Strange bedfellows

[Update, March 30: Gord Sellar has written about this article as well.]

[Update, March 21: I added a link to the Rape Crisis Center (hat tip to John Power), which is in Daehangno, (not Itaewon). I also added explanations to two photos and added two more photos to illustrate attitudes toward white women.]

Original post:

The other day Robert Neff discovered an article titled "Who Gets Sick From Yellow Fever? What Carceral Feminism Does Not See." To answer the obvious question, carceral feminism "is used to define any feminist who believes the criminal justice system should protect and serve women who are victims of rape and other forms of male violence". The term is used by those who criticize such an approach, as the author of this article does. To understand why, we start in... Itaewon.

When the dark glides over, it masks the emptied beer cans and vomit stains, and brightens up with neon lights to welcome couples and tourists to trans bars, massage parlors, 'Homo Hill,' and hip-hop clubs. 

Thus Itaewon is seething with sex of all sorts. Though she does end the paragraph by saying that "Itaewon has rebranded itself as a hotspot for foodies, tourism, and nightlife," tales of streets full of Koreans dining at upscale eateries and drinking in craft beer bars is not the first impression she wants to create. [For more on the gentrification of US military camp towns, see this interview with Geoffrey Cain.]

One of its staple landmarks 'Hooker Hill' echoes its legacy of sex workers, criminals, and foreigners. It is in Itaewon that I first overheard young white men talk about their sexual conquests of 'tight Asian pussies.' 

Sadly, she seems unaware that its been 12 years now since the wretched hive of white scum and villainy expanded to Hongdae. Or as the Herald Gyeongje put it in 2005, Hongdae was "an area hot with youthful passion that has degenerated from being mixed up with foreigners," which led to certain rumors that caused great bitterness.

Yellow fever, however, is not a simple matter of preferences. During my time working at the Seoul Rape Crisis Center, one of the more well-established response service in Korea, I saw how yellow bodies silently absorbed this cost: sexual assault of Korean women by white men, mostly American, constituted at least a third of the Center’s cases.

That's a rather shocking statistic. This is partly because this list (#21) of registered, non-gyopo foreigners in Korea (by city / district / province / county) as of the end of December last year (from the Korean Immigration Service's website; a list of registered gyopo is here (#41)) reveals that the population of registered foreigners from Western countries with the largest populations in Seoul consisted of 9738 men; for Gyeonggi-do, there were 5929 men. As those from other Western countries might add up to another 1000 or so, that would make for a total of 16,667. This would not include tourists, however. This chart (#3), showing the total number of foreigners in Korea in December 2016 by country and visa category, shows that there were 14,027 men from North America and 3163 men from Australia (the two largest Western countries represented in that category by far) who were in Korea on a B2 Tourist visa. We have no idea where they stayed or what percentage were white; among registered foreigners, gyopo make up about a third of Americans and half of Canadians. I would imagine an estimate of 15,000 white male tourists from these countries being in the capital area would be a very generous one indeed. Also not included among registered foreigners are US military. There were said to be 29,300 in Korea in 2014, With the closure of bases near the DMZ and expansion of Camp Humphries in Pyeongtaek, I'm not sure how many are in the capital area now. Let's be generous and say 20,000.

Thus, 16,600 registered male westerners + 15,000 male western tourists + 20,000 US military = 51,600 western males in the capital area, the population of which is 10,290,000 (for Seoul) and 12,342,448 (for Gyeonggi-do) for a grand total of 22,633,000, which should be divided in half for the male portion of the population (11,317,000). 51,600 thus makes up 0.46% of the male population of the capital area, and yet somehow they are responsible for a third of the Rape Crisis Center's annual cases, suggesting they rape at a rate 66 times more than their percentage of the population. This is, frankly, unbelievable. Perhaps this center is a branch in Itaewon; referring to it as "the Seoul Rape Crisis Center," however, gives the impression that it is not a branch. Needless to say, I'm rather skeptical. [Update: A link to the center's site is here; it's in Daehangno, so my skepticism just increased by a few orders of magnitude (hat tip to John Power).]

Just who are these dangerous, sex-crime-committing white men?

From what I could gather, they were recent college graduates from the US who had come to Korea to ‘make easy money’ (read: teach English in one of many hak-wons, or tutoring academies) and ‘experience the nightlife.’ [...] With the constant influx of young, college-educated white men in Korea, yellow fever flows back to the East.

Ah, so it's English teachers, then. Her problem with "carceral feminism" is that these men cannot be incarcerated due to the freedom their American passports and globalization gives them:

If the American state can prove its neoliberal conviction through deploying Korea as an example, so too can whiteness assert its masculinity by consuming ‘tight Asian pussies.’ Under white gaze, Korean girls, available and desperate, come with no strings attached; when there are strings, they can be severed easily by flying back to the US.[...] 

The normalization and prevalence of sexual violence against Korean women by white men demonstrate the material consequence of the unequal distribution of mobility.[...] The Rape Crisis Center’s record quantifies this kind of assault as a third of its annual cases[. ...] These assaults often take place in bars, clubs, and motels of areas like Itaewon. Survivors rarely know their assailants, and do not recall enough identifiable details to file a report. Those who are able to make a report find themselves in a dead end when they find out that their assailants have left the country. White men come and go–untraceable and unaccountable. [...]

He has been removed, but at his own will, and his ability to return cannot be removed from his whiteness and Korea’s neoliberal development. Without the assailant to prosecute, carceral approaches can neither support individual survivors, nor address the root cause. The cycle of white men leaving behind survivors continues.

There's nothing wrong with examining structural reasons for a phenomenon that most certainly does occur. And to be sure, "carceral approaches" face limitations when their targets can flee the country with relative ease. But there there is not enough of the concrete here (beyond the exaggerated statistic above), and readers are faced with this:

Interrogating the process through which yellow fever becomes embedded in Korea’s cultural economy presents a compelling case study of the intersections of neoliberal development and racialized colonial desire. [...]

[We must move] beyond yellow fever as fantasy. To resist the fantasy, we must begin by restoring its bodies–bodies that echo the history of American GIs and the women they used up and left–and reckon with the forces of globalization, borders, misogyny, and colonial desire that lie at its heart.

And so we deal with embeddedness, intersections, colonial desire and bodies. There may be another academic term missing from all of this, however. That these "assaults often take place in bars, clubs, and motels of areas like Itaewon" and that the women "do not recall enough" suggests perhaps that they were drinking with these men. The reason they might be drawn to them? The US is the land of milk and honey for these women:

For women, dating white men is a means through which they can access this fantasy. A friend of mine recounted her peers’ reaction when she revealed her partner to be a white American. “That’s the dream!” they exclaimed. In this dream, life is prosperous, exciting, and stable. The white man lives this dream and, thus, the proximity to him brings the dream closer. The white man becomes the dream. 

These women are portrayed as being deluded by the fantasy of America. Which might suggest why the author never uses the term "agency," since she basically robs these women of it by portraying them as nothing but victims, both of white men and of their own delusions which prompt them to approach these likely rapists in the first place. Korean girls, she says, are "available and desperate," but this sounds more like a description of Korea decades ago (at least regarding the use of 'desperate').

