흑형이란? What is meant by Black (Big) Brother?

흑형이라는 말에 대해 어떻게 생각합니까? 인종차별주의적 태도가 보여합니까? 또한 성적 매력을 부여합니까? What do you think of the term Black (Big) Brother? Does it show a racist attitude? Does it show sexualization?

"흑형" 이미지 검색의 결과에 봅시다 Let's take a look at search engine results for the term:

 네이버 Naver:

구글 Google:

"흑누나"의 결과 Black (Big) Sister search term results:

3개월 전에 비공개의 얘기에 봅시다 Let's look at a conversation on Naver from 3 months ago:

Rough Translation: When we use the term "Black (Big? Brother" and thoughtlessly talk down to people with other skin colors, don't you think it can make people of color feel bad and is a wrong thing to do??

Rough Translations:  (top) It isn't talking down. With those words I am going to praise the greatness of Black (Big) Brother and Black (Big) Sister. (middle): It's wrong. But the term is already spread widely. Can't get rid of it People use it a lot ㅜㅜ (bottom with image): The term Black (Big) Brother was made to make people laugh, right? Korea thinks it is so funny so it won't be easy to get rid of. 

네티즌들의 “흑형”이라 붙인 사진에 보면서 인종적 고정 관념에 대해 생각합시다. 이렇게 인해 인종차별주의적 태도가 비판할 수 있다. 예를 들어 억센 팔과 살팍진 몸이 강조하고 이미지의 내용을 평가하면 성관계에 관한 형상화를 많이 본다. When we look at the images that Korean language users attach the term "Black (Big) Brother" to we can think about racist attitudes. In this way we can criticize these attitudes. For example, in the images above we see an emphasis on muscular and sexualized bodies, and that the term is attached to references to sexuality and sexual imagery.

흑형이라는 말에 대해 어떻게 생각합니까? What do you think about the term Black (Big) Brother?

Extended Rebuttal: Inflated Assumption that Sex Workers in Korea Earn “higher than the average Korean”

Here at Korea Gender Café we attempt to present information, data and translations that add to discussion of gender issues in Korean society because we hope to spur discussion. 

Yesterday we submitted a rebuttal piece to koreaBANG’stranslation “Disbelief as Korea is Ranked 108th in Global Gender Equality” that broke down a few methodological flaws in Dr. Kang’s data analysis. Due to space constraints we were unable to respond point-by-point to many of his opinionated assertions. In this post we’d like to zero in on one of the problematic opinions and attitudes he brought into the debate about gender inequality: that the exclusion of the sex industry from workforce participation data inflates the inequality between men and women.

Kang writes,

“Does the misinterpreted data about socioeconomic discrimination in fact imply discrimination against men? 

There are also many problems with the data commonly used to claim sexualdiscrimination against women within Korea. The popular story is that women arebeing discriminated against, as shown by the big gender gap in employment rateand income. However, we need to take a closer look. In fact, the gender gap in employment rate and income is exaggerated in Korea.Among OECD countries, only Korea and Slovenia have made the sex trade completely illegal. MOGEF estimated that there might be 140~270k or a higher number of female sex workers in Korea. Sex workers who earn more than the average worker are exempted from the Korean income statistics while othercountries include them. This partly contributes to the income gap that appearswider on paper than it really is. 

Do they turn a blind eye to this for the sexual discrimination claims?” 

In our submission to koreaBANG we began to respond:

“Dr.Kang points out human rights violations against women in other countries, butwe can point to sexual violence and human rights violations in every country.That is not the purpose of these indices. We agree that it is problematic thatgender inequality indexes do not adequately reflect violence against women orsexual violence. We disagree with Dr. Kang’s outward looking criticism andencourage discussion of sexual violence in Korea.” 

To elaborate, if we want to discuss human rights violations in South Korea, we could pay close attention to the upcoming Constitution Court ruling on the 2004 Act to Prevent Sex Trafficking and Prohibit Prostitution.

First, sex work is omitted from income statistics, as is drug trade, gang/mafia membership and other illegal industries in which we may find both women and men employed. Rather than claiming that its exclusion is an conspiracy to "turn a blind eye" and that it implies "discrimination against men" we find this to be a more persuasive explanation. 

Second, this assumption that sex work earns high incomes likely ignores workplace conditions, rental fees, the lack of pension, income inconsistencies, associated costs, and may obscure all those that profit from the work by taking a portion of fees, etc. 

Third, Dr. Kang does not tell us how many men are employed as sex workers, but some could argue that purchasing the right to sexual use of another’s body in a sex industry with “140~270k or a higher number of female sex workers” in and of itself could be indicative of gender inequality. If the working population is that high while the working population is low in other industries, it suggests there is a segregation of women into a few industries.  

Fourth, others could argue that Dr. Kang ignores men employed in the sex industry or who act as employers of female sex workers. Meanwhile MBN News contributes a stigmatizing tone toward LGBTQ sex workers. 

But what we would really like to argue about -- and the reason we highly anticipate the above mentioned Constitutional Court ruling -- is the persistent social stigmatization of sex workers and violation of sex worker's human rights in police crackdown and incarceration.

