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Nth Room Crimes and intensifying gender conflict in South Korea: attempting to unite a highly divided society

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The horrific case of videos showing the sexual exploitation of women in South Korea being sold on the social media platform Telegram was recently uncovered, prompting a public outcry and leading to feminist action in the country. Known as the Nth Room Crimes, this case shows just how far South Korean society still is from eliminating the oppression of women and addressing skewed gender relations. The strong backlash from men against efforts to redress gender inequality makes matters even worse. This article shows that toxic masculinity in South Korea urgently needs to be addressed for any real change to take place and suggests some possible first steps.

Source: Voice of America https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/south-koreas-metoo-movement-challenges-workplace-sexual-harassment

Disclaimer

This article carries a trigger warning. It contains descriptions of events related to sexual exploitation that may be distressing to sensitive readers.

Between 2018 and 2020, thousands of videos of women being sexually exploited were sold on the social media platform Telegram by a pimp known as Doctor. A copycat followed suit and even more videos were sold online. As the sordid details of these horrific crimes, known as the Nth Room Crimes, were uncovered, South Korean society was shaken to the core. Besides the fact that the perpetrator was a young man with a ‘good background’, the extent of the crimes also led to widespread shock and disbelief. More than 60,000 people had paid using cryptocurrency to watch these videos, and over 100 women had been sexually abused in the videos, including more than 20 minors.

In response, South Koreans signed an online petition pressing for the identities of the perpetrators to be made public; over two million signatures were collected in a short period. The perpetrators’ real names were pasted in the media for all to see and condemn. Yet this is not enough. These events should lead us to urgently question the extent of misogyny in South Korea and to come up with ways to counter it. This article looks at how gender stereotyping and misogyny are well alive in South Korea and what effect it has on the efforts to press for real and enduring change.

A highly unequal society

Despite the flourishing of activities promoting gender equality in South Korea, women are still suffering the burden of highly skewed gender relations. Economic development has resulted in the increased participation of women in the labour market; however, only 4.5% of women occupied executive positions in South Korean companies as recently as 2019. Digital technologies have also contributed to the rise of feminist movements and awareness-raising about gender issues (Kim, 2017; Hasunuma and Shin, 2019). Nevertheless, they have also increased cyber gender-based crimes, including the phenomenon of spycams, misogynistic commentary on social media platforms, and the Nth Room Crimes discussed above. It is clear that the commodification of female bodies has been accelerated through those online activities.

The current situation in South Korea has several roots: nation-building based on neoliberalism, Confucianism, and toxic masculinity. Specifically, neoliberal national building efforts apply a ‘(neo)-Confucian’ philosophy that supports traditional gender hierarchies and divisions (Kim, 1996; Lee, 2014). This patriarchal system has led South Korean women to become and remain second-class citizens and the men to become the breadwinners or “salaryman” ‘who were middle-class men and full-time salaried employees during the post-war period’ (Taga, 2005, cited in Lee and Parpart, 2018).

In response to these developments, the country’s feminist movement has led several activities. It joined the #MeToo movement, the #Iamfeminist movement, and the post-it movement. After a public testimony by female prosecutor Seo Ji Heyon of harassment and intimidation by male seniors in 2018, which made news headlines, not only activists, but also many citizens started to speak up, showing how widespread sexual harassment and assault were and criticising structural gender inequality (Hasunuma and Shin, 2019). However, little has changed; as the case of the Nth Room Crimes shows, gender inequality and misogynistic attitudes are well and alive.

Source: BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43534074

Contending discourses on the position of men: a nation divided

Some South Korean men have opposite views of the extent of gender discrimination in Korean society. In the view of young men, the social privileges enjoyed by men of the previous generation have been sharply diminished, and they feel isolated by the current government’s female-oriented policies (Kwon, 2019). Moreover, changing expectations about the role of men in running households and raising children has intensified gender conflict (Kwon, 2019). Furthermore, some Korean men feel disadvantaged when competing against women for job positions and feel that women have more opportunities to be appointed. Moreover, women are seen to benefit from self-improvement through employment and other opportunities made available to them, while men are conscripted, leading to widespread resentment among men towards women. Thus, while men’s opportunities to further themselves are perceived to decrease, those of women are sharply increasing.

Indeed, female participation in economic activity steadily increased between 2011 and 2019. However, The Economist in 2018 found that the gap between male and female labour participation remains large, with South Korea faring worst compared to other OECD countries (see graph below). Men still have an advantage over women in the labour market, yet they feel that women are unfairly benefiting from new opportunities for participation.

