Downturn Spawns Flower Men Wind

The ``Dynamic Korea'' slogan has demonstrably failed to attract many tourists in recent years but it remains a fitting one for such a rapidly changing society.

By James Turnbull
Contributing Writer

The ``Dynamic Korea'' slogan has demonstrably failed to attract many tourists in recent years but it remains a fitting one for such a rapidly changing society.

One vivid example is the elaborate hairstyles, pastel colors in the clothes of many young males and children, their attention to skincare, their ``couple-clothes,'' and so on. This can be in sharp contrast to the staid appearance of their fathers.

Many Korean parents may well be quite perplexed and embarrassed at what they see as their sons' effeminate looks.

Yet most would be probably be surprised and offended to hear themselves being described as such, and, to be fair, such concepts do vary greatly between times and cultures.

What their fathers regard as effeminate now were actually the norm in many earlier periods of Korean history. For example, a good illustration would be the 2005 movie ``The King and the Clown,'' and however bizarre this may sound to Western readers, couple clothes can in fact be worn by both sexes for the sake of rebellion.

Such visible affection is a stark rejection of their parents' often-arranged marriages.

It is important to analyze the origins of current Korean fashions and lifestyle choices in Koreans' own terms, but unfortunately, this has generally not been the case in English for Korean men's current ``kkotminam'' ideals of appearance described above.

Possibly, this is because its literal translation ― ``flower men'' ― sounds quite awkward, and so for the sake of context, the seemingly close equivalent of ``metrosexuals'' soon gets mentioned also.

So much so, in fact, that they're often conflated, and the rising popularity of flower men in Korea over the last decade attributed to no more than a mere importing of metrosexuality. But this is simply wrong.

Among other things, Korea completely lacked ― nay, explicitly banned ― the mainstreaming and then co modification of gay culture in the 1990s that led to the rise of metrosexuality, and even today there are implicit restrictions against positive portrayals of foreign male-Korean female relationships in the Korea media that have prevented metrosexual symbols like David Beckham from ever acquiring the popularity here that they did in, say, Japan during the 2002 World Cup.

Moreover, when focusing on men, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that it is actually women's changing tastes in them that drive changes in their fashions and grooming habits, and accordingly it ultimately proves to be married Korean women in the late-1990s that are responsible for flower men's origins.

Why married women? Because it was that group that bore the brunt of layoffs during the ``IMF Crisis.'' The logic is that their husbands would provide for them thereafter.

But coming after decades of the subservience of feminist goals to wider ones of democratization, and only so recently being given the opportunity to achieve those ― not least of which was the right not to be fired upon marriage ― then they were greatly angered at the sudden loss of the long awaited opportunity.

Moreover, to add insult to injury, they were then encouraged by both government and business to support ``Korea's hardworking men'' in order to overcome the crisis.

Korea remains a deeply patriarchal society, and even today women are heavily circumscribed in the extent to which they can publicly criticize Korean men.

One indirect possibility, however, was the outright rejection of those ideals of men as strong, provider types, and it is no coincidence that a sudden glut of movies appeared featuring romances between older women and younger men, and that this was when the first, identifiable, flower men began appearing in advertising too.

And then there was the World Cup of 2002. Korean women themselves were surprised at how as a mass they appropriated such a previously masculine event as their own. In just a few short weeks they forever changed standards of dress, discourses of sexuality, and cemented these new ideals of Korean men.

Certainly, there are still many more elements to the story. The term flower men actually first appeared in 1999 in the context of imported Japanese manga for instance, and as the teenagers that read those have grown then manga-derived films and dramas have become hugely popular accordingly.

But it is supposedly asexual married women known as ``ajumma'' that deserve to be better known as instigators of that process. The first mention of the term ``metrosexual'' in Korean newspapers wasn't until as late as 2003 ― not as mere passive vessels for Western trends.

The writer is a writer on Korean gender issues and pop culture, and is currently conducting research on the origins of the flower men phenomenon. For a wider discussion of any of the issues raised in this article, consult his blog at http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/.