving in a remote area or on a ship on a maritime mission helps their careers. While her husband is also a Navy chief petty officer serving on the ROKS Chungbuk (FFG-816) in the Second Fleet based at Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Kang chose to serve at a naval base on Deokjeok Island off the western coast of Incheon this year ― her 11th in the Navy. Before enlisting in the Navy she served four years in the Army as she always wanted to be in the military after graduating from high school. 

Kang, now raising her four-year-old son on Deokjeok Island, said she can balance her work and childcare through the military’s childcare support policies. 

In South Korea, all able-bodied men must serve 18 to 22 months in the military but no mandatory military service is required of women. They can join the military as non-commissioned, or commissioned officer if they graduate from military academies or pass national qualification tests to join the military. 

Media focus on female personnel has often been on them taking certain positions for the first time that had not been “allowed” before, largely due to the perception that women would find it hard to serve on such missions. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link about various female servicemembers that have filled leadership roles for the first time in the ROK military.

More South Korean Women are Giving Up On Marriage

| July 31, 2019

According to the article more South Korean women are foregoing marriage and having kids which is contributing to a population decline:

Baeck Hana, a host of a feminist Youtube segment, “Honsarm Bigyeol,” in Seoul, South Korea, on July 13, 2019. 
JEAN CHUNG/BLOOMBERG

Baeck Ha-na works in accounting during the week. On weekends, she’s a YouTube star in South Korea, promoting the “live-alone life.”

Baeck, whose YouTube channel in English is called “Solo-darity,” objects to being called a “mi-hon” — someone who is not yet married. She’s part of a growing and determined group of Korean women rejecting marriage and motherhood.

Such decisions are intensifying demographic and economic challenges for the government as the country faces one of the world’s lowest birth rates and a shortfall in pension funding that is getting harder to close with fewer workers joining the labor force.

“Society made me feel like a failure for being in my 30’s and not yet a wife or a mother,” Baeck said. “Instead of belonging to someone, I now have a more ambitious future for myself.”

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link.