First, Dr. Kang never mentions that male clients are only sometimes sent to “John school” while female sex workers pay steep fines and face up to 2 years of mandatory re-education or prison. This is one more example of gender inequality in sentencing. Dr. Kang doesn’t highlight those aspects of policy that actually exist, and he presents no evidence to support his assertions.

Second, sex workers in Korea report serious human rights violations as a consequence of the current legal regime. Sex workers report swallowing condoms because simply walking with a condom is used by the police as evidence against a sex worker. The safety and health implications are rather obvious, but we urge you to read the UNDP report "Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific: Laws, HIV and human rights in the context of sex work."[1]

Third, heavy stigmatization of females in the sex industry means that even if there were not criminal penalties, gender inequality in sentencing and health perils associated with an aggressive police crackdown, workers are marginalized socially. We highly recommend Katherine Moon’s research for further reading on the history of segregated sex workers near military bases.[2] 

My ongoing research examines the relationship between the 2004 law, court sentencing and gender in Korean society. In the coming months and after publication, I look forward to sharing additional information with our readers. In the meantime, we highly recommend reading posts by sex worker’s rights NGO Giant Girls, 성노동 이론 봇 and Research Project Korea for news. 

For further reading:

Giant Girls, Grant Application, Global Fund for Women, 2010. https://grants.globalfundforwomen.org/GFWSearch/index.php?id=30551

한상희, 건국대 교수, 헌법. “성매매방지법과 여성인권” 민주법학 제30호, 2006.

최우리 기자, "당신이 굳게 믿는 그것이 진리일까," 한겨레,  2012.12.01. http://media.daum.net/society/newsview?newsid=20121201111004557

Cheng, Sealing. “Rethinking “Human Trafficking”: Reflections from South Korea” in Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM & UNITED STATES STUDIES, OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES, Rethinking Human “Trafficking,” SUMMER 2010.

Godwin, John. "Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific: Laws, HIV and human rights in the context of sex work." United Nations Development Programme, Oct 2012, p. 112. http://asia-pacific.undp.org/

Kim, Ji Hye. Korea’s New Prostitution Policy: Overcoming Challenges to Effectuate the Legislature’s Intent to Protect Prostitutes from Abuse. Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal Association, 2007

Moon, Katherine. Military Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia, The Asia-Pacific Journal; Japan Focus, Jan 17, 2009.

Weiss, Ayla. Ten Years of Fighting Trafficking: Critiquing the Trafficking in Persons Report through the Case of South Korea, Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal [Vol. 13:2, 2012].

[1] Godwin, John. "Sex Work and the Law in Asia and the Pacific: Laws, HIV and human rights in the context of sex work." United Nations Development Programme, Oct 2012, p. 112. http://asia-pacific.undp.org/

[2] Moon, Katherine. Military Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia, The Asia-Pacific Journal; Japan Focus, Jan 17, 2009.

Women-Only Spaces & Allegations of Reverse Sexism

The Korea Times ran “'Male-free' zones ignite uproar: Some question the legitimacy of woman-only areas” by Park Jin-hai, Kwon Ji-youn, and Yoon Sung-won.

I have never once seen a space in Korea designated 'male-free.' I have seen a few women-only seats and lounges, but even these are rare. The reason Park, Kwon and Yoon flip the script from (still rarely used) 'woman-only' to 'male-free' is to call attention to their perception of reverse discrimination. The article contains a few half-hearted attempts to say that sometimes maybe possibly spaces reserved for women to prevent sexual harassment could maybe possibly sometimes be sort of important to public safety -- BUT really asks 'what about men's rights?' The purpose of the piece is to assert that men’s rights are being denied and that women-only spaces are reverse discriminatory. Park, Kwon and Yoon even go so far as to try to convince us that by pursuing public safety we are unwittingly putting the status of women in jeopardy[1].

That kind of rhetorical game was probably deployed to mitigate the way that the authors disregard evidence of sexual violence, or to  try to show a paternialistic concern for the status of women, or maybe to presume to understand the needs of women and convince women that such spaces are somehow not in their best interests -- but I'm not buying what you're selling.

The authors claim that

“All people agree to some extent that women including those with children should be provided with special care. But as some of the measures put in place include absurd directives it has triggered “reverse discrimination” against men and thus worsened confrontations between members of the opposite sex.”

I argue that it is not just providing for women-only space that cause conflict, but that the larger issue is a lack of public education explaining why such measures are necessary. More importantly, c'mon, sexual harassment itself is already a huge glaring pattern of 'confrontation between members of the opposite sex' that these spaces are designed to address. From a woman's perspective, let me tell you, if I were to weigh the 'confrontation' of sexual violence and harassment with the 'confrontation' of engaging in a dialog with a man explaining why women-only spaces are important, I KNOW which one is the WORSE 'confrontation.'

Reading closely, in the interviews shared in the article, the most-repeated statement by an interviewee is a variation of "I don't understand..." The authors also seem to either lack an understanding of why some spaces were reserved only for women, or they failed to investigate and report the reason in this article. I do think that campaigns that simply label a space ‘women only’ without providing an explanation could cause confusion and misunderstanding.More importantly, inadequately explained policies or labels are a major missed opportunity for public education about sexual violence, privilege and the importance of measures to promote safety.

