Demonized Perceptions of Feminism in South Korea’s Social Media
Yoonseo Jung
High technology and fast internet in South Korea stand as the epitome of progress, development, and interconnectivity. However, the internet has also adapted itself to be the brutal arena of conflict between feminism, which is spreading among members of the young generation, and the backlash it faces.
There have been attempts of healthy feminist movements to advocate for women’s rights, with women fighting to legalise abortion; the global stretch of the #MeToo movement; and the 2019 anti-spycam movement. Despite this, online communities radically advocating women’s rights have led to a growing public misunderstanding of the term ‘feminism’ as being linked to misandry. It developed in retaliation to misogynistic sites such as ‘Ilbe Storage’ and mirrored versions of online forums created including websites like ‘Megalia’ and ‘Womad’, where derogatory comments and insults were posted towards men. They became widely popular and more extreme, especially after the ‘nth room case’ in 2020. Online social platforms, sold to around 260,000 user IDs, were used to upload extorted sexual content from underage girls. This puts into light the ubiquitous nature of digital sextortion and its fast evolution like with AI deep faking techniques. The scandal was used by such platforms to demonstrate their misandrist beliefs and, thus, further escalated the extreme polarisation on the topic of gender.
Prevailing meritocratic and neoliberalism has changed men’s attitudes towards traditional gender norms. The increasing struggle for entrance exams into schools, colleges, jobs, and the compulsory conscription system have brewed aggressive misogyny in young South Korean men. Sexism and anti-feminist sentiment here take a different character to those of the Western parts of the world and the older generation of a more traditional version of sexism featuring patriarchy, pay gaps, and strict gender roles. “[Young] Korean men see themselves as victims of feminism...” who have been attacked by such self-claimed ‘feminist’ groups on online platforms, and this collective misogyny and reactionary response also demonises feminist discourse and ideology.
The continuous online tensions between extreme groups have distorted and stigmatized the feminist movement—its effort for gender quality has been jeopardized by radical discourse. Public negative emotions about feminism are echoed through vitriolic responses on social media where people, including celebrities, who claim to be feminists have been publicly scathed and castigated by ‘netizens,’ active internet users. These ferocious online scolding campaigns of social media figures have gone to extents where one only needs to, “...look or act like a feminist…” to be attacked. Triple Olympic gold champion An San has been vilified through her Instagram page for having short hair, “...a trait of a feminist.” It was demanded she apologise and give back her medals.
Consequently, feminist movements in South Korea have mainly been sourced through online mediums and have led to inadvertent and counterproductive results for South Korean gender equality. Societal misunderstandings of feminism are infused into the public and there have been backwards attempts to exploit and capitalise on this for political gains. The more right-winged parties such as the People Power party have centered their agenda to dismantle measures for gender equality such as, “...promising to abolish female quotas in his party.” This shows the use of the stigma that arose from the confusion of feminism, to accrue support of misogynist young men. Hateful reactions have contributed to a culture where feminism is maligned and shunned.
Sources:
https://book.naver.com/bookdb/book_detail.nhn?bid=20938186
http://www.busan.com/view/busan/view.php?code=2021100311032363016
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/23/young-south-korean-men-hate-liberals-feminists/
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/the-feminist-renaissance-in-south-korea
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210812-anti-feminism-backlash-on-the-rise-in-south-korea