And when she writes that "their immobile bodies absorb the cost of whiteness," I'm reminded of cases like this, and the way in which white women are perceived by some Korean men who want to "ride the white horse" and post tips on "hunting" white or other foreign women. One gets the idea, however, that Koreans can only serve as victims, and not perpetrators.

(Both scenes are from the 2003 film "Please Teach Me English")

What is rather disturbing is the degree to which the attitude above, particularly in demonizing white men and portraying Korean women as dupes and victims, is similar to others we've seen before, such as this:

It's always just sad that some thoughtless women sympathize with foreigners who they don't realize have approached them with this (sexually demeaning) way of thinking about Korean women." "This is a place where people who are worried about this and who want to make an issue of foreigners who demean Korean women as if they are all cheap whores."

The place in question is the Anti-English Spectrum cafe, and the writer was 'Bba'allyuchi,' its founder. The cafe was founded during the 2005 English Spectrum Incident, and responded to women seen dancing with foreign men in a less-than favorable fashion: "Some online articles and the Anti-English Spectrum cafe branded us as whores, yanggongju, and pimps." Likewise, for members of the cafe and critics of these women, there was a corollary to "tight Asian pussy": "but later when a Korean guy takes her home, he'll know by her massively stretched hole he's been tricked and she's a whore."

Such criticism has appeared more recently, of course. A 2012 report on MBC portrayed women in relationships with white men in a negative manner (complete with an AIDS scare), and the producer said that "the piece intended to portray 'Korean women who are out of their sense and get involved in these kinds of affairs.'" He also said that "We need to be awakened and try to change this culture," NoCut News that same year published its 12-part "The Reality and Twisted Values of Some White Men" Series, while the next year JTBC described foreign men who try to pick up Korean women as having committed "sex crimes" and even dramatized a 'pick up' manual:



In a similar manner, the internet tabloid Ilyo Sisa also published a tour de force in the summer of 2012 titled "'Tips for targeting Korean women' spread by foreign English instructor spreads quickly: Treat them as 'sex toys' and throw them away when they're finished":

The disparaging of Korean women by foreign English instructors and foreigners living in Gangnam or Itaewon is not something that just started yesterday. White men who deliberately approach Korean women for sex or to defraud them commit all kinds of illegal acts against Korean women. Even worse, anyone can commonly hear about incidents of illegal drug taking and rape by foreigners. However, claims that the cause of these incidents is a national character which is lenient towards white people are gaining traction. We are publicizing detailed excerpts of some posts from "Anti English Spectrum," a blog which denounces the barbarity of foreigners.[...]

Though Korean men have a more outstanding financial capability than white men, Korean women absorbed in white supremacy prefer white men more and think they can learn English for free and choose white men without hesitation. Among northeast Asians (Japan, China, Korea), Korean women are considered the easiest and fastest to sleep with[.] [...]

Because of the open sexual consciousness Korean women have towards white men, there are countless instances of harm done to them. One woman became pregnant after a one night stand with a white man she met in a club, and after finding out contacted the white man but he had already left the country and she decided to get an abortion.[...]

Another woman's case was even more serious. C, a university student who had dated a foreign man once, said in a media interview, "Foreigners' habitual fraud can be seen as charming. They often move in together with a girl and pretend to be her lover and then pocket the rent and deposit and leave the country, and a girl I know who dated a foreign man had a health check and was diagnosed with AIDS and sank into depression." "Most of them (white men) think of Korean woman as targets for one night stands, and there are almost none who think of having a romantic relationship with them. When something happens with a girl, they get afraid and evade responsibility by changing their phone number beforehand or by leaving the country and disappearing."

The tone of these such articles vacillates between portraying these women as victims of dastardly white men or as clueless dupes who are far too willing to trust white men (and thus are responsible for their predicament and deserve criticism (or worse)). I'll leave it to the reader to decide where "Under white gaze, Korean girls [are] available and desperate" fits.

As for depicting them as victims of white men who would rape them, such one dimensional portrayals can be found outside of newspapers or websites:

(From the 2008 TV show "Sexy Mong Returns," billed as "an episode involving sexual assault by foreign English teachers, something that has been a social issue for some time." The rapist is in fact a Korean man who pretends to be a foreigner because women like foreigners more... but he still needs to drug and rape them for some reason.)

(From the 2008 TV show "Shin Hae-cheol's Damage." The episode, "Foreign Instructor and Club Girl," which features "Memories of an unforgettable gang rape!" can be watched here. Shin has performed at least one rather Anti-American song, with a little help from Psy.)

The latter film, Queen Bee, is from 1985 and features white and black foreigners violating their way through Itaewon. At that time there was a great deal of discussion on the place of white foreigners in Korean society (which led to the French foreign language teacher scandal of 1984), such as when an American was caught forging checks and living off the generosity of Korean women ("Koreans have a weakness for foreigners"), as well as an article about Itaewon from 1984 which differed from articles about Itaewon from the previous year in the Maeil Gyeongje (October 8, 1983) and Donga Ilbo (July 27, 1983) in that it portrayed foreigners in Itaewon in a very negative manner,

In January 2005 Ilda, a feminist journal, published an article about the English Spectrum incident which argued that "when extreme nationalism and patriarchal views meet, they run counter to the issue of women's rights." What happens, then, when nationalism and feminism meet? In the 1980s and 1990s there was a great deal of feminist organizing in regard to issues surrounding the US military presence in Korea. In many ways this is understandable; foreign men are a much easier target (one that Korean men would agree on) than taking on home-grown patriarchy. A Donga Ilbo article from 1988 titled "Obscene magazines, decadent movies, AIDS: 'Let's expel low American culture'" gives an example of the post-1988 Olympics mood: 

There are many incidents of the ravaging of Korean women by U.S. forces in Korea and even crimes such as molestation, and in the climate of the unfair ROK-U.S. Status-of-Forces Agreement, Korean women wind up being thoughtlessly treated like "conquered women."

While such negative portrayals of foreigners can (and did, and still does) move into racist territory, women are clear-cut victims in the stories it relays. One aspect of American culture which was bitterly criticized was an article by Hustler magazine called "Hustler's Olympic-goer's Guide to Korean Sex," which focused on paid sex in Itaewon and made some comments which raised the ire of Koreans who read it:

Korean women are the horniest, lustiest, most fuckable females on earth. Whatever she is like in the 'outside world,' bring a Korean female into close proximity of a cock, and her passions take over, [...A] huge cadre of the country's females are today sexual enthusiasts of the first order. They are available to all comers, black and white, foreign and domestic.

In the view of the 1988 Donga Ilbo article above, the Hustler article "introduced Korean women as all being prostitutes," something which was understandably insulting. In discussing the international position of Korea, the activists criticized such things as the Korean government's kisaeng tourism and the resulting position of women vis-a-vis foreigners. Such criticism may have functioned in a more coherent manner when dealing with prostitution, but when it deals with sex outside of prostitution, problems seem to arise. This situation had already arisen by 1984, and people did not have kind things to say about the young women who 'gave it away for free' in Itaewon:

"It's not just foreigners' prostitutes, now it's female university students or teenagers from good families who chase after foreigners and spend money on them, and when I see it I think it's pathetic," said Hong Gwan-pyo, who has sold souvenirs in the area for 8 years, with a sour look on his face.[...]