As seen above, men and women have different perspectives on gender inequality in South Korea. Lee and Parpart (2018) criticised inequitable gender divisions in terms of employment and emphasised that there is a need to deconstruct the silence on gender relations (p. 317). Nowadays, many South Korean women are attempting to make their voices heard and participate in the feminist movement, but some men are against it.

An ongoing dialogue between genders that is sorely needed is not yet taking place as men and women navigate gender conflicts separately instead of collaboratively.

But something is being done to attempt to change these conflicts. The Korean Institute for Gender Equality Promotion and Education (KIGEPE) under the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of the Republic of Korea (MOGEF) has developed ‘GENDERON’, a knowledge-sharing platform seeking to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence through furthering education on gender equality. This platform offers free monthly educational video clips to introduce gender conflicts and gender-related laws to the public and encourages citizens to participate in discussions by offering incentives and staging competitions. Moreover, the MOGEF has attempted to develop an open forum for youth participation, giving young people the opportunity to directly propose policies related to gender equality and consult with relevant ministries.

Yet it is questionable whether these platforms are actually making a difference when it comes to such a deep-seated problem. Only those who seek to change the structural inequalities are likely to engage in discussions, and the discussions are likely to address just the tip of the iceberg. In the meantime, the support of young adult men for the current government continues to decline. It is clear than an active, open conversation between men and women is necessary to address gender hatred and conflict. Education programmes and measures to prevent online gender crimes can be a start. The media should also make an effort to adhere to the broadcasting ethics code in a way that would foster healthy discussions on gender inequality without amplifying gender conflicts. Above all, the government should pay attention to preventing men from feeling alienated in its preparation and implementation of gender-related policies and should encourage all genders to participate in an open conversation on gender issues that continue to divide this country.

References

BBC (2018) “#MeToo movement takes hold in South Korea”. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43534074 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Cho, Y (2020), “Nth Room case: How many years for ‘digital sex crime’ in Korea? [VIDEO]”, The Korean Times, October 22, Available at; https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/01/718_298005.html  (Accessed: 4 February 2021)

Kwon, J (2019) “South Korea’s young men are fighting against feminism”. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/21/asia/korea-angry-young-men-intl-hnk/index.html (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

GENDERON (2019). KIGEPE MEDIA, Available at: https://genderon.kigepe.or.kr/geme/inf/gemeIntro.do (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Hasunuma. L and Shin. K (2019) “#MeToo in Japan and South Korea: #WeToo, #WithYou”, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 40:1, 97-111, Available at; DOI:10.1080/1554477X.2019.1563416 (Accessed: 6 January 2021)

Jeong, E, Y (2019), “South Korea’s Male-Dominated Workplaces in Spotlight After Sexual Harassment Accusations”, The Walls Street Journal, 20 August, Available at; https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-koreas-male-dominated-workplaces-in-spotlight-after-sexual-harassment-accusations-11597915806 (Accessed: 31 January 2021)

KIGEPE (2017), “main Project”, KIGEPE, Available at: https://www.kigepe.or.kr/eng/main/main.do?menuNo=22000 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Kim. K. (1996), “Nationalism: An advocate of, or a barrier to, feminism in South Korea”, Women’s Studies International Forum ,19, (1–2), pp 65–74, Available at; doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(95)00063-1. (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Lee N (2014) “The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military’ comfort Women’: Navigating between Nationalism and Feminism,” THE REVIEW OF KOREAN STUDIES, 17(1), pp. 71–92.

Lee, J. and Parpart, J. L. (2018) “Constructing Gender Identity through Masculinity in Csr Reports: The South Korean Case,” Business Ethics, 27(4), pp. 309–309. Available at: http://doi: 10.1111/beer.12191. (Accessed: 8 April 2021)

Statistics KOREA Government (2021) Index Korea, Available at: https://www.index.go.kr/potal/main/EachDtlPageDetail.do?idx_cd=1572 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

The Economist (2019), “The glass-ceiling index”, Daily Chart , March 8,  Available at: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/03/08/the-glass-ceiling-index (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

MOGEF(2019) “청년 참여 플랫폼, 청년이 주도하는 문화 혁신! [Youth participation outh participation platform, cultural innovation led by youth!(translated by author)]”, MOGEF, Available at: http://www.mogef.go.kr/nw/enw/nw_enw_s001d.do?mid=mda700&bbtSn=707617 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Yonhap (2020), “Sex crime chat room ignites public fury”, The Korea Herald, March 23, Available at; http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200323000289 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

 

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:

Inhwa Jeong is currently studying Economics of Development in the MA program from Development Studies at ISS. She has five years of development cooperation experience, specialising in project management. Her interests lie in the economic empowerment of marginalised people and particularly keen on gender and environmental issues.

