Discussion by Alexandra de Guzman
EPISODE 11: “If you look closely, everyone has their own special circumstances #earrings”
As our Kdrama series, “Hello, my Twenties!” is coming to a close, our Belle Epoque housemates continue on their journey into adulthood. Although the drama deals with many difficult, hard to swallow themes and topics (including one that was shown in today’s episode), it is the bonds created between these fierce girls that is the core of what makes this drama. Despite their differences, the Belle Epoque ladies show us time and time again the importance of friendship in such a confusing and dubious time of life.
The beginning scenes of the episode shows Ye-eun leaning against a couch with a bag veering her head and her arms and legs bounded with tape. We find out that Du-yeong, her ex-boyfriend, has kidnapped her. The rest of the Belle Epoque housemates continue on with their daily lives, with clues hinting of Ye-eun’s absence, such as her daily juice haven’t been drunk and her unusual texting style. The girls deliberate on Ye-eun’s whereabout, picking up on these clues purely based on their relationship with Ye-eun and discover her kidnapping. The girls dash over to his apartment without any hesitation, and eventually are able to work together to take him down. In the end, the housemates return home after a few days int he hospital and move past the incident. The epilogue contains a clip of Du-yeong interviewed, stating that he kidnapped her out of love and will get probation because of his rich father.
The episode deals with the traumatic subject matter of dating violence, an unfortunately common problem throughout the world. It has a connection to what I will be discussing in my blogpost today: Feminism in South Korea. With the changing modernity as South Korea urbanized, the nation began to stray further from the extreme Confucian values of gender roles. However, although women’s status has risen exponentially, even in today’s South Korean society, the gender disparity is still very much prevalent. South Korean women have had profound changes in education, health and employment. But, even with the high education equality, high health equality and lower unemployment, these changes were done out of practicality rather than choice. Changes have been made to the patriarchal expectations in society, however these changes were never meaningful transformations (Chang and Song 2010, 548). With the Contemporary Feminism movement having been slowly integrated into South Korea, as well as the introduction of the #MeToo movement making waves the past year, one would hope that changes would be made to the system to favor equality between males and females. The episode deals with the traumatic subject matter of dating violence, an unfortunately common problem throughout the world. It has a connection to what I will be discussing in my blogpost today: Feminism in South Korea. With the changing modernity as South Korea urbanized, the nation began to stray further from the extreme Confucian values of gender roles. However, although women’s status has risen exponentially, even in today’s South Korean society, the gender disparity is still very much prevalent. South Korean women have had profound changes in education, health and employment. But, even with the high education equality, high health equality and lower unemployment, these changes were done out of practicality rather than choice. Changes have been made to the patriarchal expectations in society, however these changes were never meaningful transformations (Chang and Song 2010, 548). With the Contemporary Feminist movement having been slowly integrated into South Korea, as well as the introduction of the #MeToo movement making waves the past year, one would hope that changes would be made to the system to favor equality between males and females. Unfortunately, that is not the case. South Korean women have low power in economic equality, with few executive positions, and even poorer political power. This marginalization of women stems not only from the traditional cultural roles that were placed on them because of the dominant patriarchal society and the lack of implementation of sexual equality made by the institution, but also through capitalism (Park 1993, 142). Rather than integrating the women into the beneficial development process of increasing the economy, the women were incorporated in the exploitative capitalism that further increased the gender disparity (Ibid., 129). For instance, women having lower employment, yet many have lower jobs or part-time jobs that pay less than their male counterparts. Furthermore, due to the hyper competitive society of South Korea, women are placed in an even more precarious situation where not only are they competing with men, but other women as well (Kim and Lee 2018, 10). Because of this society, women are coerced into things to maximize advantages for themselves, such as getting cosmetic surgery. South Korean women are placed with such high expectations based on the patriarchal ideals that dominate the Korean society. The nature of the South Korean society that has been ingrained because of the compressed modernity of the nation, has led to women working extra hard to validate their status as equivalent to their male counterparts. The episode deals with the traumatic subject matter of dating violence, an unfortunately common problem throughout the world. It has a connection to what I will be discussing in my blogpost today: Feminism in South Korea. With the changing modernity as South Korea urbanized, the nation began to stray further from the extreme Confucian values of gender roles. However, although women’s status has risen exponentially, even in today’s South Korean society, the gender disparity is still very much prevalent. South Korean women have had profound changes in education, health and employment. But, even with the high education equality, high health equality and lower unemployment, these changes were done out of practicality rather than choice. Changes have been made to the patriarchal expectations in society, however these changes were never meaningful transformations (Chang and Song 2010, 548). With the Contemporary Feminism movement having been slowly integrated into South Korea, as well as the introduction of the #MeToo movement making waves the past year, one would hope that changes would be made to the system to favor equality between males and females.