Han Hyung-sik (46) said "On average I carry out marriage procedures for about 20 international couples a month, but more than 70% return to divorce. Wearing a bitter expression, he also said, "When you see the unbearable sight of girls who come from university who fall only for the the appearance of white people who seem to be imbued with 'ladies first' kindness and then marry badly, even one's sense of national pride is ruined."

When nationalism comes into the picture, attempts to wrestle with "yellow fever" often end up taking on the tenor of yellow journalism, complete with misleading statistics and incredibly negative portrayals of certain (racial) groups. White men make easy money and rape and flee in the picture presented in the article. Relegating the Korean women involved in militarized prostitution to the category of 'victim of American imperialism' and nothing more was criticized in Hyun Sook Kim's chapter (in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism) "Yanggongju as an allegory of the nation":

[W]e must recognize that military sex workers have not been completely colonized by patriarchy, militarism, imperialism or neo-colonialism; the women do assert agency and subjectivity as Korean women. In what ways to the outcast military sex workers resist, reject, and try to invert the power hierarchy that relegates them to the lowest social standing? Do we retain the metaphor of nation as the representative discourse for collective unity and female identity, or can we develop an alternative discourse on/for military sex workers that will not re-colonize or subordinate their bodies or identities? This essay raises these unresolved questions and emphasizes the need to further investigate the ways in which the subject positions of working class women in sexual labor are constructed in defense of the nation. The first step towards 'pivoting the center' may be to chart the multiple, fragmented subjectivities of working class Korean women, such as military sex workers who have historically been excluded from scholarship and represented as passive objects in popular and radical representations. Answering these unresolved questions would thus require a critical feminist analysis of the power relations inscribed in the reading, writing and public presentations of women as the victim, the oppressed, and the exploited. Instead of essentializing the experiences of the women of Kijich'on as categorically "Yanggongju," we must begin acknowledging the agency, subjectivity, and resistance of working class women.

Her chapter is critical of those who would define these women for their own purposes, rather than actually talking to them and hearing their own stories and understanding of their experiences. I haven't come across any more of her work, unfortunately.

As can be seen in the excerpts from Korean news media above, with criticism of the "open sexual consciousness Korean women have towards white men" and of "Korean women absorbed in white supremacy" or "Korean women who are out of their sense and get involved in these kinds of affairs," the portrayal of these women as deluded victims overlaps with what appears to be a Korean male desire to discipline these women, or at least demand more moral behavior from them (like not engaging in "sex crimes" with foreigners).

This isn't to say that sex crimes aren't committed by some white men in Korea, or that some don't treat women (or girls) in incredibly callous ways with long-term consequences. They do. But they aren't the only ones, and to focus on them alone suggests another agenda is at work. Even worse is the fact that by portraying Korean women as devoid of agency, or as passive dupes ("Under white gaze, Korean girls [are] available and desperate." "The white man becomes the dream."), this not only echoes the xenophobic and misogynist responses of Korean nationalists, it also inadvertently reproduces the discourse of those being criticized in the first place. Is there really that great a difference between "Korean girls [are] available and desperate" and Hustler's claim that "a huge cadre of the country's females are...available to all comers"?

Making use of nationalist tropes without first unearthing the assumptions embedded within them can undermine the very argument one is trying to make, and leave one, as in this case, stuck in bed between neocolonial pricks and misogynist xenophobes.

Thoughts on the low age of consent and light sentences

While trying to find out more about this incredibly messed-up case - about a couple who beat their teenage daughter to death and then kept her body in the house for the better part of a year - I came across the following Joongang Ilbo news story by reporter Kim Min-gwan, from September 16 last year:

A man in his twenties who even received the motel fee from a 13-year-old schoolgirl found guilty of prostitution

A man in his twenties who met a 13-year-old runaway schoolgirl for sex but argued he wasn't guilty and said that "The schoolgirl paid more of the motel fee so it wasn't prostitution" was found guilty.

Seoul Eastern District Court announced on the 16th that is that it [sentenced] Mr. Lee (22), who had been charged with contravening the Law for Sexual Protection of Children and Youth, to a one-year sentence suspended for two years and ordered him to attend 40 hours of sexual assault treatment classes.

Mr. Lee came to know A (13) on June 10, 2015 via a smartphone chatting application. Learning that A had run away and needed a place to sleep he promised, "If you come to my house, I can put you up," and the next morning he called her out to the Uijeongbu Station area.

When he met A, Lee said, "It's hot right now, so let’s go and rest," and took A to a nearby motel. The motel fee was 20,000 won but Lee had only 8000 won in his pocket. Lee asked A, "Can you pay a little bit?" and got 10,000 won from her and, after getting a 2000 won discount, paid the motel fee.

After they had sex, Lee said, "My parents came home early so I can't put you put you up," and left A and returned home.

In court Lee claimed that "Since I had never promised to put her up at my house and I paid 8000 won of the motel fee but A paid 10,000 won, it wasn't buying sex."

Subsequently he protested that "Since A looked 20ish in her chatting program profile photo, in which she was wearing makeup, I didn't think she was a minor."

However, the court said, "It doesn't make any sense that you saw her face and didn't know she was 13." "Seeming to offer to put up a runaway victim at your house and meeting [her], you acted to buy sex to satisfy your sexual desire, and the fact that even after that you left her and ignored the fact that she was penniless because of you makes the nature of the crime very bad."

It added, "Because she expected that the defendant would give him a place to stay afterwards, she readily gave 10,000 won." "The defendant fully acknowledged the fact that he promised to provide payment for things like a place to stay and that, expecting this, A acceded to sex."

A court official said, "The amount of money when providing payment for prostitution does not matter; if it's true that payment is provided, then [the fact of] prostitution is established."

After moving on from my amazement at how someone could be that much of a scumbag, what I found interesting is that the defendant was content to suggest that he'd had consensual sex with a minor (though he did try to say "she looked 20ish"). Back in mid-2013 laws were changed regarding sex crimes (see here and here), particularly against minors, but these clearly did not affect age of consent, which is still 13, though there are certain limitations, as pointed out in this case, as well as its follow-up, higher-court appeal ruling, as described over at klawguru.com. As is noted there, having sex with someone between the ages of 13 and 18 is not a crime unless you did so "by authority/deception" (though not by "position of authority"), while having sex with someone 12 years old or younger is "a crime (unless you had no way of knowing)." Even the latter part seems to have wiggle room (as it did in a case in Gangneung a few years ago where an instructor in an elementary school was initially let off by police for having sex with a 12 year old student because they were "in love" - until they found out he was also "in love" with a 15 year old former student).

In the case I translated above, the man was only given a suspended sentence, and in this case, from 2009, a man was sentenced only to 6 months in prison for paying for sex with an 11 year-old girl (and that 6 month sentence was seen as 'severe' punishment, despite the maximum sentence being 3 years). Most famously, in the "Na-yeong case," where a man raped an 8 year-old girl who "lost 80 percent of her colon and genital organs," the defendant had three years knocked off the maximum sentence of 15 years because "I was drunk" was considered a defense. What we see in these cases is that there doesn't seem to be any desire to give out maximum punishment to men who sexually assault or exploit children. One possible reason for this is described in a Joongang Ilbo editorial written when sex crime laws were changed in mid-2013:

The revisions are only a step forward, although a significant one. A bigger problem is our society’s misperceptions about sex crimes. According to a survey of policemen in small and mid-sized cities in South Gyeongsang, a whopping 53.8 percent said that sexual violence occurs due to women’s sexy dressing. Thirty-seven percent said it’s a woman’s fault when she is sexually attacked while drunk. That clearly illustrates our society’s generosity toward men’s sexual impulses.

