Korean Feminist Research Articles

Anti-sexual violence movement against punitive measures: The feminist activism of Korean WomenLink

ABSTRACTIn South Korea, punitive measures in response to extreme sex-crimes against children have emerged since the mid-2000s. This punitive turn has been evident across the world; however, some scholars have argued that it is a result of the feminist movement against sexual violence and so has been labeled as “carceral feminism.” In this paper, I undertake a content analysis of documents of feminist organizations who work on issues of sexual violence, combined with data collected through interviews with activists. I seek to show how a feminist organization, Korean WomenLink Sexual Violence Relief Center (K-WomenLink), has actually created strategies and activities in opposition to this punitive turn in the public discourse and penal approach. Thereby, I argue that the Korean feminist movement against sexual violence in fact offers a counter-example to the discourse of carceral feminism with respect to their activities and the dynamics surrounding the movement.

Marginalized Korean Female sex worker in the context of Korean Minjung and Feminist Theology

Marginalized Korean Female sex worker in the context of Korean Minjung and Feminist Theology

SlutWalk Korea: Translation, Cultural Production, and the Politics of Possibility

Avoiding either a celebration of SlutWalk as global sisterhood or a dismissal of this movement as postfeminist, this article seeks to understand the SlutWalk phenomenon as cultural production. The article examines how SlutWalk Korea (jabnyonhangjin) organizers bridge and traverse the cultural boundaries that arise among global SlutWalk movements, Korean feminist movements, leftist movements, and popular media. Through such traversing practices, the organizers not only produce activism as signified by posters, marches, and costumes, but also (re)construct a field of feminist cultural production. By participating in SlutWalk Korea, which recognizes their interdependence and acknowledges their interior otherness, Korean organizers create new feminist subjectivities that enable new political possibilities.

페미니스트 아티스트 그룹 ‘입김’의 개입으로서 연대와 예술실천

The aim of this study is to closely examine the works of the “Feminist Artists Group IPGIM” in the context of Contemporary Korean Art and the arts of glocal era. IPGIM was created by 8 woman artists in their 30s in 1997 when Korean women culture movement was at its height. Its founders, Kwak Eunsook, Kim Myungjin, Rhu Junhwa, Woo Shinhee, Yoon Heesu, Jung Jungyeob, Je Miran, and Ha Insun, showed exceptional works in practicing art by temporary solidarity with feminist identity in the 2000s. IPGIM was active in various ways pursuing characteristics of feminist art, activist art, project art and art as public intervention. This study examines the subject, perfunctory design, analysis on aesthetics, as well as the involvement methods and urges on the change of views on woman issues in the Korean society through 4 of the 7 major projects of joint planning, and coproduced: AbanggoongJongmyo Project, Island-Survivor, Disemerging Women, Disemerging Women-Stories of Eumsa.BR IPGIM challenged the female images as a signifier and the politics of space created by patriarchal Confucian culture through feminist perspective. They have unraveled lives of female individuals with various identities that cross over different time and space into realism by focusing on female body and sexuality, labor, class. IPGIM’s activities connects to feminist art in the 1980s and umbilical cord in one sense, and on the other, progressed by reacting sensitively to changing woman issues through accepting contemporary sensibilities, temporary solidarity, uses of various media and so on. Therefore, IPGIM created a unique local feminist art different from the West in the glocal era, and contributed in the contemporary Korean feminist art.

A Constant Stream from Oppression to Freedom: Korean Feminist Art in the Age of Deconstruction and Post-Ideology

A Constant Stream from Oppression to Freedom: Korean Feminist Art in the Age of Deconstruction and Post-Ideology

Beauty Between Empires: Global Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem

Beauty Between EmpiresGlobal Feminism, Plastic Surgery, and the Trouble with Self-Esteem Sharon Heijin Lee (bio) Since 2012, when Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” dominated US airwaves, television, and computer screens, the popularity of K-pop has created renewed interest among American media outlets and netizens in the topic of South Korean (hereafter Korea or Korean) plastic surgery consumption. The Atlantic featured a story on “The K-Pop Plastic Surgery Connection,” while Bloomberg News published on medical tourism in Korea: “Gangnam Style Nip and Tuck Draws Tourists to the Beauty Belt.”1 Buzzfeed’s story was more provocative, if strangely Eurocentric, asking “When Does Plastic Surgery Become Racial Transformation?”2 And most recently the New Yorker’s piece asks, “Why Is Seoul the World’s Plastic-Surgery Capital?”3 Other much more sensationalized reporting has produced images such as the “Miss Korea gif,” which went viral in less than forty-eight hours, appearing first on a Japanese blog, then Reddit, and then in national and international newspapers in April 2013. The gif, which compresses several still jpegs into moving images such that the beauty contestants’ faces morph one into the next at rapid speed, was meant to illustrate visually what Jezebel’s headline summed up as “Plastic Surgery Means Many Beauty Queens but Only One Kind of Face.”4 The gif—posted and reposted on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit and reported upon by countless outlets—signified “Korea’s plastic surgery mayhem,”5 as one Reddit user described it. Such characterizations pathologize Korean cosmetic surgery consumption as a push toward racialized uniformity defined by a singular national beauty aesthetic across diverse Korean women’s faces.6 For US feminists, however, the gif took on particular salience. Mainstream feminist sites such as Jezebel offered the gif as evidence of a bizarre form of racialized patriarchal oppression happening abroad, making it distinct from, and exotic in relation to, forms of heteropatriarchal violence in the United States. As such, Jezebel reported on the Miss Korea gif, and Korean plastic surgery consumption more generally, at least four times in the spring [End Page 1] and summer months of 2013, in articles such as “I Can’t Stop Looking at These Korean Women Who’ve Had Plastic Surgery.” As it turned out, however, the individual images making up the viral gif were photoshopped.7 What was issued as objective visual evidence of Korean women’s fanatic obsession with plastic surgery instead reveals a fanatic obsession on the part of Americans for producing and consuming Korean women as such. Just a couple of months after the Miss Korea gif went viral in the United States, a Korean feminist nonprofit organization, Yŏsŏng Minuhoe (한국여성 민우회), known in English as Korean Womenlink (hereafter Womenlink), widely publicized a forum called “Apkujeong Station Exit #4: Let’s Talk about It.” A follow-up to their 2003 nationwide “Love Your Body” campaign, which sought to curb dieting and plastic surgery consumption among women, the forum’s title references the fact that nearly half of Seoul’s plastic surgery clinics are located in the Gangnam district (made world famous in PSY’s viral hit song), many of which can be accessed through the Apkujeong subway station and, more specifically, via the #4 exit from that stop.8 The forum was held in Seoul’s congressional building and sought public policy alternatives to curb a problem that the group asserts “has only gotten worse” since 2003.9 Besides Womenlink activists, the event featured a panel including a doctor, professor, television director, and lawyer, with a congressional representative giving closing remarks.10 The specialists provided insights into what they saw as the major factors fueling the cosmetic surgery industry as well as possible solutions to the problem. For Womenlink activists, it was a time to reflect on the ten years since their “Love Your Body” campaign. That Korean plastic surgery consumption would occupy the minds of Jezebel writers, editors, and millions of readers as well as Womenlink’s members, panelists, and forum attendees at roughly the same time—feminists from opposite ends of the world, so to speak—illuminates several key issues. First, such interest attests to the...

Jeong, Image of God: Korean Feminist Theological Anthropology

Jeong, Image of God: Korean Feminist Theological Anthropology

Rethinking the idiom for feminist pedagogy: The collaboration of theory and activism

“Feminist Pedagogy for Dialogue between Generations” was the theme that the steering committee of the Korean Association of Women's Studies 2014 suggested for its annual conference held in 2014. I understand that this theme of inter-generational dialogue indicates a crisis regarding the reproduction of the next generation of feminists and the failure in popularizing feminism in Korea, which is not something new. However, what is new is that Korean feminists now seek to resolve this via feminist pedagogy. I contend that collaboration between theory and praxis or academia and field experience needs to be realized, not merely in name but as concrete practice. Democratic relationships between the two spheres are highlighted as most significant. Given that the decline in the socioeconomic situation of junior feminists in their 20s and 30s seems to persist and continue, feminist pedagogy also needs to go beyond the psychological state of relation-oriented-ness, as conceptualized by Carol Gilligan, and instead the sociological appropriation of psychological knowledge is suggested here.

What I believe, the fundament of Korean feminist life-giving-and-rearing(生物) politics and education - Chung Ha-gok’s ‘living principle’(生理) and Hannah Arendt’s ‘natality’ -

What I believe, the fundament of Korean feminist life-giving-and-rearing(生物) politics and education - Chung Ha-gok’s ‘living principle’(生理) and Hannah Arendt’s ‘natality’ -

Stirring up Deep Waters: Korean Feminist Theologies Today

This article traces the history of Korean feminist theology, focusing on its recent developments since the 1980s. During this period Korean feminist theology has produced distinctive methodologies and actively engaged with social movements toward justice and democracy. In the past decade, however, Korean feminist theology has been criticized for its inertia. This article argues that today’s Korean feminist theology should be evaluated differently than in the past. Acknowledging considerable changes in Korean society, Korean feminist theology is coping with fresh challenges, making new waves, and generating new inspirations.

Challenges and Opportunities for a Human Rights Frame in South Korea: Context and Strategizing in the Anti-Domestic Violence Movement.

Korean feminists are keenly aware that transnational feminists emphasize a human rights framework to eradicate violence against women. But in the 1990s, they based their anti-domestic violence campaign on a frame of "preservation of the family" because it was more culturally resonant at the time than a human rights frame. The results include passage of two legislative Acts, failure to implement as intended, and a continued search for a more effective frame. Ironically, the human rights frame has re-emerged as a possible solution.