Kanae Inage is in the MA program of Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies at ISS. Her research interests focus on gender-based violence and feminist movements specifically in East Asian areas.

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Moving beyond women as victims in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in Liberia by Christo Gorpudolo

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Liberia, a war-torn country for much of the 1990s, initiated several post-conflict peacebuilding programmes with the hope of building sustainable peace. But a study of the Palava Hut Program as a transitional justice mechanism showed that such efforts can be thwarted by the reduction of women to victims of war. The opportunity to rebuild gender relations damaged during wars can be missed in the process. Besides rethinking the link between women and victimhood, women’s inclusion in peacebuilding programmes based on lived experiences can help to equalize men and women in the peacebuilding process, argues Christo Gorpudolo.

Gender is one of the most damaged relationships during war. War and masculinity re-establishes gender hierarchies, and even after the end of wars such oppressive gender relationships persist. Several post-conflict peacebuilding efforts have been initiated in Liberia following two civil wars that occurred between 1989 and 2003. Most notable amongst these peacebuilding efforts have been the development of document called ‘A Strategic Roadmap for National Healing, Peacebuilding and Reconciliation and the National Palava Hut Program. These efforts are major achievements that have set the pace for peacebuilding in the country. Yet, as important as these peacebuilding efforts seem, how gender is viewed and incorporated within the country’s transitional peacebuilding programmes remains problematic for efforts to build sustainable peace.

Solhjell and Sayndee (2016) assert that Liberia has dominate-subservient gender power relations, which limits the participation of the female gender in public discourses and also affects their bodily integrity by limiting their movement from one social class to the other, especially in public decision-making processes (Solhjell and Sayndee 2016: 12). These general societal perspectives and/or biases of gender roles in Liberia have been key sources for policies informing the transitional justice process.

Gender can be viewed as a social institution that establishes patterns of expectations for individuals, orders the social processes of everyday life, and is built into the major social organizations of society such as the economy, ideology, the family and politics. It is an entity in and of itself (Lorber 1996). In the case of Liberia’s peacebuilding efforts, gender is constructed mostly in terms of women’s numerical inclusion in post-conflict peacebuilding activities. This is based on the generally accepted notion that women form a large portion of those victimized in the civil wars. Therefore, policy makers assume that they should be integrated into the Palava Hut talks numerically to share their stories of survival and receive apologies for the crimes committed against them. Although this assertion could be true, viewing women’s participation based on the lens of victimhood also poses a danger.

As part of my Master’s research at the ISS, in 2019 I conducted a case study of Liberia’s National Palava Hut Program as a transitional justice mechanism. Using Scriven’s argumentation analysis, I  examined national policies that included the Palava Hut Program documents, related program evaluations and implementation reports, and the Strategic Roadmap for National Healing, Peacebuilding and Reconciliation. I specifically looked at issues of gender, including women’s representation in such policies. I found that victims in the studied documents generally referred to women and children. Based on this perception of women and children as victims, the documents advised that women should form part of the Palava Hut Talks to protect their rights that had been violated during the civil war and to address the ‘dishonour’ brought against them by the civil wars.

As important as those statements might sound, this fails to recognize the key role women played in ending direct violence in Liberia. Thus, women should be incorporated into the Palava Hut Program as significant stakeholders in Liberia’s peacebuilding process, not as victims. Viewing women as victims and men as perpetrators within the peacebuilding process can prevent the full realization of sustainable peace through peacebuilding efforts and hinders the possibility for the transitional era to be used as an opportunity to redefine existing gender relations. According to scholars like Catherine O’Rourke (2013), the extreme social disruption caused by political violence that a transitional justice era seeks to address can within the transitional era allow for some loosening of gender norms and create space for women to take up atypical gender roles. This can help reshape gender relations.

A way of approaching peacebuilding in Liberia in order to achieve a gender-just peacebuilding process would be to incorporate both men and women in the peacebuilding process based on their lived experiences—as equals and not necessarily according to a victim-perpetrator dichotomy. Considering lived experiences may help shift the focus of the Palava Hut Program past victims and perpetrators, thereby creating a deeper understanding of the conflict. This would also provide an opportunity to change gender-damaged relationships that persist in post-conflict societies, particularly Liberia.

