brain echo, by dan

South Korea's misogyny crisis is perpetuated by draconian anti-left laws engineered by the USA

South Korean society is highly misogynistic, and its status quo is protected by anti-left laws that hinder struggles for progressive reforms. These laws, with fascistic roots, were drawn out and enforced with the help and total support of the USA, which, in a traditionally very conservative country, resulted in women being treated, to this day, as "second-class citizens" subject to undue violence, objectification and discrimination.

For a more complete understanding of this issue, historical context of modern Korea is necessary:

During the Japanese colonial period, Koreans became deeply exploited, dehumanized as machines and beasts of burden, and reduced to the status of sub humans. Not only was their self-determination denied, but they were also alienated from their culture and language. Additionally, a large number of Korean women were forced into sexual slavery to satisfy the lust of Japanese soldiers - possibly as many as 200,000 women were coerced into a system of sexual slavery.

After WWII, the Korean peninsula was divided into two occupational zones, a US and a Soviet one (decision made by the US and accepted by the USSR without consulting Koreans). In the North, the Soviets stayed in the background, letting the self-organized people's committees carry out radical democratic reforms, such as redistribution of lands from parasitic landlords and improving labor conditions and women's rights. Most of the North's landlords fled to the US-occupied South, along with Japanese-appointed Korean officials, police, and pro-Japanese collaborators. In contrast to the Soviet-occupied North, the US established total military and governmental control over the South, retaining the Japanese, pro-Japanese collaborators and police in their positions of power and control. Koreans, finally freed from decades of colonialist exploitation, saw the Korean traitors and previous masters maintaining their oppressive control over them, under another foreign power authority. The US made sure that the political structure of the state that was formed in their occupied zone, South Korea (Republic of Korea/ROK), was in control of anti-communists extreme rightists who were brutally suppressing disorder and resistance, and repressing, jailing and massacring communists, leftists, or simply people committed to Korean independence and liberation. By 1948, as accorded in an international trusteeship, the USSR left Korea; the USA, to this day, occupies South Korea, controls their military and influences political decisions to the imperialistic interests of their capital elites.

The Korean War formally started in 1950, between the state that was formed in the North, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea/DPRK), and the US-puppet state of South Korea. In this war, which technically should be considered a civil war, the North fought for Korean independence and liberation, while the South for imperialist and capitalistic interests of the US and pro-Japanese Korean elites. The consequences of this war were horrific, causing an estimated 3 to 4.5 million deaths, with Koreans making up 2.3 to 3 million of those fatalities, mostly civilians (Chinese casualties, who helped the DPRK, ranged between 600,000 and one million, while U.S. fatalities were significantly lower at 36,574). Given that Korea's population in 1950 was about 20 million, the war wiped out 10 to 15 percent of the population. The United States holds primary responsibility for the millions of lives lost during the war: partitioned the country; intervened in the war; after the DPRK army withdrew north of the 38th parallel, the US decided to push the war further instead of breaking off hostilities; and when the Chinese forces pushed the US forces back to the south of the parallel, instead of agreeing to stop the war, the US fought for two more years, bombing North Korea completely to the ground. The US bombers burned to the ground nearly every city and village, destroyed almost every substantial building and infrastructures, such as vital dams, and left the country a scorched wasteland.

National Security Law

In 1948, before the Korean War, and actually just a few months after the establishment of the ROK, its US-backed and controlled government introduced the draconian National Security Law (or National Security Act), with the stated purpose "to secure the security of the State and the subsistence and freedom of nationals, by regulating any anticipated activities compromising the safety of the State". The law allows for severe penalties, including death or life imprisonment, for anyone involved in anti-state activities, such as joining or supporting anti-state organizations, providing them with financial or material aid, or communicating with their members. It also extends to banning any public show of support or sympathy for the DPRK. This law exists to this day, and it has been criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations.