You know there's a problem when the police answer this way (though perhaps we won't be too surprised by such attitudes coming from "small and mid-sized cities in South Gyeongsang," considering what happened in Miryang in 2004 - but it's sad to see these attitudes hadn't changed ten years later.

Daniel Tudor pointed out something that has been overlooked:

There have been attempts to raise the age of consent, such as that of then-Grand National Party lawmaker Kwon Seong-dong, who tried to lift it to 16 in 2012. I am mystified as to why it is still 13. With the ever-increasing concern over child protection, I doubt any political party would have anything to lose by throwing its weight behind a legal change here.

And yet this attempt to raise the age of consent went nowhere. As one ponders this fact in the light of lenient sentence after lenient sentence for those who sexually assault or exploit minors, one might be tempted to reach some rather unpleasant conclusions.

White Day!

Men check out the candy selection at L Dept. Store on White Day, 1993 (from here).

Today is White Day (well, it's the 14th in the US), and I was made to think of it during a presentation in which a classmate spoke on this post about Valentine's Day and White Day's origins (note that it gives only the origin of the former; one assumes the author didn't want to draw attention to the Japanese origin of the latter). Also mentioned in the presentation was the list (similar to this one) of "__days" which occur on the 14th of each month in Korea, though I don't think anything beyond white and black day exists outside of such internet posts.

The first mention of White Day that turns up in the Naver News Library is this Hankyoreh editorial from February 14, 1989, titled "Behind chocolate hides a cunning business ploy," which concludes by saying that companies conjuring up White Day to make kids pay twice is improper.

It's mentioned twice in 1991 in a column the Maeil Gyeongje published written by people describing their married life. This one describes how the writer's husband forgot her birthday and said he'd celebrate it on the lunar calendar, and seemed to forget again but eventually surprised her with roses. She notes that he always gave her presents before that, even on "white day, a day he criticized as one made by merchants in order to sell candy."

The most interesting reference I found in 1991 was this one in the Kyunghyang Shinmun on March 11 titled "日(일),야광女子(여자)속옷판매 화이트데이 선물용: [In] Japan, glow-in-the-dark women's underwear sold as white day present." As the article puts it, "For the coming 14th (white day), a women's underwear company in Japan plans to sell 400,000 pairs of glow-in-the-dark panties to Japanese men wanting a present that their lover will never forget."

 New word for the day: 야광 - glow in the dark.

The Accidental Citizen-Soldier: An English teacher's worst nightmare?

In 2002, Young Chun - born and raised in the U.S. by parents who had emigrated from Korea - came to Korea to teach English and pay off university debts. When he applied for an F-4 visa at the immigration office, he was informed by a confused immigration officer that he couldn't get one because he was, in fact, a Korean citizen; someone had put his name on the family register when he was born. Through a string of bad luck, he eventually found himself with an immigration exit ban and orders to report for military service - even though he didn't speak Korean. Given no assistance by the country of his birth, and unable to evade this order without going to prison, he reported for basic training in January, 2004, and began a two-year experience which would even involve deployment to Afghanistan.

This story is told in Young Chun's recently-released memoir "The Accidental Citizen-Soldier: The Story of an American in the Korean Army." He was kind enough to send me a pdf to review, and within a few pages I was hooked. In addition to having fascinating subject matter, it's well-written, well-paced, and sprinkled with enough humour to lighten an otherwise somber story. Military service is an experience almost all Korean men have to suffer through, and "The Accidental Citizen-Soldier" provides a first-hand look at what it entails, detailing all of the humiliations, power struggles and occasional kindnesses. It's gratifying to see him proceed through what is often an inhumane system and come to understand it and use it to his benefit, even finding time to translate a Korean novel for a translation contest.

More about Young's story can be found in this interview he gave to a Seattle newspaper in 2004 (which didn't go over well when his superiors found out), as well as at his blog, where you can listen to a recent interview given for TBS radio.

The book is well worth reading and can be found at Amazon.com for what should be $2.99 for a Kindle edition (a way to get around a tacked-on $2.00 'international charge' is detailed on his blog). A softcover version is also available and there are currently a handful of copies at the Gwanghwamun branch of Kyobo Bookstore.

I asked Young a few questions about his experience, beginning with the differences between how the ROK and US militaries treat their soldiers:

I think the biggest difference is each army's attitude towards its soldiers. The US Army treats its soldiers as human beings with civil rights to be respected and needs to be fulfilled. At the time, I felt like the Korean Army saw its conscripts as nothing more than tools, no different than a shovel or a toilet. Prior to my induction, I had heard that the pay was atrocious; I hadn't heard that I would be worked almost constantly with very little sleep, sometimes having to skip meals because the officers wouldn't let me take a break from work (even though they made sure to go themselves). There was never a guarantee of free time, and there were no counseling services even though I was depressed and frustrated for most of my first year.

When I was in Afghanistan, I was amazed at all the welfare facilities available on base. They had almost everything I could think of and a lot I couldn't have even imagined. On the other hand, on my base in Daegu, the only real welfare facility for conscripts was the PX, which was dwarfed by the one in Afghanistan. The BX on Bagram Air Base was a Wal-mart. The PX on my base in Daegu was a 7-11. At least, that's how it felt. My company in Daegu had a small trailer with some gym equipment and a single basketball hoop. I've heard that other units had a noraebang and a computer for conscripts to use; my company had neither. I couldn't even check my e-mail on base.

In Bagram, I was also amazed by how civilly American soldiers treated each other. In Daegu, it was only ridicule and bullying between soldiers. Aside from your donggi (soldiers who started the same month as you), everyone was someone to be feared or someone to order around. It is the ROK Army culture that forces people to act in such an unnatural way. While on deployment, there was no such protocol in the 2nd Construction Company, and it was much more bearable.

I have heard that the ROK Army has been working on treating conscripts marginally better. I've heard that privates now make something like 130,000 won a month and the general atmosphere among conscripts is better, but I don't know for certain. It's kind of a general understanding that it gets a little better and more comfortable every year, and people who did their service earlier are keen to point out that things were more difficult for them.

While the Korean soldiers in Afghanistan are depicted in the book as getting along well enough with the American soldiers there, some incidents - such as one which ends with an high-ranking American officer storming out after muttering, "God damn Koreans" - made me wonder if the ROK military presence there might have done more harm than good:

To be honest, I don't think the Korean Army's presence in Afghanistan made a difference one way or the other. Sure, we were a nuisance, but most of the truly outrageous things were suffered by those in command--the base command and the command of the 109th Engineers--rather than the average soldier. That being said, I don't think anyone thought we really contributed to the war efforts, and I don't think much was expected of us. The Dasan Engineering Unit poured concrete around the base and the Dongeui Medical Unit treated local nationals, and for the most part, the Korean soldiers kept to the Korean compounds when they weren't busy shopping.

