Rumors of impurity

Courtesy of WH

By David A. Tizzard

It feels somewhat peculiar to write about women in Korea because I'm neither a woman nor Korean. I also don't think that there is a singular female experience in Korea. Women's personal experiences differ greatly across time, class, and many other factors. Nevertheless, nationwide statistics paint an all too familiar and distressing story. They show Korean women incredibly far behind their OECD counterparts in terms of boardroom participation, political representation, wage gap, parental leave, and a host of other factors. Dry statistics also fail to account for the more psychological and existential fears many women feel in society.

There has been a great deal of progress in the past century here in Korea. Such progress is not to say that the current situation is desirable nor is it to make an excuse for what is seen as acceptable today, of course. However, it is just to make that point that Korea is not Canada, the United Kingdom or Germany. History matters, as does culture. Those who ignore it fail to understand problems in their true context.

At the end of the 1800s, some Korean women were still largely confided to the internal spaces of the home. They were also often expected to cover themselves from head to toe. This custom was part of a broader fundamentalist interpretation of neo-Confucian doctrines that advocated men and women be distinct in all that they do. So while men occupied the public sphere, women were resigned to the private realm. Early missionaries and travelers to Korea often remarked how striking the country was for the notable absence of women in society. Despite what modern representations might suggest, life was not always like a Korean drama, with beautiful aristocratic women strolling publically around the town in shimmering hanbok.

Slowly though, through education, employment, and changing attitudes, women entered society, schools, and the workforce. This change was a long time coming, and obviously very important that it did begin. Women also drove the Korean economy as it rushed towards modernization, toiling for hours in brutal sweatshop conditions in order that the country might procure color televisions and nationwide electricity.

Many economists suggest that the "Miracle on the Han River" which saw Korea go from being one of the world's most poverty-stricken nations to an Oscar-winning, smartphone-producing behemoth was anything but a miracle. Of course it's nice to attribute things to some special unquantifiable source of "woo." But one of the great drivers of the Korean economic success story was an increased number of "inputs." Quite simply, it began drastically increasing the amount of available workers and the education they received. The actual miracle might have been simply having more people working, and many of them were women.

Now that the Korean economy has nearly everyone in university and trying to get jobs, it has few inputs left to add. So, the economy has returned to a relatively more normal pace. Things are slowing down. Inequality is increasing. The middle-class is disappearing and it's become important to be efficient and creative. Thus, it looks to leaders to provide solutions.

Over the last month or so, the presidential race has sped up and economic conditions, inequality, the housing market and unemployment have all been high on the list of citizens' concerns. There are two main frontrunners, yet we've seen both parties assessed not in terms of their own skills, but rather by how well women related to those parties measure up to a traditional model of what a person should be. It's been quite unsettling to see it all play out, to be honest. I don't know how much of each story is true or false. Nor does anyone really, I don't think. But how quickly, publically, and broadly across the political divide such ideas are easily disseminated has shocked me. And I add, none of these observations below are to be seen as support for either party.

First there was the slut-shaming of Kim Keon-hee, the wife of the conservative presidential candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol. If the mural painted on the side of a wall in Seoul by gleeful "liberals" wasn't enough, I still see it on social media whenever politics is discussed. Leaving aside the fact that Kim Keon-hee has a Master's Degree and a Ph.D., Yoon is said to be not fit to be president because of his wife's past, which allegedly included actions of a sexual behavior. Irrespective of whether Yoon may or may not be a good fit for president, the sexual activity of his wife in the past makes him unsuitable in many eyes ― a past which no-one has in fact confirmed. The rumor of impurity is enough.

Then in the opposite camp, the Democratic Party of Korea's candidate, Lee Jae-myung, saw the abrupt resignation of Professor Cho Dong-youn just days after she had been appointed as the standing co-chairwoman of the election committee. At the center of this story was a child born out of marriage. Again, many of the actual specific details of how and why are unknown. However, what was clear was that, for many people, Cho's actions of having a child outside of a traditional structure were unethical and made her unfit for any type of political position. The rumor of impurity is enough.

Obviously women having sexual agency is a difficult thing for some people to accept. But then, so is it when they don't. In the lead-up to the to the 2012 presidential election, a spokesman for Moon Jae-in's team criticized the country's first female president for being childless and that she had "never had to share women's worries and hardships." Damned if you and damned if you don't, it seems.

I just don't understand how a country can operate in this manner. It seems so unfairly stacked against women. Korea demands puritanical behavior from women to achieve anything, while at the same time allowing prostitution and night-time entertainment establishments to exist all over the country. Of course we all have our own ideas of what a good family and marriage might look like, but life isn't like fairy tales or K-dramas. It's weird, it's messy and it's complicated. These topics also seem to detract from other, actual, more serious aspects of corruption, collusion and the abuse of power taking place.

I don't think this idea is about feminism per se, though of course it can be. Rather, it's about equality, empathy and understanding. For everyone ― whatever their past, history, gender or bedroom proclivities ― deserves to be treated under the idea of merit, rather than with shame or rumors of impurity.

Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.