#feminism for korean women

[sarcasticsweetlara]

FLETCHER - I Believe You (AUDIO)

[xoheisse]

This is off topic for my account, but I want to help spread this important information.

Korean women are experiencing massive sexual violence by men.

tw : rape, abuse, crime

Secret Man's Telegram rooms were discovered in over 70% of South Korean schools where female students' faces were photoshopped into porn using AI.

A feminist in South Korea has mapped out schools where deepfake child pornography was created by male students using photos of girls on Telegram.

South Korean journalists who wrote articles about telegram deepfake child sex crimes are also being blackmailed with deepfakes by the perpetrators.

They also speak aggressively and disrespectfully about Ukrainian and Japanese women.

updates!

[twoyara]

As an Asian woman, it makes me laugh how libfems try to degrade the whole radical feminism movement by calling it "white feminism". When in fact it is libfems who are white feminists, and never the other way around.

It's they some white privileged twitter dumbasses who have never seen what a REAL poor life is like in their lives, that sit around thinking that prostitution is okay and there's no shame in surrogacy, knowing full well that the victims of these "jobs" are we, women of color.

Women who escaped their countries from dictatorships, poverty and lack of any women's rights to more "progressive" countries, without knowing language or having papers, thinking they had gone to a better life where they would be helped, only to find themselves as a piece of meat for men's amusement.

So libfem, shut the fuck up. I can't take your bullshit. And it's good to know that radical feminism is prevalent in my republic, as it is in most Asian countries. I love all my Asian sisters that I interact with now and have been able to interact with in the past, in all the years I have spent in this wonderful movement❤️❤️

[hard--headed--woman]

Something happened in my English class that I think perfectly sums up how so many people don't understand feminism.

At the beginning of each class, we have to talk about something in english for two minutes. This woman decided to talk about radical feminism in South Korea. She explained how feminists there decide not to date men, have sex with men, marry men and have kids with men anymore. It was very interesting and well explained, and I was happy to see another woman from my uni talking about feminism. From what I understood, she's not Korean but goes to Korea often and has a lot of radical feminists friends there.

Then another woman raises her hand and asks "don't you think these rules are a little bit tough?". I roll my eyes, but the other woman is confused. She frowns. "What rules? What are you talking about?". "I mean, the not dating men rule. Isn’t it a bit too tough?". "Well of course it's tough for the men but that's the goal isn’t? Feminism has to be a bit tough to men in order to work". She really didn't seem to understand what that other woman meant, and the other was apparently confused about it. "I mean for the women... for the Korean women. Aren't these rules too tough for Korean feminists? Isn’t there a way to help women without giving them such hard rules to follow?".

I was very annoyed (so was the woman who talked about this movement in the first place) because how can you miss the point so badly? How does she think feminism works? Does she believe some sort of higher power gives Korean women rules to follow and that they get thrown in jail if they date a man? How can you describe this movement as "rules"? They aren't rules. They would be rules if Korean women were forced to obey them, if they were punished for dating men. That's not the case. What's happening is that some women decide of their own free will to stop dating men (among other things). They don't follow any rules, they freely chose to do what they do. It's about women's freedom, about women deciding what they do with their life and body. But I guess people nowadays use this concept only to defend prostitution and makeup, without understanding it in reality, when it comes to women doing things that go against what the patriarchy wants them to do.

Anyway, I find it interesting that this woman's first conclusion was that these were rules rather than free choices. This is why many people see radical feminism as a cult; they can't understand the idea of women making their own choices if those choices defy patriarchy. They think we must be some kind of cult that brainwashes them and forces them to obey and follow complicated rules, because how else can a woman decide to stop fucking men? A free woman would never do that.

[thererisesaredstar]

Our Dependable Daughters

Kim Ok Chol (2024)

[gacha-incels]

It was late at night, and Darim's animation studio had just finished designing a new look for a character in one of South Korea's most popular video games, MapleStory. 

Darim was proud of her work. So, sitting alone on the floor of her small studio apartment, she posted the trailer on social media. Almost immediately, she was flooded with thousands of abusive messages, including death and rape threats.