The authors go on to cite women’s lounges at schools and law firms,

“there are special pink buses exclusively for female passengers. “The idea of having a safe bus ride is good. But having a bus which men are banned from, is tantamount to criminalizing all men and viewing them as potential sex criminals,” said Kang Hyun-chul. “It reminds me of the old-time black-white segregation of the South Africa. It is very insulting.”

*I am not an artist, but you get the point~

Park, Yoon and Kwon describe the activism of members of Ilbe and Man of Korea/남성연대 who snap pictures of women-only spaces for online discussion and offline complaint. Of course Ilbe and Man of Korea/남성연대 members can rush to claim reverse sexism by snapping a pic of the 'women's seat' at the library, because they don't know about or understand that there have been safety problems at the library. These self-proclaimed ‘men's rightists’ argue that they are excluded via reverse discrimination, and this may be partially attributed to the fact that they are not educated about the extent of their male privilege in this context. While the ‘men’s rights’ group thinks that they are being excluded from learning spaces at schools and library, their outrage is amplified the rapid gains made in women's educational attainment. At the same time, they do not realize that by being men they are not profiled in public spaces as a target for sexual harassment.

The signage could read something like “in accordance with ### law to prevent sexual harassment, this seat is reserved for women only” or “due to reported incidents of sexual harassment, this seat is reserved for women only” rather than simply saying “women only.” Doing so would immediately highlight our consciousness of harassment and possibly promote survivor reporting and bystander intervention.

The authors conclude,

“The hard facts still suggest that the status of Korean women lags behind those of other countries ― the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap report for 2012 ranked Korea 108th out of 135 countries around the world.
Yet, some of the measures that have been introduced without being given much thought as to their implications only jeopardize the status of women.”

The authors never explain the decision-making process behind making these women-only spaces and the critique that these are randomly designated spaces ignores the crime reports that are the actual basis for making safer women-only designated bus seats, train cars, library seats and lounges. Let’s get real; promoting the safety of women is NOT going to ‘jeopardize their status.’ Rather than internalizing, accepting and tolerating sexual harassment, visibility around sexual harassment teaches women and men to stand up for safe spaces for everyone.

Finally attitudes described by Professor Kwak,

“As more women pursue careers and succeed in these, the traditional viewpoint that regarded women as weak members of society has changed,” said Kwak Geum-ju, psychology a professor at Seoul National University. “Consequently, some males now go as far as to perceive women as competitors, exacerbating confrontations between the two sexes.”

demonstrate that we need to fill an education gap. We need to make sure that men and women understand these initiatives in the context of public safety, and do not mislabel them as competitive advantages for women. It isn’t about giving women a leg-up in the workplace; it is about preventing the sometimes debilitating effects of sexual violence so that women can safely access education.

Without appropriate public education campaigns to spread awareness, misunderstanding and backlash grow. Efforts to create safe spaces are overturned and women and social minority voices are effectively being silenced by backlash against human rights campaign progress. So let’s spread the word ourselves and help the public understand the reason that these projects exist. Let’s share information about sex crimes, let’s track where they happen, let’s stand up and intervene when we see sexual harassment, and let’s give public education to those who compare the pink car on a subway train to apartheid in South Africa.

This December a new public education project to promote awareness and reporting of street harassment will launch nationwide in Korea. Korean Gender Café 한국 젠더 카페 will soon post updates for those interested in this evolving project.

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We'd like to highlight a few examples of our public awareness promotion around sexual violence, please see:

Sexual Assault and Harassment, Child Self-defense, Domestic Violence Shelter Volunteer
Seoul Rape Medical Treatment and National Police Hospital (Located on Line 3, exit 1)
What is quasi-rape? Is Park Si-hoo charged with rape?
Queer Corner: Imbalance of Power and Rape in the Korean Gay Community
Sexual Violence as a Migrating Woman, Re: India Story You Never Wanted to Hear
Queer Corner: Violence in a Label - 마짜, 때짜, 올
가정폭력 Domestic Violence Awareness : Music & Media

For another discussion on reverse sexism please see So-called "Reverse Sexism" in Korea 소위 ‘역차별’

For background on Ilbe and Man of Korea/남성연대 see our posts
What is "Men’s Korea" (formerly Boslachi)? 맨즈코리아 ('보슬아치' 사이트), 그들은 누구인가?
What is Man of Korea? ‘남성연대’, 그들은 누구인가?
Korean Male Union & Sexual Harassment 남성연대와 성희롱
Dangerous Man of Korea Fundraiser Ends in Death
‘남성연대’, 페미니즘 그리고 여성가족부의 대안 “Korean Male Union”, Feminism and Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family

This is the 70th post on the Korean Gender Café 한국 젠더 카페! *^^*

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[1] There are cases where public safety initiatives HAVE put women’s status and safety in jeopardy. For example, I urge Park, Kwon and Yoon to do some reading about refugee camps and peacekeeping operations under investigation where women were segregated and forced to trade sex for resources, were raped by peacekeepers, or were raped while searching for resources due to poor facilities for displaced persons. The pink car on the subway is NOT such an instance.