I also asked him about the effect his experience had upon his attitude toward Korea in general.

I get asked this question often because people are surprised that I decided to stay in Korea and they usually expect me to be very bitter. Of course, I don't look back at the experience fondly, but the Korean Army is the Korean Army and Korean society is Korean society. There are things that I greatly enjoy about Korea and things that frustrate me to no end, but I don't let my experience in the service color my judgment of Korea.

With regard to the people, wherever you go in the world, there are good, kindly, decent people, and there are cruel, selfish, arrogant assholes. The US is no different, Korea is no different, the Korean Army is no different. Granted, the culture in the Army brought out the worst in people, which is one of the reasons why I prefer not to see people I met in the Army. I try to surround myself with the former.

I do deeply sympathize when I hear my friends talking about their experiences in corporate Korea because it often reminds me of my time in the Army, and I've determined never to put myself in such a hellish and poisonous environment again.

Lastly, I asked him about how he went about learning Korean:

For the first three or four weeks, I simply parroted whatever I was taught without knowing what the words meant. Once I got my Korean-English pocket dictionary, I was constantly looking up words that I heard throughout the day and tried to piece things together. When I was a private, I once got verbally abused for looking at my dictionary while I was walking. I had only wanted to look up a word before I forgot it. "Privates don't get to read and walk," the sergeant said, after he had given me a good shoulder to the back.

Once I was in Daegu, I had access to a small library in the squad room. I would choose a novel and go through it, looking up every word I didn't know until I could piece together what was being said. It was very slow-going; I remember spending a couple of days on a single paragraph. The book that I translated for The Korea Times Literature Awards was maybe the first Korean novel I was able to read from cover to cover. I also bought a book on Korean grammar when I was on furlough prior to pre-deployment training. I think I copied most of the entries in my journal. Needless to say, I wrote pages upon pages of vocabulary words and grammar points.

That was one aspect of my learning Korean. The other was the hostile environment. If I said something grammatically incorrect or even mispronounced any little word, I was ridiculed and shamed mercilessly. Some people would respond by working harder until their ability was recognized; I basically just shut my mouth and kept to myself. I never yelled at anyone when I was a sergeant, partially because I knew better than anyone how it felt but mostly because I couldn't yell in Korean. I still can't.

It's a little embarrassing, but I couldn't speak Korean decently until after I got discharged. Everything I had studied didn't get processed until I finally had the time to process it. Needless to say, I don't recommend going to the Korean Army if you're interested in learning Korean.

Thanks to Young for answering my questions.

More on Sewol

If you haven't read "The West’s Confucian Confusion: How More Confucianism Might Have Saved the Sewol" over at Sweet Pickles and Corn, do head over there now and give it a read (and click around the other posts there while you're at it). One of the best books I've read dealing with Neo-Confucianism (and how it relates to the political and legal traditions in Joseon Korea), by the way, is The Korean Political Tradition and Law by Hahm Pyong-choon (Ham Byeong-chun, who was killed in the Rangoon bombing in 1983) published by the Royal Asiatic Society.

The author of "The West’s Confucian Confusion" notes in the comments that "a lot of it is probably just intellectual laziness, but there’s also something a little darker at work that always seeks to paint Asian people as a mindless undifferentiated mass." I'm sure that goes back a long ways, but that topic is explored in depth in John Dower's "War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War," which examines the the racial aspects of both American and Japanese propaganda; he notes, for example, that while there was room for 'the good German' in Allied propaganda, there was no such category reserved for the Japanese - they were all the same.

As for the corruption at the heart of Chonghaejin Marine Co., which seems responsible for the disaster, see the links put up by King Baeksu over at ROK Drop (I skipped over the other comments, to be honest). As more information about the company and the policies and background of its owner, Yoo Byung-un come to light, it seems a very sordid story is being uncovered.

Sweet Dream online

Several years ago I posted about the 1936 film Sweet Dream, which I interpreted as a "story of how modernity is corrupting women." Back then they were called 'modern women'; more recently they've been known as 'doenjang nyeo,' or 'bean paste girls.'I couldn't help noticing that in Declaration of Idiots (the 1983 film mentioned in my last post), as well as that film's director Lee Jang-ho's next film, Between the Knees (which can be seen here, without subtitles), the vectors of western consumerism and open sexuality are women.

At any rate, Sweet Dream can be watched online with subtitles, courtesy of the Korean Film Archive:

Heaven on Earth

The 1988 Seoul Olympics

Prologue 1: "Why can't Americans be Punished?"

Part 1:  The Seoul Olympics, 25 years later
Part 2:  The 1988 Olympics and Korean fears of AIDS
Part 3:  Americans and bad first impressions
Part 4:  Reptilian Style: The 'live-or-die general war' against Hollywood
Part 5:  An attack in a boxing ring
Part 6:  Media responses to the boxing ring incident
Part 7:  No more lion: US swimmers' 'prank' becomes 'diplomatic incident'
Part 8:  KAIST catches Big Ben
Part 9:  Hankyoreh interviews Korean witness to theft by swimmers
Part 10: Stop me if you've heard this one: Four GIs head to Itaewon in a taxi...
Part 11: Taxi-kicking US runner taken to Itaewon police box
Part 12: NBC uses the power of t-shirts to insult Korea... again
Part 13: Cultivating outrage toward America
Part 14: Politicians engage in damage control
Part 15: Heaven on Earth
Part 16: Hustler magazine tramples the purity of the Korean race 
Part 17: Stolen gold

Part 15: Heaven on Earth

In the November 1988 issue of The New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma wrote a lengthy place about the Seoul Olympics titled 'Playing for Keeps' (which also appears in his book 'The Missionary and the Libertine'). In it he mentions one aspect of Korean culture he came across:

Perhaps the Korean belief in miracles is cultural. Korea is after all a nation of mass prayer meetings, new religions, the birthplace of the Reverend Moon, and a hospitable destination for the likes of Billy Graham. Russell Warren Howe, in his otherwise egregiously ill-written, misinformed book [reviewed here], is probably right to call Korean culture shamanistic. Filipinos often seem to be waiting for a national messiah, but Koreans have a tendency to take a messianic view of the nation itself. One of the more amusing spectacles at the Seoul games was the peddlers of many different sects and creeds lying in ambush outside the main entrances of sports arenas. I shall restrict my quotations to only two of the many pamphlets pressed into my hands by beaming proselytizers. One was from one Presbyter Park Tae-sun, of the Sun Kyung (Fairland) Development and Institution:

To All Mankind!—We proclaim that the Republic of Korea is the country where mankind was first created and civilization was cradled, and the parental country of all mankind. All mankind now participating in the '88 Olympic Games! We advise you to realize the fact that the Republic of Korea having about 5000 year [sic] long history, is your parental country."

 The Kingdom Gospel Evangelical Association had this to say:

The reason why the kingdom of God where our human body can live eternally comes true herein [sic] the Republic of Korea is that the Taegukki, Korea National Flag has the figure of glorious God, and the Republic of Korea has seen the Second Advent of Jesus Christ really coming to it. Now, all the world should recognize the fact that the Republic of Korea is the right place where the heaven of eternal life shall be realized.