Young male gamers had taken issue with a single frame in the trailer, in which the female character could be seen holding her thumb and forefinger close together. 

They thought it resembled a hand gesture used by a radical online feminist community almost a decade ago to poke fun at the size of Korean men's penises.

"There were insults I'd never heard before, they were disgusting and inhumane," said Darim, which is not her real name. One read: "You've just sabotaged your job."

Messages then started piling into Darim's studio and the game developer claiming she was a feminist and demanding she be fired. Within hours, the company pulled the promotional video.

Darim had become the latest victim in a series of vicious online witch hunts, in which men in South Korea attack women they suspect of having feminist views. They bombard them with abuse and try to get them sacked.

This is part of a growing backlash to feminism, in which feminists have been branded man-haters who deserve to be punished. The witch hunts are having a chilling effect on women, with many now scared to admit they are feminists. 

This is forcing the movement underground, in a country where gender discrimination is still deeply entrenched. South Korea has the largest gender pay gap in the OECD, a group of the world's rich countries.

The hunts are often spearheaded by young male video gamers, and target women who work in the industry, like Darim, though recently they have spread to other professions. 

They look for anything that resembles what they term the 'finger-pinching gesture' and use it as proof that men-hating women are surreptitiously mocking them.

Once they spot a supposed sign, the hunt begins. "They decide that a dark, evil feminist is hiding in the company, and her life should be ruined," explained Minsung Kim, a 22-year-old male gamer who, concerned by these witch hunts, set up an organisation (KGCS)to support the victims.

The witch hunters track down all female employees at the company in question, and trawl their social media accounts, searching for any evidence of feminism. Way back on Darim's timeline, they found an 'offending' post.

Darim in fact had nothing to do with the disputed part of the animation, but her studio was rattled by the torrent of abuse – especially after Nexon, the gaming company, suddenly removed all the studio's artwork from their roster and issued an apology to customers.

"My company and CEO were in a panic," said Darim. "I thought I was going to be fired, and I'd never be able to work in animation again."

Then Minsung's organisation stepped in. They urged her studio to ignore the gamers and offered to pay Darim's legal fees so she could report the abuse. "We said these demands will never end, you need to nip this in the bud now," he said. The studio listened, and Darim kept her job.

But similar witch hunts have worked, in the gaming industry and beyond, and they are becoming more frequent. In one case, a young illustrator lost her job (Limbus Company incident)after a handful of disgruntled gamers stormed the company's office demanding she be removed.

And it is not just Korean companies that have capitulated. Last year, the international car maker Renault suspended one of its female employees after she was accused of making the finger-pinching gesture while moving her hands in a promotional presentation.

"These anti-feminists are getting more organised; their playbook is getting more specific," said Minsung. "By taking a hand gesture that everyone makes and turning it into a scarlet letter they can brand literally anyone an evil feminist," he said.

Because the companies are folding to these baseless accusations, the instigators of these hunts have become emboldened, he said. "They are confident now that when you accuse someone of feminism, you can ruin their career."

Minsung knows, because not long ago he was one of these men. He used to belong to the anti-feminist forums. "We are exposed to the uncensored internet unimaginably young," he said, having joined the forums aged nine.

It was only when Minsung traded video games for playing real-life games, including Dungeons and Dragons, that he met women, and his views shifted. He became, in his words, an "ardent feminist".

In South Korea, women commonly suffer discrimination and misogyny both at work and at home. But as they have fought to improve their rights, many young men have started to believe they are the ones being discriminated against.

The backlash began in the mid-2010s, following a surge of feminist activism. During this time, women took to the streets in protest at sexual violence and the widespread use of hidden cameras that secretly film women using toilets and changing rooms - around 5,000 to 6,000 cases are reported annually.

"Young men saw women becoming vocal and were threatened by their rise," said Myungji Yang, a professor of sociology at the University of Hawai'i Manoa, who has interviewed dozens of young Korean men. "They learn about feminism from online forums, which carry the most radical caricature of feminists," she said. "This has given them a distorted idea of what feminism is."

One of their grievances is the 18-month military service men must complete. Once they leave the military they often "feel entitled" to a good job, said Hyun Mee Kim, a professor of cultural anthropology at Yonsei University in Seoul, who studies feminism. 