Framing Dynamics of South Korean Women’s Movements, 1970s–90s: Global Influences, State Responses, and Interorganizational Networks

South Korean feminist activism has been a paradigmatic case of success in terms of legislating and amending laws and policies germane to gender equality. In explain- ing dynamics of South Korean women's movements, however, existing research that highlights importance of external structures falls short of analytic acumen. Even when propitious opportunities for movement vibrancy appear, they cannot become consequential gains unless movement participants perceive opportuni- ties as palpable and capitalize on them. By focusing on activities of Korea Women's Hot Line (KWHL), we explore how KWHL created a gender frame in 1970s and changed it in 1980s and 1990s and investigate how KWHL problematized gender violence, identified perpetrators, distinguished root cause, and furnished solutions. This process of frame construction and reconstitution is not only intrinsic to forming a feminist identity and mobilizing women's movements but also integral to movement trajectories. Yet, framing and its impact are practiced and constrained within specific domestic and international confines. In South Korean case, gender frames have been formulated and reformulated by three factors: (1) global influences, (2) state responses, and (3) interorganizational networks. The abeyance of Western feminism from late 1970s coincided with an increase in women's movements in developing countries. 1 South Korean feminist activism has been one of paradigmatic cases of success and has been highly touted domestically and internationally. A Western feminist scholar appraises that the (South) Korean women's movement has proven sufficiently cohesive and flexible as to provide demands for gender equality with an increasingly visible and

Expanding the Feminist Politics of Reproduction in the Context of the Developmental Hegemony of South Korea

This paper attempts to expand the political spaces of South Korean feminist politics of reproduction, which demands women's biological reproductive rights from the state in the context of the developmental hegemony of Korean society. The case study of SMCs (Saemaul Mothers' Clubs) shows that a long, deep, and continuous mobilization of women's biological reproduction has been undertaken by the state within the frame of economic and socio-political development. In this process women have embodied developmen-talism, creating strong consent for the associated state-led development policies. The feminist politics of reproduction calls for a shift from the politics of women's biological reproductive rights with a strategy for engaging with the state in a struggle to deconstruct the developmental hegemony of reproduction that is simultaneously entrenched in people's bodies, sexuality, mindsets, behavior patterns and in civil society groups, state institutions, and economic sectors at local, national, and global levels.

Flow and Irony: Locating Literary Modernity in Hahn Moo-Sook's Retrospective Gazes

Before the twentieth century, the female presence in Korean literature was largely a construct of patriarchal imagination, with women held up merely as exemplars for all others to emulate. The twentieth century brought wider exposure to Western culture, and Korean feminists began laying a foundation for woman's social engagement and equality. Hahn Moo-Sook was born during the early waves of the feminist literary movement and lived to write through tumultuous times of war, division, and political upheavals. This essay discusses Hahn's literary world in terms of her egalitarian vision of history as witnessed by underprivileged class and gender; her early vision of modernity wavering between the world of the novel and of the romantic tale in And So Flows History ; and the flowering of her modernist style in several of her later works.

Particularity and Universality of Korean Feminist Theology in Global Age

Particularity and Universality of Korean Feminist Theology in Global Age

The Future of Ecumenical Movement and Korean Feminist Theology of Sanctity(聖), Nature(性) and Sincerity(誠) in looking forward to having the Conference of WCC Busan 2013

The Future of Ecumenical Movement and Korean Feminist Theology of Sanctity(聖), Nature(性) and Sincerity(誠) in looking forward to having the Conference of WCC Busan 2013

An Old Testament Interpretation in an Era of Globalization from the perspective of Korean Feminist Theology

An Old Testament Interpretation in an Era of Globalization from the perspective of Korean Feminist Theology

Should feminism transcend nationalism? A defense of feminist nationalism in South Korea

Much postcolonial Third World feminism literature has emphasized the gendered nature of nationalism and its negative effects on feminism. Thus, to secure feminism in postcolonial Third World feminist literature contends that gender takes precedence over nation and feminist discourse abandons nationalism. This article challenges the general understanding of gendered nationalism, which in particular prevails in postcolonial Third World feminism scholarship. Focusing on the history of the South Korean women's movement, I propose to show not only that the Korean feminist struggle is compatible with nationalist activities but also that Korean feminism and Korean nationalism reinforce each other in a constructive way. I am primarily concerned with three cases of the South Korean women's nationalist movement since the 1980s—minjung feminism, the comfort-women issue, and the abolishment of the family-head system. In this regard, the South Korean women's movement might be properly called feminist nationalism.

Neo-Liberalism, Deschooling Society and the Education of Korean Feminist all the world-reviving Spirituality

Neo-Liberalism, Deschooling Society and the Education of Korean Feminist all the world-reviving Spirituality

A Korean Feminist Perspective on God Representation

This article investigates the ways in which the patriarchal God image when combined with Confucianism in Korean culture can negatively affect Korean Christian women in their concept of identity and self-worth. In doing so, a few salient constructs of Confucianism that are closely related to the role of Korean women are examined. Engaging in and dialoging with the works of Sigmund Freud and Ana-Maria Rizzuto in their treatments of God representation along with some key research findings in that area, the nature and the various dynamics of God representation are discussed. Finally some practical suggestions are given in dealing with the patriarchal image of God in relation to the lived experiences of Korean Christian women in Korean context.