One suspects something wrong happened on the way to modern nationhood in Korea. An unfortunate synthesis must have occurred between West and East. The West, usually via Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, gave Korea half-baked German notions of Blood and Soil; it also exported, mostly from America, the equally half-baked notions of vulgar evangelism. Korea contributed an emotional legacy of historical bitterness and a propensity for shamanistic rites. These are precisely some of the ingredients that went into Independence Hall, and were encouraged by the Olympic games. No doubt the sense of victimhood, of being ignored or worse by other powers throughout history, has contributed to the modern zeal to gain recognition, to win gold medals, to beat the Japanese, and ultimately, who knows, the Americans.

Up next we'll look at the lengths gone to to win one more medal for Korea by claiming victory over an American.

Crushing the competition

It's always nice to see ten year-old girls internalizing zero-sum attitudes in regard to competition.

This reminded me of another RAS lecture from last year by Chong-ae Lee titled "Has Korean Competition Reached its Limit?" It's well worth watching (at that link), as she works at SBS and had clearly worked on programs related to the topic. The lecture is full of survey results and statistics which show just how much Korean society - in particular the education system and job market - resembles the picture above.

The scramble

A perceptive observation by Kevin Kim:

Koreans are infamously zigzaggy: Korea is the land of last-minute changes in plan, as well as last-minute accomplishments of plans. But despite having lived in Korea for eight years, I've never gotten used to this flexible relationship with punctuality, and often marvel at how such an efficiency-averse culture has managed to succeed as well as it has, both economically and technologically. The answer can only be the scramble: Koreans are famously hard workers, and I suppose much of their effort is devoted to (wasted on, more like) compensating quickly for all the zigzagging from Point A to Point B. This vicious cycle of plan-change-replan reinforces the peninsula's headache-inducing "Hurry! Hurry!" mentality. While the scramble does make Koreans more flexible and open-minded than many of us planning-happy Westerners, it produces a great deal of unnecessary stress and chaos along the way. Korean culture, far from being Swiss-linear, is a drunkard's aimless stumble.

On the other hand, Westerners of the procrastinating type tend to force the scramble upon ourselves, instead of letting other people do it for (to?) us. I'm not sure if that's better or worse...

Teenage Runaway articles update

As I noted in this post, the Hankyoreh has been translating a series of its articles about prostitution among teenage runaways, and several more have been added:

Part 1: Runaways flee abuse at home, end up in prostitution
Part 2: The lives of female runaways in Seoul
Part 3: Runaways' prostitution
Part 4: Runaways live with the pain of rape
Part 5: The exploitation of teen runaways

Al Jazeera also reported on this topic.

All of the articles are worth reading; Al Jazeera's starts out with a correction stating that it "first published this story quoting an estimation by a coalition of women’s groups that there are 1.2 million women in the sex trade in South Korea, and that 20 per cent of all South Korean women aged 15-29 were involved in prostitution. However, these NGO figures are not supported by any official data and are impossible to verify."

It's hard to know what the figures are (1 million was thrown around in reports before the 1988 Olympics), though 20% in the 15-29 age bracket seems too high - unless, according to this report, you happen to be a North Korean defector ("More than 30 percent of women from the North turned to prostitution as they tried to settle in the South, according to one study"). On the other hand, one study in 2008 found that one in every three female secondary school students in Busan had received sex trade proposals while chatting online, and 6.5% of the respondents said they had sold sex. So while 20% is too high, the actual percentage is still likely to be an uncomfortable figure.

Needless to say, with the first hand accounts in the articles, they're a pretty depressing read.

A look at prostitution among teen runaways

Back in June the Hanguk Ilbo published this article:

"1 out of 4 runaway teenage girls have experience selling sex"

A survey has found that 1 out of 4 runaway teenage girls have experience selling sex. On the 6th a survey done by the Seoul Happy Sexuality Human Rights Center of 175 teenage girls living at 25 shelters in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do found that 25.% of the girls answered "I have experience selling sex."

Those 14 to 17 years old made up 88.1% of those selling sex, while 'conditional meeting' arranged over the internet, was, at 83.7%, the most common type. As for why they sold sex (multiple answers), 44.2% said "I had no place to sleep," 30.2% answered "I was hungry" and "I was forced."

54.4% said they had experience earning money after running away from home, and among them 55.3% said they earned money in the 'sex industry or by selling sex.' Of those who said they earned money in the 'sex industry or by selling sex,' their experience involved conditional meeting (25.5%), noraebang(10.6%), bodobang (9.6%), Dallan jujeom and room salon (3.2%), kiss bang (3.2%), sex selling gathering place (2.1%), and ticket dabang (1.1%).

Among those who had answered as such, 40.7% had experience of suffering sexual violence, and among those, 37.7% had been sexually assaulted/molested by family members or relatives.

The average age of those who particpated in the survey is 16 years old, 70.8% first ran away from home between the ages of 12 and 15, with the average age being 13.

In order to protect teenaged female runaways who are easily exposed to dangerous situations like sexual violence and selling sex, Seoul will expand its year-round on-the-street nighttime counseling. In particular, 'Drop-in center' support facilities where they can stay temporarily in emergency situations will be established in July.

I'd forgotten I'd translated this at the time until I saw the Hankyoreh's 6 part series on the sexual exploitation of teen runaways. Part 1, titled "Runaways flee abuse at home, end up in prostitution," opens with this introduction:

Last year, more than 20,000 young people ran away from home. That total only represents the cases that were reported to police. As of now, an estimated 200,000 adolescents are living on the streets around the country. Over 60% of the runaways are girls, children who have fled poverty and abuse at home. Roughly half of these girls are believed to be surviving on the streets through prostitution. For all the shock the South Korean public shows when confronted with sex crimes, it turns a blind eye to the kind of sexual exploitation that disadvantaged teenage girls are exposed to on a daily basis.

It's interesting that the number of runaways is that high (200,000). As reported by the Korea Times in 1995, "According to Education Ministry's statistics, the number of runaway students increased to 11,363 [in 1994], a 23 percent hike from 1993. Among them, girls outnumbered boys 5,935 to 5,428." It was later reported that "In 2001, the number of runaways in South Korea reached 61319 youths (23577 males and 37742 females)." The increase at that time was likely due to the fallout from the 1997 financial crisis. In all these cases, the gender split was skewed towards females. (For more such articles from the 1990s, see here).

The Hankyoreh has translated parts one and two of this series, which illustrates pretty clearly why so many female teen runaways rely on prostitution to survive. Each part has several graphs based on the study described in the Hanguk Ilbo above.

 (That should be '13 and younger.')

Part 3 has the following graphs, the first from a survey of 96 female runaways in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do who had sold sex, March-April 2012, asking why they first sold sex:

(From top) No place to sleep, hungry, pressured, wanted to earn money, had no other job, entertainment expenses, as a favor to a friend, despair after being raped, curiosity, other.

The next 4 graphs are from a survey of 175 female runaways in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, March-April 2012. The first asks what is the most difficult thing after running away:

(Clockwise from orange) Money, depresson/anxiety/frustration, family problems, finding a job, anxiety over the path they've chosen, senior-junior relationship among friends, other.