How was the Korean Housewife Constructed?

Yesterday I posted a critique of the lazy way we toss around the term Confucian to describe contemporary Korean gender roles. A great comment by a reader prompted me to add additional explanation of what we might overlook when we focus on ‘Confucian’ and ‘traditional’ values. For a more specific discussion of Confucian ideology, I have written about Confucianism and the Choson Dynasty on this blog a few times: Power & Gender in the Early Korean State, Fashion: Regulating the Inner/Outer in Choson Korea, Comparing Marriage in the Middle Ages and Korea’s Choson Dynasty: 서양의 중세 초기와 조선의 결혼비교, and 조선 초기의 파워와 젠더체제. Here I’d like to throw out for our consideration some important alternate explanations of the contemporary construction of family life in Korea. 

I point out internal and external factors that have affected Korea in its modern history to emphasize the breadth of forces at play that are left entirely out of the discussion when we rush to attribute something to Korea's Confucian past. 

Many Confucian social and legal regulations were codified that affected family life, especially between 1300 and 1700. But there is significant doubt as to how deeply Confucian values penetrated into the common social consciousness, as they were largely codes to regulate the elite yangban. The colonial period was immediately predated by a ‘rush to modernize’ to avoid colonization in the late 1800s. On top of that the colonial period through 1945 was a major disruption in so many social structures that we might dub ‘traditional’ so that what we are calling ‘traditional’ today is a complicated reassertion or reconstruction or reclaiming of ‘traditions’ which shouldn’t be presented as a continuous march to the present. There are absolutely some lingering legacies, but we need to add depth to our understanding of Confucianism if we are going to throw it around as an explanation for Korean society today. Worse, I fear that by relying too heavily on the convenience of the Confucian explanation, we overlook more important influences on family life.

For example, in talking about housewives, we should not have this conversation without discussing the following major influences in recent history:

THE FIRST being the urbanization drive under Park Chung Hee, which disrupted ‘traditional’ family life in incredibly transformative ways. In Confucian and even in colonial period Korea family structures were generally larger multi-generational networks and geographically close. Pre-industrialization in Korea (which was only partially ushered in during the colonial period) families were more agrarian and family roles quite different from today. Here on the blog we have discussed the Theory of Compressed Modernization, which describes how Korea underwent rapid transformation in under 60 years that Europe process over the course of 200 years. When Park Chung Hee pushed urban industrialization, state policy transformed the family. Where once a network of women and men cooperated in a large family unit, now a mother was mobilized to prepare her husband, children (male and female) for economic competition in the city and factory. When the state didn’t have the foresight to prepare some social safety nets for the elderly left in the countryside, it was more convenient to criticize women for abandoning their ‘traditional’ roles than acknowledge how the state had reconstructed family life without preparing to care for the old. Newspapers in the 1970s criticize women (similar critiques emerged of the ‘New Woman’ in the colonial period). This transformation under Park Chung Hee sounds a lot more like the housewife Harper describes than anything in Confucian texts or dating back to Choson. There are absolutely some lingering legacies of Confucian ideology in Korean society, but these are redefined and deployed by contemporary actors.

SECOND, we can’t overlook the reality that European and North American societies made basically the same general decisions about gendered division of labor amidst industrialization. This is another reason to doubt a uniquely Korean tradition that created the housewife.

THIRD, I think the intensification of competition for rapid modernization probably has had the most direct and adverse affects on human rights conditions in Korean society. This means that in thinking about how to address these harms, we are distracting ourselves with ‘Confucian tradition’ when maybe we should instead be thinking about the hegemonic way Samsung corporate structure harms family life in contemporary Korea, or the continued mobilization of the people by government to make steep sacrifices with inadequate social safety nets. Looking too distantly and too ‘culturally’ into Korea’s past obscures the political and economic changes we can demand today that are changing patterns of inequality. We need only look to the incredibly important influence of the IMF crisis in the 1990s, which reversed a lot of trends in Korean society toward gender equality. Not unlike recessions in other regions, women pay a heavier price for economic slowdown, and that isn’t unique to Korea. It is a failure of most societies to adequately engage women productively in society in ways that respect their human rights. For more discussion of Compressed Modernization Theory on this blog, please see Compressed Modernization for Gender Studies 압축적 근대성와 젠더 and 압축적 근대성 이론 Compressed Modernization Theory for Korean Studies.

TO wrap this up, I think it is really skipping quite a few steps to simplistically say that the housewife in contemporary Korea is a Confucian tradition unique to Korea. It just isn’t that linear. Better to understand a variety of factors and locate the influences that have the most detrimental effects on women’s human rights.