As more women have entered the workforce, and jobs have become harder to get, some men feel their opportunities are being unfairly taken away. 

These feelings have been validated by South Korea's now disgraced and suspended President, Yoon Suk Yeol, who came to power in 2022 on an anti-feminist platform, claiming gender discrimination no longer existed, and has since tried to dismantle the government's gender equality ministry.

More surprising than these views themselves, is that the men who hold them have such power over major companies.

I travelled to Pangyo, the Silicon Valley of South Korea, to meet a woman who has worked in the gaming industry for 20 years. After Darim's case, her company started to edit all its games, removing the fingers from characters' hands, turning them into fists, to avoid complaints.

"It's exhausting and frustrating" to work like this, she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The idea that a hand gesture can be seen as an attack on men is absurd and companies should be ignoring it."

When I asked why they were not, she told me that many developers share the gamers' anti-feminist views. "For all those outside yelling, there are those on the inside who also believe things are bad."

Then there is the financial cost. The men threaten to boycott the games unless the companies act. 

"The gaming companies think the anti-feminists are the largest source of their revenue," said Minsung. After Darim's company, Studio Ppuri, was targeted, it said it lost nearly two thirds of its contracts with gaming companies. 

Studio Ppuri, did not respond to our questions, but both Nexon, the game developer, and Renault Korea told us they stood against all forms of discrimination and prejudice.

There is evidence the authorities are also capitulating to the anti-feminists' demands. When Darim reported her abuse to the police, they refused to take her case. 

They said because the finger-pinching gesture was taboo, it was "logical" that she, as a feminist, had been attacked. "I was astonished," she said. "Why would the authorities not protect me?"

Following outrage from feminist organisations, the police backtracked and are now investigating. In a statement, Seocho district police told the BBC their initial decision to close the case had been "insufficient" and they were "making all efforts to identify the suspects".

The case left Darim's lawyer, Yu-kyung Beom, dumbfounded. "If you want to say that you're a feminist in South Korea, you have to be very brave or insane," she said.

Beaten up for having short hair

In November 2023, the violence spilled offline and into real life. A young woman, who we are calling Jigu, was working alone in a convenience store late at night, when a man walked in and started attacking her.

"He said 'hey, you're a feminist, right? You look like a feminist with your short hair'," Jigu told me as she apprehensively recounted the night. The man pushed her to the ground and started kicking her. "I kept going in and out of consciousness. I thought I could die."

Jigu did not consider herself a feminist. She just liked having short hair and thought it suited her. The attack has left her with permanent injuries. Her left ear is damaged, and she wears a hearing aid. 

"I feel like I've become a completely different person," she said. "I don't smile as much. Some days it is agony just to stay alive, the memory of that day is still so clear."

Her assailant was sent to prison for three years, and for the first time a South Korean court ruled this was a misogynistically motivated crime: in effect, that Jigu had been attacked for looking like a feminist.

During the attack, the man said he belonged to an extreme anti-feminist group, New Men's Solidarity. Its leader, In-kyu Bae, has called on men to confront feminists. So, one evening, as he held a live-streaming event in Gangnam, a flashy neighbourhood in Seoul, I went to try to talk to him.

"I'm here to tell you these feminists are staining the country with hatred," he shouted from the roof of a black van kitted out with loudspeakers.

"That psychopath [who attacked Jigu] was not a member of our group. We don't have members, we are a YouTube channel," he told me as he simultaneously broadcast to thousands of subscribers. A small group of young men who had come to watch in person were cheering along.

"We've never encouraged anyone to use violence. In fact, the violent ones are the feminist groups. They're shaming men's genitals," he added. 

Last year, Mr Bae and several of his supporters were convicted of defaming and insulting a feminist activist after harassing her for more than two years.

Anti-feminist views have become so widespread that Yuri Kim, the director of Korea Women's Trade Union, recently established a committee to track cases of what she describes as "feminism censorship". She found that some women have been questioned about their stance on feminism in job interviews, while at work women commonly face comments like "all feminists need to die".

