"[3] The feminist or women's rights movement in South Korea is quite recent compared to first wave and second-wave feminism in the Western world.
With the advent of democracy and capitalism, women started to do work in public spaces, participated in political activity (once their suffrage was legitimized in the 1948 Constitution), and gained more opportunities to pursue higher education including college and university degrees.
[16] Gender-based disparities in workers' rights and pay persist "despite an above-average level of female tertiary education", according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).
[19] Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, women were disproportionately given temporary, unstable jobs known as Korean: 비정규직; RR: bijeongkyujik which have fewer legal protections and are notoriously low-paid.
[18] The Korea Development Institute (KDI) released a report in 2023 suggesting that the declining birth rate was connected to an increase in women's participation in the economy.
[39] The CEO of fashion e-commerce company Musinsa told employees in an online meeting, "we will be penalized, but paying the fine costs less than running the centers".
[45] In September 2022, a 37-year-old woman who had worked at Korea's top tech firm, Naver, for over ten years committed suicide reportedly because of bullying she received as a consequence of returning from maternity leave.
[20][58] Her father Park Chung Hee conducted a military coup in 1961 and ruled the country for 18 years, with a legacy of economic transformation marred by human rights abuses.
[20] The New York Times expressed doubt that the election of a female President would bring about significant changes because in South Korea, "women's most important job is still considered to be raising children".
She highlighted the irony of Park's position, similar to that of Margaret Thatcher, whereby women lead "conservative or leftist parties that have rarely prioritized or supported gender equality in their policy making and implementation", which she termed "window-dressing".
However, in the 1980s, the birth of radical women's organizations began to resist American feminist influence by concentrating on broad human rights issues and reunification instead of gender equality.
KWAU's participation in protests eventually forced General Chun Doo Hwan to step down whose successor then implemented direct presidential elections.
The term "bean paste girl" describes a young, college-aged woman who eats cheap meals to save money for things like Starbucks, which are seen as symbols of sophistication and Westernization.
[75][76] Scholars Donna Do-own Kim and Minseok Yoo argue that these misogynist stereotypes pressured Korean women to "continuously police and prove themselves" to avoid being labeled as selfish, materialistic, or undesirable.
[citation needed] The first major online feminist movement in South Korea was Megalia, which started in May and June 2015 on the popular internet forum DC Inside.
Female trolls occupied a forum page dedicated to sharing news about the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak, where users had been blaming two Korean women for helping spread the disease.
[79] When moderators on DC Inside banned the "Megalians" for derogatory language (while allowing the original misogynist posts to remain) the movement moved to other parts of the Korean internet.
[citation needed] Korean media accused Megalia of being as extreme as the far-right forum houseILBE and blamed the movement for encouraging hatred towards the opposite sex.
[102] To protest the beauty standards they find damaging, South Korean women choose to boycott makeup, hair dye and cosmetic procedures, a billion-dollar industry in the country.
These demonstrations were characterized by the youthfulness of the crowd as well as their tendency to practice, limiting those who were able to join in the movement to women who were assigned female at birth, but including trans men.
[114] Both the Korean MeToo movement and the Gangnam murder case have been accredited with playing an important role in catalyzing the growth of interest towards feminism within South Korea.
[117] The #MeToo movement, ignited in January 2018 with the initial accusation made by Suh Ji-Hyeon, inspiring many women to come forward about their personal experiences with sexual harassment and violence.
[121][additional citation(s) needed] South Korean radical feminist online communities, such as Womad and Megalia, have undoubtedly played a role in forming such perceptions of feminism.
[122] Lee Na-mi, a researcher at a psychological analysis center, during an interview, made clear her worries about how such discourses could result in the South Korean feminist movement being distorted or perceived wrongly.
Red Velvet member, Irene, was flooded with comments and messages across social media from angry fans after expressing that she had read the feminist novel, Kim Ji Young, Born 1982.
[125] More recently, a member of the South Korean Olympic archery team, An San, suffered extreme backlash because of claims that she must be a feminist, based on her short hair and the fact that she attends a women's-only college.
During his run for presidency, he called for the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to be abolished, and accused its officials of treating men like "potential sex criminals.
[131] The culture of South Korea typically favors male dominance which influences the orginazinational structure of workplaces and boosts societal pressures for women.
To Chief Justice Kim, gender equality as defined in the Constitution was a fundamentally foreign idea, and the reformation of family relations would lead to the disruption of authentic "Korean-ness."
Although it did not directly have a positive effect on women's equality, the revision showed that family structures could be changed, and allowed room in the political discourse for further reforms.