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Korea has been described as a sexually conservative country for so long, and by so many foreign observers, such an impression can easily be forgiven: Surely the likes of TIME and The New York Times can't be wrong?
In reality, though, this stereotype is trite and outdated at best, and it doesn't take much time here to notice such things as the ubiquitous love hotels, all the skin on display in the Korean media, and the increasingly liberal standards of the Korean movie industry. Indeed, just last month, the Korean Supreme Court ruled that the American movie ``Shortbus" would be allowed to be screened uncensored, despite the abundance of graphic, non-simulated sex scenes. Why, then, does the stereotype persist?
To be fair, it wasn't all that long ago that Korea was a much more reserved place. Not until the World Cup of 2002, for instance, could unmarried women be so bold as to ``publicly" wax lyrical about men's bodies, and even just five years ago, standards of modesty dictated that women wear T-shirts over their swimsuits and that lingerie should be well-hidden. Accordingly, even alcohol advertisements overwhelmingly presented virginal images of women, and, most notoriously, in 2004, a Giordano clothing commercial with Jun Ji-hyun and Jung Woo-sung was banned as being too sexually provocative even though both were fully clothed.
And it was in that period or earlier that many of the most recent Korea-related books on our bookshelves were actually written or researched. But this is 2009, and things are very different now: men's bodies are increasingly commodities much like women's are; it is now rare to see women trying to ``swim" while wearing T-shirts; it is the fashion for bra straps and the like to be clearly visible; and, in particular, alcohol advertisements are dominated by images of sexually assertive women in revealing clothing, a trend which has been copied by much of the rest of the advertising industry. And, indeed, by definition, rapidly evolving in response to changing sexual mores, but also partially a cause of them, advertisements are probably the best means by which to keep abreast of changes.
To be sure, one could argue that that is reading too much into them: Falling back on tried and tested formulas, advertisements often become more provocative during recessions, and, on top of that, a recent spate of them featuring partial nudity and/or actors in ``accidental" sexual positions ― a recent commercial for the ironically named Bang Bang clothing company with Han Ji-hye and So Ji-sub comes to mind ― probably reflects the fact that consumers have become deadened to what was previously considered shocking more than anything else.
But that they don't create an outcry now surely does at least partially reflect the fact that Koreans are increasingly confident with their bodies and more comfortable with public displays of affection and sexuality? Moreover, if one digs deeper, one finds that this is Koreans' definite choice, and not something imposed upon them by, say, globalization or cultural imperialism, to which many people would attribute the changes.
For instance, the decision to allow the screening of ``Shortbus" should be seen in the context of Koreans long complaining about censorship in movies, which not only left them feeling like children, but often rendered entire movies nonsensical. Also, increasingly revealing lingerie advertisements and fashion are primarily the result of the liberalization of the industry in the 2000s and consumers rejecting the conservative and limited selection of designs of the previous industry trio of Try Brands, BYC, and Taechang in favor of more colorful and racier alternatives offered by new domestic and foreign rivals instead. Finally, changes to alcohol advertisements are primarily motivated by wanting to increase sales to women, the logic being that men want, and women want to be, the woman in the ad.
Certainly, the changes are not automatic positives. While men will always be more visual creatures than women, and revealing images of women in the media are not sexist in themselves, in the balance they indeed are if they're not reciprocated by significant numbers of those of men also. And this increased objectification of women's bodies occurs in a society already so obsessed with skinniness ― despite Korean women being among the least obese in the world ― and greatly predisposed towards judging them in terms of how closely they conform to a vast array of ever-changing and arbitrarily defined ``lines," so much so that women can't help but feel inadequate.
But these are not the faults of the advertisements, but how people choose to react to them. And in the meantime, as definite products of their times, I recommend them as excellent lenses through which to study current social trends. That Bang Bang commercial I mentioned earlier, for instance, is the first I've ever seen to (indirectly) portray an unmarried couple living together, and ― lo and behold ― the numbers of such Korean households has been greatly increasing in recent years. Good luck finding mention of that in books about Korea and foreign newspapers, though!
James Turnbull is a writer on Korean gender issues and pop culture, and is currently conducting research on the origins of the Korean ``kkotminam" phenomenon. He can be reached via his blog at http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com.
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