As for the graphs based on the same survey in part 4, 40% of runaway girls said they had been raped; asked who their first attacker was, 31.7% said friends or boyfriends, 25.7% said relatives or family, 11.9% said a stranger, 9.9% said a neighbour, 5% said someone buying sex, and 15.9% said something other.

Part 5 has a list of teen runaway prostitution by type (clockwise from orange): "Conditional meeting," bodobang/noraebang/kissbang/dallanjujeom, propositioned on street, brothel/massage parlour/ticket dabang, other.

Above is a graph showing the most common paths to prostitution (clockwise from orange): Chatting, introduced by a friend, propositioned on the street, business owner forced them, kidnapped/confined, other.

I should note above that jogeon mannam, or 'conditional meeting,' has basically become the new name for wonjo gyoje, or 'compensated dating', about which I talked a great deal here. Whereas wonjo gyoje was a euphemism specifically for (freelance, often organized through the internet) teen prostitution, 'conditional meeting' is a more general term (mentioned, for instance, here back in 2004). I'd come across an article discussing this shift some time ago but can't offhand remember which it was. It might be "A culture that cultivates the prostitution of teenage girls: based on the experiences of prostitution among teenage girls," the abstract of which is here.

Part 6 has the following two graphs; the first is titled "Assistance needed most by teenage runaways."

Clockwise from orange: Shelter or group home, job, schooling, job training, emotional support, medical aid.

Below is titled "Rape/indecent assault against children and youth 2007-2011."

Above is titled "Number prosecuted for breaking child/youth sexual protection law (via teen prostitution, etc), 2008-Aug. 2012."

Hopefully the Hankyoreh will continue to translate this series. I've been meaning to post about the proposed changes to sex crime laws which have been suggested in the wake of high profile sex crimes against children this year, but there's been so much information it's hard to know where to start. When you see the numbers above and read questions asking why sex crimes against children and teens are so common, well, I'm pretty sure the attitudes which make teen prostitution so common and the reasons children and teens are targeted by rapists are pretty closely related - as is how they are depicted in the media. But that's a post for another day.

School demographics

I came across some statistics on my school's students today, and thought it was interesting to look at the demographics:


When you take into consideration that there were a similar number of students in grade 6 last year, and almost 300 two years ago, the downward trend in the number of students is pretty clear. As for the sex ratio, according to Wikipedia, "In 2010, the global sex ratio was 986 females per 1,000 males." The sex ratio for this school is 943 females per 1,000 males. Here are female/male sex ratios by grade:
Grade 1: 936 per 1000
Grade 2: 882 per 1000
Grade 3: 1187 per 1000
Grade 4: 859 per 1000
Grade 5: 879 per 1000
Grade 6: 942 per 1000

In the statistics above, you can see that for some reason there were about 15 more students in grade 3, and all of those 15 are girls. Seeing as they were born in 2003, perhaps some of them were conceived during the World Cup...

Of course, this is just one school. I went to a demonstration class in Mok-dong a few weeks ago and eventually realized that there were two boys for every girl in the grade 6 class that was being taught. I asked the teacher about this and she said that was the ratio for grade 6 students at that school (the other grades apparently weren't as bad). Needless to say, 2:1 is a rather skewed ratio, though it was confined to one area (and the school was fairly small).

I was wondering just how much of a change this was from the 1980s and 1990s, and according to this article, "South Korea’s sex ratio rose from just above normal to 117 in 1990—then the highest in the world—before falling back to more natural levels." The 'normal level' is considered 105 males for 100 females, and calculating it that way, the sex ratio at my school is 106 males to 100 females, making it only slightly above normal. Well then, looked at that way, the gender imbalance isn't as great as it might first seem.

It would be fascinating to see nationwide statistics over the last decade to see how the low birthrate has been developing. It doesn't seem like a trend that will change any time soon.

Juvenile Delinquency Up

Concerns about rising crime by teens is nothing new, as this May 24, 1970 Korea Times article about a rise in juvenile delinquency reveals:


For the negative perceptions of youth in the 1990s, see this post.

Dirty Korean women who have brought shame to the country?

The 2005 English Spectrum Incident

Part 1: English Spectrum and 'Ask The Playboy'
Part 2: The Kimchiland where it’s easy to sleep with women and make money
Part 3: English Spectrum shuts down as Anti-English Spectrum is created
Part 4: How to hunt foreign women
Part 5: Did the foreigners who denigrated Korean women throw a secret party?
Part 6: The 'Ask The Playboy' sexy costume party
Part 7: Stir over ‘lewd party’ involving foreigners and Korean women
Part 8: The 2003 post that tarred foreign English teachers as child molesters
Part 9: Netizens shocked by foreign instructor site introducing how to harass Korean children
Part 10: Movement to expel foreign teachers who denigrated Korean women
Part 11: "Middle school girls will do anything"
Part 12: Netizens propose 'Yankee counter strike force'
Part 13: Segye Ilbo interview with the women from the party, part 1
Part 14: Segye Ilbo interview with the women from the party, part 2
Part 15: Web messages draw Koreans’ wrath
Part 16: Thai female laborers and white English instructors
Part 17: 'Regret' over the scandal caused by confessions of foreign instructors
Part 18: "Korean men have no excuse"
Part 19: "Unfit foreign instructors should be a 'social issue'"
Part 20: 'Clamor' at foreigner English education site
Part 21: Foreign instructor: "I want to apologize"
Part 22: No putting brakes on 'Internet human rights violations'
Part 23: "They branded us as whores, yanggongju and pimps," part 1
Part 24: "They branded us as whores, yanggongju and pimps," part 2
Part 25: Don't Imagine
Part 26: 'Foreign instructor' takes third place
Part 27: Art From Outsider's Point of View
Part 28: U.S. Embassy warns Americans of threats near colleges
Part 29: Internet real name system debated
Part 30: Dirty Korean women who have brought shame to the country?

On January 24, 2005, Ilda, a feminist journal, published an article about the English Spectrum incident:

Dirty Korean women who have brought shame to the country?

In viewing the so-called 'English Spectrum' incident, we can witness once again how, when extreme nationalism and patriarchal views meet, they run counter to the issue of women's rights.

The incident began when controversy was caused by problematic writings such as how to molest children and comments denigrating Korean women which were posted in the 'Ask The Playboy' forum of the foreign job site 'English Spectrum.' The posted methods written in detail of how to Korean women bear comparison to well known things such as "Korean men's geisha tourism, how to deal with Japanese geisha." In it is still contained a patriarchal view objectifying women.

We need to clearly raise the issue and approach the problem of the foreign men posting comments demeaning women, and posting photos without consent, from a human rights perspective. However, it was after this when photos of foreign instructors having a party at a Hongdae club with Korean women were made public that this incident's fuse burned and truly flared up. Ironically, after the photos were made public, what started with foreign men denigrating Korean women changed to Korean men venting their anger at and demeaning the Korean women in the photos.

What the media and netizens surrounding this incident all gave the most attention to was the so-called 'promiscuous party' or 'lewd party' and the photos of the women who attended the sensationally overinflated party. As the photos were made public, what came under concentrated fire were the "Korean women" in the photos. The photos of women enjoying themselves at a party with foreign men spread like wildfire through cyberspace, where they were openly posted at porn sites and sites which collect indecent photos of women and entertainers, and people bragged about the explosive number of hits.