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Lastly, I've written a few times about the problem of associating violence against women as 'unique' to certain societies. Some of these earlier posts could definitely use some revisiting, revising or renewed debate. In the following posts I emphasize that HOW we talk about violence against women is very important:

Sexual Violence as a Migrating Woman, Re: India Story You Never Wanted to Hear

Yoon is NOT in a 'sex scandal'

Buzzfeed! Fearing rape is not a “Unique side effect of being an Indian girl”

Single Moms & Korean Fertility Policy 싱글맘와 한국의의 가족계획

~녀 뉴스 or Nyo News, the Female Files

MBC 응답 Responses to MBC's The Shocking Reality About Relationships With Foreigners

Rape and Sex Offender Registry in Korea 성폭행와 성범죄자알림

Solidarity is for White Women in Korea, too. Re: The Fear of Becoming a Housewife

Let’s talk about how so many writers lazily toss around Confucianism and its’ impact on gender roles in Korean society. Let’s pursue alternate, more complicated and more rigorous discussions of Korean society. At stake is not only intellectual rigor, but the pursuit of mutual understanding that can only be achieved when we stop recklessly dismissing cultures when we could be building solidarity. Although there are many pieces in which we encounter the assertion that Korean gender roles are Confucian, I am going to point to a piece by Megan Harper who recently contributed “THE FEAR OF BECOMING A HOUSEWIFE” to Groove Magazine.

Harper writes (emphasis mine),  

“This year, I married a Korean man. He isn’t “Korean-Korean,” which is our code to mean he is comfortable with the ways of life outside of the peninsula.”

"He understands the limits that Confucianism places on women and tries his hardest to understand my expectations of equality."

"I have met many women with advanced degrees in subjects such as Russian literature, Chinese and graphic design who abandon all career goals once they marry. Or maybe it is because many of the young women I work with consider university to be simply a way to meet a wealthy man and become his housewife."  

"What I was not prepared for, though, was the depth of his parents’ gender roles, my feelings toward their way of life and the effect these things would have on my ability to relate to his parents. It is hard to hide my discomfort when I see my mother-in-law prepare a beautiful dinner that her husband has half eaten before she even has a chance to sit down. I cannot understand why she tolerates this lack of family assistance. Although I am embarrassed by my own narrow-mindedness, this type of event, and my perception of her, makes it very difficult for me to relate to her; my own refusal to take on the “housewife” role has made it hard for me to embrace this woman.

I know that traditional gender roles continue to exist in my own culture, but they feel much more limiting in Korea. Perhaps it is because, as an outsider, they are easier to see." 

When I hear similar comments from Americans (ex. I frequently hear something like "At Chuseok all the men drank and all the women cooked and cleaned, can you believe how sexist Korea is?") I add this bit of analysis: Perhaps it is easier to see Korean women this way because I was raised in a culture that stereotypes Asian women, I was raised falsely to think that my culture has the 'most' gender equality, I was raised in a culture willfully blind its own exploitation of Asian women. It is important for people from my culture to unlearn some of the racism and nationalism we were raised with. .

TO SUMMARIZE the piece, the author (not Korean) discusses a process of negotiating gender role expectations with her (Korean, but not so-called “Korean-Korean) husband. The author also reflects on her own attitude toward her (I guess the author would say, “Korean-Korean”) “traditional” mother-in-law’s gender role and Korean women's sacrifices for family. The piece emphasizes a link between “traditional Korean” (Confucian) culture and gender role expectations, contrasting this with only the briefest of references to her own culture. Her unnamed and largely un-examined culture is not subjected to the same lens. The key words used to describe women and her home culture include: equality, independent, respectable, equalized gender roles, etc. 

Honestly, at first I wanted to get behind the effort the author says she is putting into understanding her mother-in-law, but ultimately found the piece somewhat offensive and the cultural explanations kind of lazy and stereotypical. This is no doubt because SO MUCH of our dialog in English-language literature talks about Korea in this way. I struggle to find English newspapers abroad that don’t talk about Confucianism in every piece about Korea, even when it is about a plane crash >.< Even many Korean friends and classmates will emphasize Confucianism instead of other explanations possibly because it has become a quick and easy way to describe and emphasize perceived differences. Back to what the Grand Narrative dubbed 

The fear of becoming a (Korean) housewife http://t.co/aVd9RuO7ux
— JamesTurnbull (@JamesTurnbull) September 9, 2013

the author concludes,

"I hope to share with others my unexpected limit in understanding that arises from my own gender role expectations. Regardless of my mother-in-law’s reasoning, it is futile for me to judge her. I will strive to respect her for the sacrifices she has made while using my own life to demonstrate equalized gender roles."

FIRST and FOREMOST I have to critique the way that the author positions her life as a demonstration of equalized gender roles to her mother-in-law. Despite prior reflections on trying to be open-minded, the piece asserts a instructive superiority of a not 'Korean-Korean' life and mindset over a 'Korean-Korean' life and mindset. The author also leaves out a lot of incredibly important context about these so-called 'equalized gender roles.' This discussion may also reveal our blindness to our own privileges and complicity in exploitation that we externalize and blame on others and other cultures.