As we are nearing the end of the series of “Hello, My Twenties!” I will leave you with these discussion questions to ponder about:
1) What does ‘feminism’ mean to you?
2) What are some concrete ways to fight for gender equality specifically in South Korea?
3) In your opinion, is domestic violence a learned behaviour?
Bibliography
Chang, Kyung-sup and Song Min-young. “The stranded individualizer under compressed modernity: South Korean women in individualization without individualism” The British Journal of Sociology 61, no. 2 (2010): 539-564
Kim, Sun-woo and Yu-ri Lee. “Why do women want to be beautiful? A qualitative study proposing a new ‘human beauty values’ concept” PloS ONE 13, no. 8 (2018): 1-25
Park, Kyung-ae. “Women and Development: The Case of South Korea” Comparative Politics 25, no. 2 (1993): 127-145
Age of Youth (Hello, My Twenties!) 
For me, feminism means gender equality in the sense where gender does not matter and will not create discrimination or prejudice. It is not about making it so that females are equivalent to male but for performance to be the deciding factor. Ideas of gender are stereotyped into us and that needs to change because they are not accurate.
Regarding the last question, I do believe domestic violence can be a learned behaviour because especially when we are young, we observe and understand the world based on our surroundings. If domestic violence is a common occurence growing up, that becomes simply a part of everyday life and if a child is not taught that it should not be normal, they will not know. This practice becomes embedded in them and can ultimately cause them to also go down the path of domestic violence.
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I agree with what @kmengo said. Feminism, in my opinion, means to have gender equality and in an ideal world for everyone to be treated equally, which is a very egalitarian mindset. Feminism has had a bad reputation for being pro-female and anti-male but the point of feminism, and how it was created in the first place, was to fight for female rights because of how unequal they were compared to men. Although biology will always be a factor, it is the idea that we are not judged because of our biology and that there are people that can surpass what their biology is stereotyped as.
For the third question, I have a similar standing as @kmengo. I also believe domestic violence can be learned. Although I believe that some people have more violent tendencies than other biologically, whether they act on it or is taught to control it depends on their environmental factors during their upbringing. If one were to have a very abusive family, it is not uncommon to see the child become abusive in the future. However, there are individuals who don’t repeat what their family has done because they do not want to continue the cycle. In the case of Du-yeong who blames his violent nature on his mother, it becomes problematic to solely blame it on your upbringing. It can one explanation why he acts this way but the fact that he is aware and doesn’t intend on changing his ways makes him less sympathetic.
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When discussing feminism, I think its extremely important to consider intersectionality. “White Feminism” often has markedly different goals than “Black Feminism” or “Asian Feminism” due to forces of interlocking oppression that disproportionately affect certain women around the world. Personally, as a Black-mixed women living in Canada, feminism means equity across political, economic, and social spheres of my life. I recognize that this is a place a privilege as other women’s goals around the world are more immediate such as autonomy over their own bodies, having a right to an education, and the right to refuse child marriage.
South Korea is very unique in its fight against feminism as we are seeing women fighting simultaneously for goals in second wave feminism and third wave feminism. For example, just this year Korea overturned its 66-year ban on abortion in 2019. In addition to this, Korea has also those who have undergone sexual-reassignment surgery to be exempt from conscription in the military. Although both of these “wins” need to be viewed with a degree of nuance it shows the ways traditional second and third wave goals are being won simultaneously in the 21st century. Some specific ways—many of which they are already doing—Korean women can fight for their rights are raising their voices, supporting one another, sharing the workload of activism, getting involved at a grassroots level with organizations, educate the next generation, learn and know their rights, and give to the cause.
In my opinion I do not believe domestic violence is a learned behaviour. There are many people who grew up in households that viewed physical and emotional abuse, however learned they wanted a better life for themselves and their future family. I think its important to note that it takes work not to reproduce their parents mistake, however its not impossible. Its easy to give in to bad traits however the mark of a person with true character is to prevail against those.
-Vanessa A.
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Hi Alexandra, nice post on the struggles women currently face in South Korea towards equal treatment. I would also agree with @kmengo‘s definition of feminism in that it advocates for equal standards performance-wise rather than gender-wise. Males and females with the same job position should be evaluated and paid equally in the workplace as both are likely to have the same level of work experience and quality of education. @Jasmine also mentioned how biological differences tend to affect perceived advantages/disadvantages between genders and I also agree that these differences should not be the basis/greatest influence when evaluating work performance.