References:
Lorber, J. (1996) ‘Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender’, Socological Inquiry 66(2): 143-160.
O’Rourke, C. (2013) Gender Politics in Transitional Justice. Routledge.
Solhjell, R. and T.D. Sayndee (2016) ‘Gender-Based Violence and Access to Justice: Grand Bassa County, Liberia’

christo

About the authors:

Christo Z. Gorpudolo is a graduate of Development Studies, Social Justice Perspectives (SJP) from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

 

Image Credit: ©Pray the Devil Back to Hell on Wikimedia Commons

Exploring masculinities: being a man in the #MeToo era by ISS Counselling Team members

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A recent workshop on masculinities hosted by the ISS Counselling Team focused on ‘being a man in the #MeToo era’, drawing participants from the ISS and beyond. The workshop provided a space for reflection on lived experiences regarding masculinity, for the exploration of the ways in which masculinities have been constructed and performed, and for the examination of some of the ideals of masculinity across different cultures. This article briefly details some of the workshop’s highlights.

The #MeToo movement and its impact in academia

Previous to the workshop, some students at ISS felt the need to figure out how to navigate their masculinities in light of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement is a global movement against sexual harassment and sexual violence that was initiated in 2006 as part of a grassroots campaign led by the African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, with the initial purpose of helping young women of color that had previously experienced sexual abuse. In 2017, the hashtag gained widespread visibility and popularity when the Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano asked her followers on Twitter to use the hashtag #MeToo to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault, amidst the scandal of sexual abuse allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein.

Academia, as any other space in society and like any other industry, is not exempt from sexism, misogyny and sexual misconduct. This is why there’s a need for the ISS community to engage in conversations around the issue of sexual harassment and its connection with hegemonic ideals of masculinity and manhood and prevent this from happening.

Masculinity studies

Within the field of Gender Studies, there has been a steady growth in research on men and masculinities since the early 1980s. The leading proponent in theorizing masculinities is Raewyn Connell (also R.W. Connell in some publications), Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney, who has asserted the existence of plural masculinities, the social hierarchy that exists between them, and the theoretical idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. For Connell, masculinities are necessarily plural given the different shapes masculinity takes depending on the different sociocultural contexts where they are constructed. Nevertheless, there is also a modern western idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that prevails over women and other subordinated masculinities.

Recent critical reflections on masculinities have been brought even more into the fore since the advent of the #MeToo movement. The acknowledgement of concepts like ‘toxic masculinity’ have become popular to highlight the negative and harmful effects of certain norms of masculine behavior but also the unattainable expectations that men and boys face. It’s a term often associated with forms of masculinity that end up encouraging misogynistic, homophobic and violent behaviours, while at the same time pushing boys into intense emotional repression.

Coming into the workshop, participants had varying degrees of engagement with these concepts, some encountering the critical idea of “masculinitIES” (in plural) for the first time, while others preparing to dedicate their MA or PhD research around such issues. During the workshop, participants engaged in conversations on social expectations and stereotypes of men from around the world, and how attainable they really are in practice. Participants in the workshop also agreed that although men do benefit from unequal gender relations, these benefits are not without a cost. Similarly, there are unequal power relations amongst men given that masculinities are constructed in relation to existing social hierarchies such as class, race, age, disability, sexuality, nationality, among others. Finally, one of the conclusions of this workshop was that there are many ways to be a man and express one’s masculinity.

Way Forward… What’s Next?

As a follow up to the workshop we realize the need to bring these dialogues into our daily conversations and interactions. We must find ways to address everyday experiences of misogyny and violence from an intersectional perspective, both in and outside academia. Men require spaces to reflect on their privileges and the costs of unequal gender relations with its variations across class, race, sexuality, ability and other intersections of power. The struggle towards equality continues, and we believe that discussions around masculinity are also an important part of that struggle.

Also see: Hyper-masculinity: a threat to inclusive community development in fragile environments by Holly A Ritchie

Picture credit: Wolfmann

Brenda RodriguezAbout the authors: 

Brenda Rodríguez Cortés (left) is a PhD candidate at ISS working on gender and sexuality. Ana Fabregas, Angélica Arámbulo and Ahmad Faraz are MA students at ISS. They are all Peer Counsellors and part of the ISS Counselling Team.