LET’S START with how not unique to Korea it is to have a mother-in-law that does the majority of the housework or who has ‘traditional’ views about gender, motherhood or being a wife. Personal disclosure, I recently married an American man and my mother-in-law and I have some quite different and some shared views about culture and gender roles even though our citizenship is the same. Before my partner, I once lived with a long-term with a partner and his mother who migrated to the US from Mexico. My partner’s mother and I also had some different and some shared attitudes about culture and gender roles despite not having the same citizenship. I lived in a homestay in Korea for over a year, and once again similar and different ideas about gender roles. My mom did all the cooking and cleaning except for once a week when my father typically ordered in food and dumped trash. Guess what, if you are raised by a single mom (as I later was, and as my cousins were), who is it that is doing the cooking and cleaning? I bet it is usually still mom and not dad. Thinking about the men in my life growing up, I have an uncle who migrated from Greece to the U.S. Another uncle migrated from Iraq. During all of the Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox Catholic, and Islamic holidays, also during the Chuseoks, Thanksgivings, the quinceañeras, even during the national holidays and other special occasions that I have attended and participated in, women did the cooking, the cleaning, the care and love work. 

NEXT, the author is worried about becoming a Korean housewife and wants to keep working. I would like to see a follow-up reflection by the author on how she engages her husband, husband’s boss, her boss and most importantly her mother-in-law or possibly a nanny in a few years when she wants to keep working and is struggling to find daycare. Will grandma be more relatable or her gender role more appreciated when the time comes to make that decision? Though, I honestly really hope we don’t need that reflection because I hope SOME administration will start taking social welfare policy seriously.  

I sense a rebuttal: So you say American women and European women's workforce participation has surged? Let's break that down a bit, too. Women in my family, a grandma or an aunt not working outside the home, absolutely took on the care work while both or a single parent were working. Let's look at broader social trends. At the same time that women's workforce participation in the US and Europe has surged, simultaneously world migration trends reflect a major shift toward a majority of migrants being female? In origin societies we see complex family decisions over whether or not to send daughters and wives abroad for migration to destination states in Europe and the Americas. Migration patterns all over the world are pushed by gender roles that haven’t changed THAT much in the ‘West’ and by economic competition that compels all sorts of changes in societies. What work are female migrant laborers doing? Largely care, reproductive and sexual labor. How many affluent households in the U.S, in Western Europe, in Korea and Japan are replacing middle and upper-class family housewives with migrant or increasingly 'competitive market-solution' labor like fast food, boutique daycare, dry cleaners, etc.? I love all the fancy jargon we (myself included!) use to glorify and add scientific weigh to our own cultural solutions while we dismiss other countries for having ‘traditional’ or in this case ‘Confucian’ solutions.

FINALLY, let’s get to Confucianism. I don't think the author understands Confucianism and how it has transformed and been transformed by Korean society. Nor do I think the author tries to think of other explanations besides Confucianism. The Confucian card is over played and we are missing out on better explanations. Too often, writers use Confucianism as a neat and tidy quick way to dismiss something in Korea as essentially 'pre-modern' while simultaneously failing to make any further inquiry into Korea's modern history and society.

In particular, let’s drop the 'backward Confucian Korea' trope and seek more nuanced explanations. Frankly, in the context of this piece, the Confucian trope pretends that all issues in Korean society today are 'pre-modern' and tied to some ingrained sexist cultural/religious though pattern. I think that bit of explanation is tidily left off because that would implicate modern structures all over the world and also require consideration of Korea's colonial and occupied recent history. In turn, this ignores the role of government intrusion into family life in modern Korean history, and especially the mobilization of family and housewife for a decidedly neo-liberal international market. Was Park Chung Hee acting in accordance with Confucianism or aligning policy with the cold war and international markets?

Furthermore, is that mobilization of women and family an isolated experience in Korea? No. Even seen a poster of Rosie the Riveter? Or a war-time volunteer nurse? Or a Red Cross volunteer knitting socks? Oh, those examples are too distant and you don’t want to compare US and Europe in WWII to post-colonial and Korean War recover era Korean workforce mobilization? What happens to American and European women during recession? Hours and benefits cut to keep “more people at work” rather than all-out cutting jobs? Funny how we keep reading that women and people of color in America are disproportionately losing benefits and having hours cut.

Like the Americas and Europe, Korea has also had mobilization of women for home labor, for labor in manufacturing and unpaid care labor for troops, students, husbands and sons, and so has every other country ever. How can we use Confucianism as the sole explanation for anything in Korean society while ignoring the influences of religion (Protestantism anyone?), Japanese colonial state education of women for low pay low skilled labor (Thank you NEW RIGHT textbook revisionism, what a TRIUMPH that was for gender equality), US-ROK economic ties and international markets that mobilized men abroad to wars and oil fields, rapid modernization pressures and lacking social safety nets. I don't have a full explanation, but lazily tossing around "Confucianism" isn't good enough and we need to start a better dialog about societies. More urgently, we need to keep promoting less offensive conversations about Korean women, men and their families. Not just on blogs but also in news media and academia, too.   

Maybe in Korean society we need a dose of something similar to what intersectional feminism and the recent #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen dialog represent in the US. As feminists, let’s stop dismissing other women’s culture and start listening. This dialog would be a vital precondition for really working together to face inequality and other challenges we face in our societies.