According to Prof Kim, the feminism academic, men are using now feminist threats in the office as a way to harass and control their female colleagues - it is their way of saying 'we are watching you; you should behave yourself'.

Such harassment is proving effective. Last year, a pair of scholars coined the phrase "quiet feminism", to describe the impact of what they say is a "pervasive everyday backlash". 

Gowoon Jung and Minyoung Moon found that although women held feminist beliefs they did not feel safe disclosing them in public. Women I spoke to said they were even afraid to cut their hair short, while others said feminism had become so synonymous with hating men they did not associate with the cause.

A 2024 IPSOS poll of 31 countries found only 24% of women in South Korea defined themselves as feminist, compared to an average of 45%, and down from 33% in 2019.

Prof Kim worries the consequences will be severe. By being forced to conceal their feminist values, she argues women are being stripped of their ability to fight against gender inequality, which penetrates workplaces, politics and public life.

Feminists are now busy brainstorming ways to put an end to the witch hunts. One clear answer is legal change. In South Korea there is no blanket anti-discrimination law to protect women and prevent them being fired for their views. 

It has been repeatedly blocked by politicians, largely because it would support gay and transgender people, with anti-feminists, and even some trans-exclusionary feminists, now lobbying against it.

Minsung believes the only way to strip the witch hunters of their powers is for the companies and the authorities to stand up to them. They make up a small fraction of men in South Korea, they just have loud voices and a bizarrely oversized influence, he argues.

Since her attack, Jigu now proudly calls herself a feminist. "I want to reach out to other victims like me, and if even one woman has the strength to grab my hand, I want to help."

[ichverdurstehier]

High-key disgusting how much kpop fans will defend Korean incels. BTS is not the norm. BTS are extremely abnormal. Defending Korean incels won't make BTS date you. Slandering Korean feminists won't get you a Korean boyfriend

[rotzaprachim]

well a male friend got very bothered when I said it was “incredibly cruel” to say it’s dangerous to men or bad for women to have a “fear based mentality” around men, which maybe I shouldn’t have said it such, but then he compared feminism to both the current actions of themodern medinas yisrael and North Korea and talked about how girls ruined his friends life by falsely accusing him of stalking them and said he was crying over the bus talking about it and I was being hypocritical for being bothered by antisemitism and Hamas when Jews are violent but not ready to go #notallmen (Jewish male friend btw) so I don’t know how to respond

[genkishoujo]

can someone explain how marxism is the same as liberal feminism and the KKK? i'm not well read enough on theory to understand

also. how have you 'studied south korean feminism for 6-7 months' but you still havent seen this paper? or did you read it and decide you were still onto something here??

[memento-mariii]

There's something I find hilarious about this perjorative korean incels (and honestly just about any korean website whose userbase tend to lean male; the incel problem is depressingly widespread and normalized here) use for non-misogynist men, "스윗남 (pronounced "sweet-nam")", that translates literally to "Sweet Man".

Like, that's just objectively not a bad thing to be??? Sorry that guys who actually respect women and have actual personalities get more pussy than you, bro. Maybe if you were a better person you'd get laid more.

It's just so embarrassingly obvious that they're just seething in jealousy 😂

EDIT: a TERF reblogged this so here's a reminder that trans women are women, trans men are men, and punching down at a group of fellow marginalized people who are *also* oppressed by the cisheteropatriarchal gender roles will not free us from the patriarchy.

[abwwia]

For Youngmi and many others who subscribe to its basic premises, 4B, or “practicing bihon,” is the only path by which a Korean woman today can live autonomously. In their view, Korean men are essentially beyond redemption, and Korean culture, on the whole, is hopelessly patriarchal — often downright misogynistic.