I think the most concrete way to fight for gender equality would be for South Korea to create laws that enforce same wages regardless of gender, to increase education on how work performance doesn’t necessarily depend on gender and create laws that enforce female participation at higher positions in a company. As mentioned in class, women are less likely to be hired for full time positions due to the constant “possibility” that a woman would get pregnant and eventually either leave the job for maternity leave, or ask for more benefits to take care of her baby. I think this perception can be challenged if a law enforced the mandatory addition of women to positions of power. This may backfire due to the possibility that this becomes another form of tokenism or might become quota based (x amount of women must be employed) however I think some female representation is better than none and is a good first step to solving gender discrimination. Once more women are added to positions of power, and the notion that women are (and always were) just as capable as men, I think the law could gradually be lifted/changed so that gender isn’t mentioned, but rather an emphasis on work performance, achievements and skills that becomes a determining factor on who gets the position.
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As a male, I perceive feminism as female fighting for their equal rights to achieve the same status as men have in terms of politically, socially, and domestically. As Jasmine said, feminists fight against discrimination and stereotyping in a male-dominated society. The 11th episode shows there is a strong sense of misogyny in Korea, Ye-eun’s ex-boyfriend was a notable example of misogynist because he kidnapped Ye-eun for his hatred toward Ye-Eun. In this man’s mind, women like Ye-eun should be inferior to him, it is intolerant for a man like Ye-eun’s ex-boyfriend to see a woman performing better than him in society. Besides, Eun-Jae is brave enough in the scene to stand out confronting Ye-eun’s ex-boyfriend. I think it is an expression of the female should stand out against the misogyny and other inequalities, and this also answered the second question that women fight together against obstacles is a concrete way to fight for gender equality.
For the third question, domestic violence has many causes. Could be the alcohol addict husband, unemployment caused financial difficulties, and maybe mental issues. In my opinion, learning behavior is just one factor that caused domestic violence. In a country like Korea which has a long history of male dominate tradition in the family, I suppose the cause of domestic violence might have a lot to do with its conservative male-dominated history, which some males may learn from the past and be a too authoritative figure in the family.
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For me, I think feminism means women speak up for themselves and fight for their equal rights or at least they can be treated fairly as men. In such a patriarchal society like South Korea, men are afraid of feminism will have them lose their power in workplaces, families and society.
I think one of the concrete ways to fight for gender equity could be fighting it through social media. Having more women to speak up for themselves, being brave to talk about what their true needs will probably help men understand more about feminism, not just simply thinking that women are trying to replace them in the society and so that men can feel more secure and open-minded towards feminism.
I believed domestic violence can be learned. When people seeing others doing it and talking about it, young ones learn from it regardless of it’s right or wrong. People are influenced by others they interact with.
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For me, achieving feminism is a vital part of the path to gender equality. Safeguarding feminism is conducive to safeguarding women’s status in society and family. However, the ultimate goal is to achieve a state of equality rather than women’s rights higher than men. Due to the serious gender inequality problem in South Korea, there are many activities in South Korea to fight for gender equality. Such as some feminist activities, as well as the LGBT community. These activities intensify and produced some good results, such as the election of the last South Korean President Park Geun-Hye is a woman. As for domestic violence, I think it is a kind of learned behavior. Some people use domestic violence because they have experienced or has witnessed it once, which makes them treat others in the same way.
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Modern Feminism now takes on many forms. There are now so many types of feminist just like how there are now many types of vegan. I do not like what feminism has now become in modern society. It no longer stands for the gender equality that it set out to be. Many feminist movements now are filled with individuals that have their own agenda. Both feminism and masculism has largely become a movement filled with toxicity, hate and aggression. If people really want equal rights, they should not promote aggressive behavior that demeans the other party or gender. I feel that the name and movement should be changed to stand for gender equity be more gender neutral.
When fighting for gender equality, one must note that they should not discriminate on who gets discriminated. This means that any form of blame shifting onto a particular group of people, including gender. People from all walks of life get discriminated against. Once you have the mindset that one party or gender has it worse than the rest, you fail to see the bigger picture.
There is a culture of discrimination, where anger and discontent is taken out on groups of people, feeding a vicious cycle of corruption and hate, where people compete with power and status. The ones who tend to take the biggest hit are the stragglers, the low status, physically weak and financially poor. This culture of discrimination should try to be altered through positive movements, especially not resorting to protests, riots and hateful demonstrations. People should learn to discriminate less. Domestic violence is a learned behaviour as a result of an outlet for one’s own anger towards others or themselves. Taking out this anger upon one’s own people or family is also learned through observation of subliminal reinforcement by parents and society.
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To me, feminism is being able to raise awareness to show that women are not by any means less capable or less important than men. As for domestic violence, i believe this type of behaviour cannot be learned. I think domestic violence is a trait that someone is born with because you can just teach someone to abuse another person if they are that type of person.
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