The right to see and not be seen: South Korean musicals and young feminist activism

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Jiyoon Jung
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Right

In South Korea, musicals are considered as ‘female culture’. Based on recent fieldwork, this essay gives attention to the ways in which female fans project themselves in three common spaces: in dark theatre auditoriums, online fan forums and feminist protests. In each of the three spaces, female musical fans nurture and enact their own version of feminism. I employ the discourse of ‘voyeurism’ and ‘half-visibility’ to understand how young South Korean women navigate patriarchal capitalist society. I ultimately argue that today’s South Korean musicals empower young South Korean women by providing safe spaces for feminism.

Mixed-Race Children and Their Korean Mothers

Framed by War ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 148-173
Author(s):  
Susie Woo
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Segregated Schools ◽  
Child Placement ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Identification Practices

This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.

HEIGHT AND WEIGHT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL SCHWEKENDIEK
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
School Children ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Anthropometric Data ◽  
South Korean ◽  
North And South

SummaryThis paper investigates height and weight differences between the two Koreas by comparing national anthropometric data published by the South Korean Research Institute of Standard and Science with United Nations survey data collected inside North Korea in 2002. For socioeconomic reasons, pre-school children raised in the developing country of North Korea are up to 13 cm shorter and up to 7 kg lighter than children who were brought up in South Korea – an OECD member. North Korean women were also found to weigh up to 9 kg less than their Southern counterparts.

scholarly journals Prevalence of osteoporosis among North Korean women refugees living in South Korea: a comparative cross-sectional study

BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. e036230
Author(s):  
Kyeong Jin Kim ◽  
Jee Hyun An ◽  
Kyoung Jin Kim ◽  
Ji Hee Yu ◽  
Nam Hoon Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Body Weight ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Women Refugees ◽  
Korean Women ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Prevalence Of Osteoporosis

ObjectiveTo investigate the prevalence of osteoporosis among North Korean women refugees when compared with South Korean women, who have identical genetic backgrounds but experience different environments.DesignComparative cross-sectional study.SettingNorth Korean Refugee Health in South Korea (NORNS) study in South Korea.ParticipantsWe evaluated 122 North Korean women who participated in NORNS study and 366 age-matched/menopausal status-matched South Korean women from the Korea University Medical Center (KUMC) health examination cohort. The median age of the NORNS participants was 46 years (IQR, 40–60 years) with 52 women (42.6%) being postmenopausal.ResultsAmong the postmenopausal women, NORNS participants had a higher body mass index and number of pregnancies and lower physical activity than the KUMC participants. The overall prevalence of osteoporosis was 48% (25/52) and 17% (27/156) in NORNS and KUMC participants, respectively. The bone mineral density (BMD) values at the lumbar spine, femur neck and total hip were significantly lower in postmenopausal NORNS women than in the postmenopausal KUMC women. Old age, low body weight and late age of menarche were associated with low BMD among the postmenopausal North Korean refugees. In premenopausal participants, the NORNS women had lower body weight and physical activity than the KUMC women at baseline. All the NORNS women had normal Z-scores, although the BMD at the lumbar spine was significantly lower in NORNS women than in the KUMC women (0.952 vs 1.002 g/cm2, p<0.001).ConclusionsOsteoporosis is a prevalent health problem in postmenopausal North Korean women refugees living in South Korea. It is conceivable to prepare vigilant countermeasures for bone health deterioration in this growing population, especially for postmenopausal women. Further research is warranted to determine the cause of the differences between participants of the same ethnic group.

Elusive Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Everyday Lives

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.

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