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Women in South Korea: Focusing on the political, social, and sexual movement

Hyouk Kyu Kim

HISTORY 359

Sally A. Hastings

11/29/2016

Katharine H. S. Moon. Resurrecting Prostitutes and overturning Treaties: Gender Politics in the

Anti-American Movement in South Korea The Journal of Asian Studies. 66.1 (2007): 129-

157.

Barbara Molony, Janet Theiss, Hyaeweol Choi. Gender in Modern East Asia (2016): 540.

Seungsook Moon. Civil Society and the Womens Movement in South Korea. The Journal of

Asain Studies 61.2 (2002):473-500.

Women in South Korea before the beginning 1990s certainly went through a lot of social

discrimination. The social structures were simply oppressive to women over many different

fields which includes the issue of gender, a patriarchal society, and sexual inequality in terms of

an economic. The relationship between women and the Korean society still remains very

androcentric because of its Confucian traditions and the family norms. In addition, the

militarized prostitution also demonstrates well about a womens oppression and their limitation
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within society. The existing literature documents about the womens movement have gone

through in the past and tries to bring out the issue of women in the Korean context. The study of

biographies of some of the most influential incident in South Korea in the late-twenties century

draws out the issue of political and social movement as well. Therefore, a review of the

following three literatures on Korean women will be examined in this paper that how their roles

in all aspects of daily life shows fundamental implications on political, social and sexual

movement, and why women in South Korea needed to react over some kind of segregation that

they had to fight for their rights in terms of gendered bias.

This essay explores two scholarly articles and Molonys Gender in Modern East Asia on

how Korean women have responded to the cultural pressures that are created by political, social

and sexual norms. An article by Moon (473-500) explores how civil society still tends to

downplay womens feminist criticism due to silent principles of androcentrism and the public

sphere. Moon (474) states that it is critical to understand how the impact of political

democratization on womens societal function has been shaped during the industrialization in the

1960s. The negative aspects of the Neo-Confucian family norms, traditions and the masculinized

public sphere not only affected womens social relation among individuals and groups, but also

established womens position in Korean society (478). As Moon states Neo-Confucianism

Choson Dynasty (1392-1910) consciously chose as the state ideology, the spatial separation of

sexes and the gendered division of labor constituted the cornerstone of a new social order based

on the patrilineage(478), womens traditional family arrangement were somehow deficient or

inferior to men. In addition, the masculinized image of the sa-il-gu in 1960 is one another good

example of South Koreas nature of civil society that many young male students protested over

the dictatorship of President Syngman Rhee (479). These bias are unconsciously rooted in
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Korean peoples mind that women and men inherently different in character and ability, and that

this difference somehow interprets that the status of men in South Koreas civil society is higher

and more valuable than that of women.

Womens oppression during 1970s was also affected by political pressure. The women

factory-workers labor movement on protesting their unpaid pay check during industrializing

Korea were threatened by the Park Chung Hees repressive military regime (479). During this

time, any labor movement were violated due to the potential threat from North Korea, and the

government back then needed to strengthen their political power and suppress human rights

(Monoly 2016, Chapter 10). As a result, womens labor movement were overshadowed by the

militant male workers, and that many women decided to quit their works and chose to be wives

of male workers as a supporter for their husbands successful outcome (480). The womens

participation and movement from 1960s to 1970s clearly explains that womens right and

protection were somewhat missing or avoided by the gendered bias which had been

unconsciously established by the Neo-Confucianism and political matters in Koreas civil

society.

Another article by Katharine Moon (129-157) demonstrates that how anti-American

movement draws out public attention on Korean women who were suffered sexually and

somehow used by the Korean government as a political matter. According to Moon, the

militarized prostitution brings out social limitation of women within civil society in Korea (131).

The first incident happened in 1992 when Yun Kumi, a young prostituted woman, were killed by

a private soldier of the U.S. Army (129). The scope of these sexual relationship between Korean

women and U.S. Army goes back to 1950s in the kijichon where Korean women first started

to service U.S soldiers sexually right after the Korea-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty establishment,
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the continuing presence of U.S army in South Korea (Molony 2016, Chapter 10) (Moon 129).