South Koreans have faced legal consequences for actions perceived as supportive of the DPRK, such as making pro-DPRK statements, creating websites with similar content, advocating for socialism, discussing alternatives to capitalism in public settings, sharing DPRK-related tweets, owning North Korean-published books, tuning into Pyongyang's radio broadcasts, or visiting the DPRK without government approval. Even efforts to promote reconciliation between the two Koreas, or any expressions of leftism have been used to imprison South Koreans. Only one year after it was established, it had already been used to arrest 188,621 people committed to Korean independence and other leftist causes.

Examples of the use of this law to suppress various forms of leftism:

In 1989, South Korea's police state arrested an average of 3.3 citizens per day for violating "anti-communist regulations". Even President Kim Dae Jung, the most democratic ROK president to his date, used this law to imprison people who demonstrated against unemployment and the government’s response to an economic crisis, and to imprison filmmaker Suh Joon Sik who screened a film about the anti-communist massacre that happened on Jeju Island in 1948.

The main argument of this post is that this law has been used to suppress and repress various forms of leftism, particularly progressive reforms, resulting in the perpetuation of conservatism and misogyny.

The consequences of suppressing leftism

  1. Lack of anti-discrimination laws: South Korea and Japan are the only countries in the OECD to lack an anti-discrimination law. The UN Commission on Human Rights have urged South Korea to enact comprehensive anti-discrimination laws to strengthen its efforts in combating issues of equality, racism, and xenophobia.

  2. Weak labour rights: South Koreans work some of the longest hours among OECD countries, with many employees in manufacturing jobs exceeding 60-hour workweeks. Despite paid vacation allowances, many workers either don’t take time off or work excessive hours even when they do. In 2014, the average South Korean worked 2,124 hours, which surpasses the standard 40-hour workweek and suggests that vacations are either skipped or limited (source from 2015). And these numbers were already an improvement from the year 2000, when the average was 2,512 hours—significantly more than workers in the US (40% more) or Germany (80% more). These long work hours highlight the persistent intensity of labor in South Korea, echoing conditions from the era of Japanese colonial rule when Koreans were subjected to grueling labor in Japanese-owned mines and factories. Furthermore, the ROK government has yet to ratify the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Violence and Harassment Convention (C190), which would obligate it to take steps to eliminate harassment and violence in the workplace. Additionally, women in the ROK also have strict maternity leave policies, which contributes to South Korea having the lowest fertility rate in the world.

  3. Suppression of LBGTQIA+ rights: Right-wing civic groups and conservative Christians groups are influencial and politically engaged. A lot of times they were able to prevent Pride parades to take place in certain areas, and in 2015 they were actually able to ban the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, which made the Human Rights Watch express concern. Furthermore, their opposition to same-sex marriage or even LGBTQIA+ visibility has been a significant obstacle to passing legislative measures that protect LGBTQIA+ rights. These groups also pose an obstacle to the implementation of necessary and basic sexual education in schools.

  4. Misogyny and patriarchal dominance over women: For nearly 25 years, South Korea has consistently recorded the largest gender pay gap among OECD countries and has ranked, for the past decade, at the bottom of global indexes of gender equality such as The Economist's glass ceiling index and the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report. Martial rape was only outlawed in 2013, while only in late 2020 did the ROK decriminalize abortion. Violence against women, namely domestic assault, workplace sexual harassment, rape and murder have become alarmingly frequent. Digital sex crimes have reached epidemic levels in one of the world’s most connected countries: men have installed hidden cameras in public bathrooms, women’s locker rooms, stores, and subways to secretly film women, with the footage often being distributed online without consent. In South Korean online culture, behaviors like stereotyping, discrimination, objectifying women, focusing on appearance and age, and reducing women to mere body parts have become widespread. This repetitive and amplified hate speech fuels and perpetuates societal prejudices against women, making such biases more entrenched. The Human Rights Watch published, in 2021, a report highlighting the widespread issue of digital sex crimes in South Korea: according to the report, these crimes are often overlooked by police and lawmakers due to their non-physical nature (in 2019, the prosecution of digital sex crime cases dropped by more than 43%, and in 2020, 79% of those convicted received only suspended sentences or fines).