I’m guilty of some laziness too, that’s why I need to keep listening, studying, reflecting and looking for other viewpoints. Re-reading some of my posts on this blog, I realize that in my living and studying process I’ve changed my views quite a lot over the past 14 months of blogging about gender and Korean society. Thank you to readers and critics and friends for your dialog. Since I know I am also in a privileged space where I can access information as my full-time occupation, to spread some of that around, here is a short reading list that inspires much of what I have written here:

Chang, KS and MY Song. 2010. “The stranded individualizer under compressed modernity: South Korean women in individualization without individualism” The British Journal of Sociology 61(3): 539-564.

Cheng, Sealing. "Sexual Protection, Citizenship and Nationhood: Prostituted Women and Migrant Wives in South Korea," Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Vol. 37, No. 10, Dec. 2011.

Cho, Uhn, “The Encroachment of Globalization into Intimate Life: The Flexible Korean Family in “Economic Crisis”” Korea Journal 45(3), 2005.

Cho, Joo-hyun. “Neoliberal Governmentality at Work: Post-IMF Korean Society and the Construction of Neo-liberal Women” Korea Journal 49(3): 2009.

Nelson, Laura, “Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea,” 2000.

Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work, published by Stanford University Press, 2001.

Kim, Hyun Mee. "The State and Migrant Women: Diverging Hopes in the Making of “Multicultural Families” in Contemporary Korea" in Korea Journal, Winter 2007.

Yi, Eunhee Kim, “’Home is a Place to Rest’: Constructing the Meaning of Work, Family and Gender in the Korean Middle Class,” Korea Journal 38(2), 1998.

Asian Girlz Apologies: On Sincerity and Slut Shaming – 2 of 3

Asian Girlz music video Director Michael Steinberg is getting very little response to his visual interpretation of the song. As the director, he is responsible for the scenes, editing, camera angles, etc. He is responsible in one way or another for everything except the lyrics of the song. So, any response to actress Levy Tran, for instance, should also have been a question or a critique to Steinberg.

Worse, while Levy Tran has made an apology, and the band has made some insufficient apologies for their racist and sexist lyrics, in the Twitter conversations below, director Steinberg comes off as completely unwilling to reconsider his video scripting and his objectifying camera angles.

It would be better for the director to answer criticism with a bit of self-reflection. How much being called out does it take before an ‘artist’ will really think it through instead of coming up with lame reasons to pass on their own responsibility for using their "art" platform for racist or sexist ideas?

Steinberg is absolutely responsible for the concept of the music video. His Tweet back in February shares this concept:

 As far back as… uh… January, he was preparing for the project:

This is how Steinberg has decided to deal with audience criticism. He merely asserts that his work is ‘Art’ without intention to be racist or sexist. Please Note *underlining added for emphasis, you know, because I am EDITING and taking CREATIVE CONTROL over how to explain my INTENT and TELL a story:

  

 By writing the above responses, Steinberg denies that his own work could also be exploitative. The director is defensive and asserts his work is great. Rather than reflect, he turns responsibility back on the audience to define for him 'the line.' At best, he asks 'should we take it down' but his exchanges with audience members refuse to acknowledge his role as as director and the impact his work has had on the audience. 

I'm not sure that Michael Steinberg's writing can demonstrate the nuanced understanding of race that would be required for him to claim that he is producing 'Art' about racial stereotypes. His own writing is full of intentionally used cliches, particularly evident in his publicly accessible writing sample for a TV Pilot titled ICE that he describes as a "procedural about Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

  

Note how non-white characters are introduced by name, followed immediately by race, then a character motive description (sometimes playing into stereotype). Meanwhile, characters he intends to be white are not given any racial description at all. It is pretty clear that as a writer, he writes from the perspective of, and for white audiences. Why is it hard to understand that his 'Art' could be received differently by non-white or racially-conscious audiences? Probably because Steinberg lacks sufficient self-reflection about his role as an ‘Artist’ and that his writing, creative control and direction of pieces portray people of color.   

The song and its music video are totally unclear and ineffective if their intent is to mock Orientalizing fetishism or racist attitudes. In filming the music video, a couple of smarter choices might go further to establish its cred as a critique. One example, Steinberg’s decision to shoot the striptease scene from this angle puts Levy Tran on display as an object of The Male Gaze. Perhaps simply shooting from a level angle could make a difference by shifting emphasis from objectification of her body and toward her performance. This is a fundamental concept in cinematography that even I, with no background in film, can grasp and am aware of.

Steinberg didn't want to respond to our critique or explain his creative decisions as director of the music video: 

If Steinberg’s intent was to poke fun at guys who fetishize, he fails big. A director/artist is supposed to think about audience. Even commentators who are sympathetic to the claim that the video was intended to make fun of racists point out it’s utter failure. For example, GangnamBoy writes, “I’m sure most of the intended audience will be too stupid to even understand the "message." They’ll just stare at the hot girl. The problem is that they just aren’t clever enough to make a satire. Whatever message they’re trying to say is just going to be lost in internet comment wars.”