- Youngmi and her friends created a map of women-owned businesses in Daegu so they could ensure their dollars went to supporting other women. “The economy is a very important issue for us,” she told interviewer . https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html?utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=thecut&utm_medium=s1

[hard--headed--woman]

we seriously need a bigger movement of women refusing to date and have sex with men right now ; feminism won't get anywhere as long as women do not take this kind of radical actions. i know it's a complicated topic since even "radical" feminists on here think it's too much and won't do it but i believe it's essential for women's liberation.

making sure men have access to women's bodies is the patriarchy's priority. in its head, that's what women are made for. that's why we are born. we exist to sleep with men - or should i say, to let men fuck us -, to marry them - become their servant and private prostitute - , to give them kids. it's one of the roots of the patriarchy. if we want to destroy the patriarchy, we have to destroy the roots. we have to destroy this root.

in history, feminism got somewhere everytime women took big actions against the patriarchy. posts are good, little actions help, but we need to make real noise. de frapper un grand coup. this way, we will be safer, and the patriarchy will be severly wounded.

[balkanradfem]

(I just realised how long this is after typing it out. my bad, i have a habit of yapping too much 😭. Feel free to ignore this if you want. I love your posts btw i learn a lot thanks to you)

radfems seem to be more successful in korea compared to other regions. they are good at organising and have done public protests where they absolutely don’t hold back, Here’s some footage from a korean feminist protest: https://youtu.be/O4vWycy0sDI?si=2KmBUQ7Jpp9prt_q

The way they don’t care about what people think and just start all out screaming at men is refreshing. They have many radfem forums and groups and the discussions in these websites is so much more practical than what I’ve seen here.

They are very focused on self improvement and achieving economic, political and social success compared to radblr which is more communist and promotes living in a little wooden cabin in the woods with some other women to be more eco friendly. Nothing against communism i just think while we’re already living in a capitalist society promoting communism in female spaces will just lead to women becoming poorer and oppressed further by rich men. And nothing wrong with being eco friendly either but I don’t think women living in a hut will do anything when men still at large continue to destroy the world. 

the main website korean women use to organise is called womad. It’s so much better than any feminist forum I’ve ever seen. It’s anonymous and usernames are automatically generated and change every hour or so so that no one can be recognized anywhere. The police have been trying to crackdown on them because of extreme misandry for a long time but all attempts have failed. 

From reading their posts it seems almost all of them have a good understanding of politics and economics. Their discussions are productive and they don’t have any infighting like radblr and they don’t let any other social issue distract them from the real enemy which is men. What do you think could be the reason behind this? Are korean women just intellectually superior? I personally feel like korean women have the highest iq of all women. I look up to them a lot and womad has taught me a lot.

They even have a women’s party in korea and they won around 200,000 votes which isn’t a lot but it’s still a huge achievement. Check out womensparty.kr 

I wish indian women would catch up. I’m sick of indian moids taking up every inch of space in this country. Every street in india is filled with moids, it’s so dystopian there are no women in sight. One would think only men live here. This is also the reason there’s so much fucking trash in the streets. These overgrown manchildren who have their mommys clean up after them go out and throw trash wherever they see fit and do not bother cleaning because that’s a woman’s job. Women can’t go out to exercise because every public space is occupied by men. I’m so so sick of them. 

Power to the korean women! I'm glad you're finding guidance and inspiration in the feminism they lead and that they're so successful, I admire it as well!

I'm standing by indian women and hope they manage to gain freedom! And until they do, we need to prop them up and also be on their side. Only males are our enemies :)

[gacha-incels]

a protest was held following the lenient ruling of the misogynist attacker in the Jinju convenience store case (more info posted previously here). The sentence was less than requested by the prosecution and the violence was somehow not recognized as a hate crime even though the man attacked this woman specifically because he believed she was a feminist.

[spiderfreedom]

Meanwhile, some women [in South Korea] received an advanced education, like Na Hye-Seok, the country's first Western-style painter and an iconic writer. One of the so-called "New Women," Na was born in 1896 to a wealthy family and learned about feminism in Japan, where she studied the arts and read various feminist texts, including Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. The theatre play inspired Na's poem "Nora," a rallying cry for women to defy patriarchal norms:

I was a doll As the doll of my father as a daughter As the doll of my husband as a wife I was their toy Let Nora go […] I am a person Before being a wife of a husband Before being a mother of a child First, I'd like to become a person […] Ahhh girls Wake up and follow behind Rise up and radiate power The bright light of the new day shined.

From “Flowers of Fire.”

[ichverdurstehier]

Korean men: women are objects to be protected

Also Korean men: if you protect your sister we'll give you life in prison