In the past years, alt-right and far-right political movements have been growing all over the world, specially within the young male demographic, which is very concerning. These movements are patriarchal and anti-feminist, not only perpetuating but also actively promoting misogyny - in their extreme form, even wanting to remove from women voting rights and advocating for woman to basically be property of men.

This is aggravating the aforementioned misogyny problems in South Korea: the current president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, in an attempt to attract young male voters, promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. He also declared that "systemic structural discrimination based on gender doesn’t exist in South Korea", despite of all of previously described violence, misogyny and discrimination that South Korean women endure. Additionally, president Yoon also eliminated government gender quotas: only 3 women were appointed to his 19-member cabinet.

The anti-woman and anti-feminist environment, although not new in the ROK, has increased and is a serious problem. Public figures, such as K-pop stars, actresses and athletes, are frequently highly and harshly criticized by anti-feminist groups simply for reading books or wearing slogans that are associated with feminism, or even just by having a short hairstyle! This problem is so extreme that various women ended up taking their own lives after being aggressively and brutally harassed and cyberbullied online. Such an incident happened with Sulli, a bold and artistic K-pop star and actress: her suicide was linked to severe depression that she developed as the result of the constant and brutal online harassment and cyberbullying, simply for being a feminist voice and advocating for the no bra movement.

Other examples of recent disgusting misogyny in South Korea are:

The root cause of all these crimes is just pure sexism and misogyny. This is a deeply disturbing and horrific systemic and structural problem in South Korean society. This post has as an objective raising awareness to this issue, and also connecting the lack of leftist social reforms as one of factors that allowed the perpetuation of conservatism and misogyny in South Korea.

Let's also not forget the US role in South Korean history: under US control and influence, the ROK spent most of the 20th century under military dictatorships and authoritarian governance, only transitioning to democracy in the late 1980s. The US-hegemony and imperialistic interests made sure that the ROK was a strong anti-communist police state, persecuting and imprisoning, sometimes even massacring, left-wing leaning people and people protesting against the government - using the National Security Law as a tool for that objetive.

In contrast to the weak labour rights and misogynistic society in South Korea, there's North Korea. Even before the Korean War happened, the DPRK had already promulgated labour reforms: The workday was limited to eight hours for non-hazardous jobs and seven hours for hazardous ones. Employees were guaranteed two weeks of paid vacation annually, while those in hazardous positions were granted a full month off. Additionally, child labour and pay discrimination against women were outlawed, and a social insurance system was introduced. Paid maternity leave, childcare facilities, and prepared meals enabled women to fully participate in the workforce by alleviating the domestic burdens they had traditionally carried alone, and it was also established a law that, for the first time in Korean history, guaranteed women social rights equal to those of men.

As a final note, a secondary objetive of this post was to try to talk about the role of the US in Korean history, its role in the Korean war, which is technicalities away from being called a US-perpetuated Korean genocide, and its occupation, to this day, of South Korea. For this reason I might have given slightly more historical context than necessary for the main point of this post. Despite this, there's several important facts and events that I was not able to talk about (in reality, I had to rewrite the historical context 3x times, because everything seemed so important to talk about that I ended up starting to write a really big history portion - but that would make this post unfocused). The US role in the Korean war and modern Korean history (known in the west as "The Forgotten War") are highly unknown to the general public, and the little common sense knowledge is highly propagandized. Thus, it is needed that this important part of modern history is talked about and discussed more.

For that, I highly recommend the book Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom by Stephen Gowans. I read it this summer and it completely changed my perspective on the North Korea-South Korea conflict and history. It is the main source/reference of this post.

- dan 09/09/2024

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#politics