Furthermore, a good critique doesn't need to be EXPLAINED in an interview or post or Tweet. An ‘artist’ shouldn’t need to inform the audience at large that "no no I totally meant to make fun of racists... I just failed, but this is ‘Art’ with a capital A so I am absolved of your critique." These excuses really don’t work if your project just regurgitates racist words/ideas.

To wrap this up, I love that rather than promote Steinberg’s video, some groups have started to make alternate play lists, such as Feed The People Playlist: APIAFemale-Identified Musicians by Sean Miura.

Read our other posts in this series on Asian Girlz Apologies:
Part 1 critiques the problematic racism and sexism in Day Above Ground's lyrics and apology
Part 3 addresses the online and media community and the slut-shaming of Levy Tran

  

For Discussion:

I enjoyed a chat about the Asian Girlz MV with my good friend Taylor Bradley, parts of which I’d like to share here in the hope that others will join our conversation (in the comments section below). We discussed what we though the band and director might have ‘expected’ and we touch on an ongoing debate about cultural appropriation in the music industry. We end by addressing the ‘Art’ of the Asian Girlz music video.

[Chelle B. Mille] http://m.complex.com/music/2013/07/day-above-ground-asian-girlz-racist-song

[Chelle B. Mille] want to contribute a reaction for my blog?

[Chelle B. Mille] calling for your solidarity~

[Taylor Bradley] god thats painful

[Taylor Bradley] lyrics music the fucking faces

 [Taylor Bradley] *their

…

[Taylor Bradley] i wonder what the reception they were expecting

[Chelle B. Mille] yeah... the part of the video that they shot IN China Town or KTown was confusing... I wonder, did they just tell people they were shooting a video, or were those folks fans, had they heard the song?

[Chelle B. Mille] As for Levy Tran, just because one individual who is a woman and Asian consents to the song with participation... doesn't mean it is a good idea or is gonna fly... but maybe it made them think there would be a positive reception to the song?

…

[Taylor Bradley] im not sure how bad appropriation is. I mean GDragon wears his hat sideways....

[Chelle B. Mille] are you thinking about the blackface image where he mimics other celebrities that wear a hoodie in solidarity for Trayvon Martin... but in blackface?

[Taylor Bradley] no. just wearing his hat sideways

[Chelle B. Mille] I don't think that in and of itself upsets anybody... its when someone then tries to put on a 'performance' of another culture... like separating an unknowing performance from its history or context. If an American woman performs as aegyo... what does that performance mean?

[Chelle B. Mille] likewise when Hyuna sings about having dark ‘chocolate’ skin in a kpop MV ‘ghetto’ in her Ice Cream MV... the appropriation of cultural history, music, fashion, etc. do come across problematically in my opinion. It ties into racialized consumption or use of anothers culture while also taking over control of its interpretation.

[Taylor Bradley] i dont know.  i feel the problem is only when you appropriate the bad symbols.

[Chelle B. Mille] hmm

[Taylor Bradley] like if kanye wanted to wear a kimono that would be fine

[Taylor Bradley] but if he wore a [Japanese] imperial officers uniform

[Taylor Bradley] that wouldnt be fine

[Chelle B. Mille] what examples show good/bad appropriation? or is there a distinction to draw between appreciation vs. appropriation?

[Taylor Bradley] second question: i dont think so

[Chelle B. Mille] I think it matters what he does in the kimono, too. And the original use of the kimono. That is why the "headdress Indian" costume is offensive to some... the headdress is a sacred religious artifact being disrespected at a kegger party.

[Taylor Bradley] yeah that makes senses

[Taylor Bradley] be careful with bad symbols, and be respectful with good ones

[Taylor Bradley] maybe thats the rule

[Chelle B. Mille] but I can't figure out a method to distinguish clearly and instructively how to evaluate appropriation. seems the logical first step is to be knowledgeable about the culture... but then we still have to be careful about not perceiving a right to appropriate based on being 'in the field' as so so so many anthropologists have done in the past.

[Taylor Bradley] i like my morality simple

[Taylor Bradley] rule one: dont be a dick

[Chelle B. Mille] yeah... it ought to be common sense like the guideline you mention, but wow, we are capable of such stupidity

[Taylor Bradley] rule two: follow rule one

[Chelle B. Mille] lol

[Taylor Bradley] i think that if you are showing respect to another person culture your fine

[Taylor Bradley] its usually not hard to tell

[Taylor Bradley] with the days above ground guys though

[Taylor Bradley] they werent trying to be disrespectful, just fucking clueless

[Chelle B. Mille] hmmm... I think they were trying to 'push boundaries'

second line about butt fucking... they weren't being respectful for sure... they wanted shock value... they wanted to use sex to sell records... they just vomited up every cliche they could think of

[Taylor Bradley] haha

[Taylor Bradley] but their response seemed so naive

[Taylor Bradley] youre right they may be savvier than im giving them credit for

[Chelle B. Mille] hahaha... I may assume everyone is devious until proven dumb

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Michael Steinberg's Tweets from https://twitter.com/cine_fix

Michael Steinberg's writing sample was posted to his website at http://michaelsteinbergfilms.com/writing