The photos were edited to read "Korea is the country where you can easily sleep with women," "Come to Korea. You can have whatever you want every night," "Korean fucking girls [in English]", and looking at what Korean men 'kindly' wrote, one can see in what direction the anger of the Korean men who 'enjoyed and shared' the photos went in. Seeing the replies of a good many men under the photos, the issue becomes clearer: "As for sluts, they do slutty things, and as for personal freedom, it's all good, but later when a Korean guy takes her home, he'll know by her massively stretched hole he's been tricked and she's a whore - don't marry her." "There are lots of garbage-like girls who hold hands with western bastards and give away their bodies while drunk." "If girls who do things like that with Yankees marry Korean men, poor Korean men." "Those women have disgraced Korea."

Korean men said, "I never dreamed it was so bad," but the scenes in the photos that had them frothing at the mouth in anger were not of Korean women hitting on foreigners, but just of them enjoying a party together. (As well, the owner of the club that hosted the party claimed that photos unrelated to the party were mixed in with ones that were.) Water poured on their bodies, dirty gestures while incredibly drunk, dancing while revealing their underwear and the contours of their bodies, listening to music, wearing tight clothes. These aspects of enjoying the party are [deemed] 'promiscuous' and 'decadent culture', but it doesn't help to push conservative standards on people. (If I might add, Korea's 'decadent pleasure' culture can be clearly witnessed at various places of prostitution.) Also, not only are the comments at the site from unclear sources, but there is no basis for condemning all foreign instructors.

Ultimately, their anger is because of the immodest behaviour of "Korean men's property, Korean women." With the cry of "expel foreigners," or "I want to send foreign men on the street running," not only for a long time they could find no direction for their 'chivalry,' but you can clearly guess at the context of the anger circling around this incident. It's because the focus of the Korean women's enjoyment at the party was 'foreign men.' Under the nationalist perception of "I will never forgive seeing my women carrying on like that with foreign bastards," these women are denigrated as "whores" or "yanggongju" and condemned by patriarchal standards.

However, whether the Korean women in the photos are dating or having a good time with foreigners, all of this is their own person affair and is not something for Korea to be concerned with. If Korea is concerned with this, why has this claim/argument monopolized by Korean men not been pointed out before that they are already widely known as the 'ugly Korean' when they go abroad and enjoy 'sex tours' and massages from women?

If an issue is to be made of comments by foreigners denigrating Korean women, then those photos cannot be widely put into the "In Korea" category at so-called [online] "dirty picture collections" as they have been. How contradictory is it that on the one hand these photos are gathered and enjoyed to the utmost without any awareness at all of the issue of the human rights of the women in the photos, while on the other hand profanity-filled rants are spat out which actually denigrate women and nationalism is invoked by worrying about 'Korea?'

The issues raised surrounding this incident, such as publishing photos which violate privacy without consent, or examining the educational realities and mistaken sexual awareness of some foreign instructors, are clear. However the media, which distorted and sensationalized the incident as a 'promiscuous party' or 'lewd party,' and the netizens, who posted the photos here and there and habitually left comments denigrating the women as 'whores' and 'sluts' and violated the women's human rights, have no right to pass judgement on them.

It's nice to see a critical look at this incident, and a feminist one at that. Another lengthy analysis was published later, but it's nearly unreadable (it will get posted eventually, however). Some of what is said above also applies to the MBC report on the 'realities' of dating foreigners, which is just as offensive to Korean women as it is to foreigners.

Internet real name system debated

The 2005 English Spectrum Incident

Part 1: English Spectrum and 'Ask The Playboy'
Part 2: The Kimchiland where it’s easy to sleep with women and make money
Part 3: English Spectrum shuts down as Anti-English Spectrum is created
Part 4: How to hunt foreign women
Part 5: Did the foreigners who denigrated Korean women throw a secret party?
Part 6: The 'Ask The Playboy' sexy costume party
Part 7: Stir over ‘lewd party’ involving foreigners and Korean women
Part 8: The 2003 post that tarred foreign English teachers as child molesters
Part 9: Netizens shocked by foreign instructor site introducing how to harass Korean children
Part 10: Movement to expel foreign teachers who denigrated Korean women
Part 11: "Middle school girls will do anything"
Part 12: Netizens propose 'Yankee counter strike force'
Part 13: Segye Ilbo interview with the women from the party, part 1
Part 14: Segye Ilbo interview with the women from the party, part 2
Part 15: Web messages draw Koreans’ wrath
Part 16: Thai female laborers and white English instructors
Part 17: 'Regret' over the scandal caused by confessions of foreign instructors
Part 18: "Korean men have no excuse"
Part 19: "Unfit foreign instructors should be a 'social issue'"
Part 20: 'Clamor' at foreigner English education site
Part 21: Foreign instructor: "I want to apologize"
Part 22: No putting brakes on 'Internet human rights violations'
Part 23: "They branded us as whores, yanggongju and pimps," part 1
Part 24: "They branded us as whores, yanggongju and pimps," part 2
Part 25: Don't Imagine
Part 26: 'Foreign instructor' takes third place
Part 27: Art From Outsider's Point of View
Part 28: U.S. Embassy warns Americans of threats near colleges
Part 29: Internet real name system debated

On January 24, My Daily (who else?) reported on the evolving debate over a real name system for netizens, a topic which continues from the discussion in this article published five days earlier. It begins:

Netizens in heated debate over real name system controversy

As the mass distribution of such things as the Celebrity X-File is being seen as an opportunity to introduce a netizen real name system, debate for or against it among netizens is heating up.

As negative opinion has been formed due to things like the spread of the Celebrity X-File, the battle over writing at the foreign instructor denigration site, and some netizens' personal terror, in regard to those who have brought up the netizen real name system, controversy is growing, as those opposing it are saying, "This is just trying to reduce freedom of expression," while those who favor the adoption of the real name system say "You should be responsible for what you write."

It goes on to note that this was not just an internet discussion, with CBS radio "develop[ing] a platform to discuss the netizen real name system" earlier that day by interviewing a lawyer who said that "Because the internet is after all based on anonymity, a possible consequence is that faceless terror is possible and incorrect information can be blindly accepted." It goes on note pro and con opinions summarized above and then ends with quotes from experts saying "In truth, there are many difficulties in introducing a netizen real name system" and "More desirable than laws and systems would be for education regarding netizen etiquette when using the internet to be systematically carried out at school and at home."

As it turns out, there weren't as many problems as one might have thought in implementing this system, though it was done slowly. Here is a summary of the way in which the system was first suggested and implemented, written as Google was about to adopt the system for Youtube in 2009. After the dog poop girl incident in June of 2005, the debate was brought back to life, as noted in these posts from the time:

Internet Witchhunts and Conflict Resolution
Riding the wave of 'cyber terror' articles
'Real Names' in Korean Cyberspace
Portals and the Cyber Terror blame game

Google would later decide not to implement the system, apparently enraging a certain future Seoul mayoral candidate. At the end of last year, it was suggested that the real name system may be scrapped, but as far as I know little has been done in that regard.