Maintaining thousands of U.S. military in South Korea was politically so important that the

Korean government silently encouraged Korean women to work as a prostitute for their own

national security. This selfish political movement by the Korean government viewed military

prostitution as a necessary evil to accommodate the social and sexual needs of the U.S soldiers

(138). As a matter of Korean womens prostituted service to American, Moon states Not only

activists but also officials and analysts for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have

acknowledged the undeniable link between the abuses and violence against Korean women,

especially camptown prostitutes (131). The greatest problem with regard to womens sexual

segregation is far more deeply rooted than a simple societal problem. In fact, Korean womens

gender-neutral process was finally triggered after the tragic incident of Yun Kumi (132).

Starting from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, Not only has such masculine nationalism

showed how the women organizations and activists initially challenges for the greater human

rights of Korean women, but also the anti-American movement in relation to Korean womens

ideological desire for sexual equality in Korean society reacted to attain some degree of civil

rights through political participation (144). Under such masculine nationalism, womens rights

and welfare around camptown faced the most resistance by male leadership during 1990s (145).

Simply, male leaders blamed kijichon women for their volunteering to service U.S army

(145). Toward the mid 1990 to the early 2000, womens rights and welfare were uttered once

again through womens organization, Saewoomtuhnot only the organization criticized the U.S.

military but also they demanded to reform SOFA provisions to ensure protections for kijichon

women (147). For the greater justice, Korean womens organization challenged about the

ambiguous revision of the SOFA on how the authorities would determine some substantial
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evidence of rape (148). In many cases, U.S soldiers custody were not permitted to transfer to the

Korean authorities unless there was a legitimate evidence. Moreover, the demand for the health

of camptown women was promised as the U.S military will regularly check up on soldiers

HIV/AIDS along with the Korean government (p148).

As womens organization tried to attain sexual equality of status with men in society,

such masculine nationalism brings out some evident limitation on womens participation ever

since from the military regime in 1960s. According to Molony, womens political participation

showed a steady progress as the oppressive military regime from the 1960s were changed to

more liberal democratization in the late 1980s, which triggered a new space for activism

(Molony 2016, CP10). Molony argues about three major factors that the womens movement

achieved.

First, the more liberal politics, starting from the president Kim Young Sam, provided

women more energy to a gender-focused agenda by eliminating feudal legal arrangements in

relation to the family head system (Molony 2016, CP11). Second, there was this new political

and cultural autonomy that the government provided women more chances to advocate for the

rights of women (Molony 2016, CP11). In addition, not only the decentralization of the power in

Seoul made women to participate in various social movements with regard to consumer rights,

labor reforms, youth rights, and liberal education, but they had also contributed themselves to

shape their own lives (Molony 2106, CP11).

One another important aspect of attaining womens right with regard to the family norms

is the abolition of the Family Head System Hojuje (Molony 2016, Cp11). Other than Neo-

Confucianism, Hojuje was one of the fundamental or powerful male-centered family law system

in South Koreas society. More importantly, the family relationship is subsequently the most
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basic among all human relationship, and having this Hojuje law abolished was crucial for women

to establish their gender equality toward the more democratic relationship between women and

men within civil society (Molony 2016, CP11).

In conclusion, these two articles and Molonys Gender in Modern East Asia indicate that

Korean Women had to go through such a hard time with establishing their human rights in

gendered-bias politically, socially and sexually. For the greater justice, not only the rooted Neo-

Confucianism system affected women to achieve their rights, but also the sacrifice of Yun Kum

Mi triggered both the womens organizations and public spheres to attain more development

during industrialization. It is now evident that the nation itself in South Korea is advancing

politically and socially towards the right position as it values every aspect of gender relationship

by abolishing some old feudal system like Hojuje. Without such a change and womens

participation in political matter, gender equality in South Korea would not be achieved.
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1 Are the pages of this paper numbered? yes

2 How many total references are there in this paper to various sources? 23
3 How many come from the chosen articles? 23
4 How many end notes are there? 0
5 Why are the end notes used?
6 How many paragraphs are there that have no parenthetical reference and no note? none
7 What kinds of paragraphs are they?
8 For every paragraph that has a reference, look at the topic sentence. Does it relate in

some way to the title of the paper or the thesis? Yes, I tried to relate all the paragraph to

my topic
9 What kinds of numerals are used for the notes?