South Korea is a deeply conservative country, and experts say its patriarchal society encourages rampant sexism
But rising feminist movements and changing values among South Korean women are redirecting depictions of beauty
After trying for over a year to persuade more South Korean women to have babies, Chung Hyun-back says one reason stands out for her failure: “Our patriarchal culture.” Ms. Chung, who was tasked by the previous government with reversing the country’s plummeting birthrate, knows firsthand how tough it is to be a woman in South Korea. She chose her career over nuptials and children. Like her, millions of young women have been collectively spurning motherhood in a so-called birth strike.
A 2022 survey found that more women than men — 65 percent versus 48 percent — don’t want children. They’re doubling down by avoiding matrimony (and its conventional pressures) altogether. The other term in South Korea for birth strike is “marriage strike.”
The trend is killing South Korea. For three years in a row, the country has recorded the lowest fertility rate in the world, with women of reproductive age having fewer than one child on average. It reached the “dead cross,” when deaths outnumbered births, in 2020, nearly a decade earlier than expected.
As she pursued her dream of becoming a fashion model, veering for years between extreme dieting and overeating, Park I-seul realised she had a problem: She was not tall and skinny, like typical runway models, nor was she big enough to be a plus-size model.
She also realised that the only way to meet South Korea’s lofty beauty standards was for her to continuously deny who she truly is.
So Park, 25, began calling herself a “natural size model” – a nearly unheard of term in South Korea – which she defines as someone with the same kind of body you see in daily life, as opposed to a difficult-to-attain ideal. She began to get work, and she started a popular YouTube channel where she introduces fashions for women who look more like her than like the women in fashion magazines.
Now, about half of the country’s 228 cities, counties and districts risk losing so many residents they might vanish. Day care centers and kindergartens are being converted into nursing homes. Ob-Gyn clinics are closing, and funeral parlors are opening. At Seoksan Elementary School, in rural Gunwi County, the student body has shrunk from 700 pupils to four. When last I visited, the children couldn’t even form a soccer team.
Young Koreans have well-documented reasons not to start a family, including the staggering costs of raising children, unaffordable homes, lousy job prospects and soul-crushing work hours. But women in particular are fed up with this traditionalist society’s impossible expectations of mothers. So they’re quitting.
Hong Kong drops to 7th spot on global IPO venue ranking as fundraising plunges 52 per cent in first quarter: Refinitiv
A total of 17 Hong Kong IPOs raised US$837 million, the worst first-quarter performance since 2009 amid the Global Financial Crisis
Second-half activity will rise as several tech firms, including the operator of Lalamove and units of JD.com, have filed for listings, a broker says
President Yoon Suk-yeol, elected last year, has suggested feminism is to blame for blocking “healthy relationships” between men and women. But he’s got it backward — gender equality is the solution to falling birthrates. Many of the Korean women shunning dating, marriage and childbirth are sick of pervasive sexism and furious about a culture of violent chauvinism. Their refusal to be “baby-making machines,” according to protest banners I’ve seen, is retaliation. “The birth strike is women’s revenge on a society that puts impossible burdens on us and doesn’t respect us,” says Jiny Kim, 30, a Seoul office worker who’s intent on remaining childless.
Making life fairer and safer for women would work wonders toward reducing the country’s existential threat. Yet this feminist dream seems increasingly far-fetched, as Mr. Yoon’s conservative government champions regressive policies that only magnify the problem.
South Korea’s demographic crisis was once inconceivable: As late as the 1960s, women had six children on average. But the state, pursuing economic development, carried out an aggressive population control campaign. In about 20 years, women were having fewer than the 2.1 children needed for replenishment, a number that’s only continued to drop. The latest available data from South Korea’s statistics agency put the fertility rate at 0.81 for 2021; by the third quarter of 2022 it was 0.79.
Funds raised from new share listings in Hong Kong in the first quarter plummeted 52 per cent year on year, pushing the city to seventh place on a global ranking of venues for initial public offerings (IPOs), but some analysts expect a rebound later this year.
A total of 17 companies raised US$837 million via IPOs in the first quarter in Hong Kong, according to Refinitiv data as of Friday. That is the lowest quarterly total since the second quarter of last year when funding fell to US$590 million as the city faced the fifth wave of Covid-19. It is also the worst first-quarter total since the first three months of 2009 amid the Global Financial Crisis.
“The market sentiment in the first quarter was full of uncertainties, so companies preferred to hold up their deals,” said Louis Tse Ming-kwong, managing director at Wealthy Securities.
Recent governments have indeed been alarmed by a rate that’s seemingly approaching zero. Over 16 years, 280 trillion won ($210 billion) has been poured into programs encouraging procreation, such as a monthly allowance for parents of newborns.
Many women still say nope. No wonder. There’s little escaping suffocating gender norms, whether in pregnancy guidelines to arrange clean undergarments for your husband before labor, or the dayslong kitchen drudgework for holidays like the Chuseok harvest festival. Married women are saddled with the lion’s share of chores and child care, squeezing new mothers so much that many give up professional ambitions. Even in dual-income households, wives daily spend more than three hours on these tasks versus their husband’s 54 minutes.
Discrimination against working mothers by employers is also absurdly common. In one notorious case, the country’s top baby formula maker was accused of pressuring female employees to quit after getting pregnant.
And gender-based violence is “shockingly widespread,” according to Human Rights Watch. In 2021, a woman was murdered or targeted for murder every 1.4 days or less, according to the Korea Women’s Hotline. Women have dubbed the act of ending a relationship without getting a vicious reaction a “safe breakup.”
But women haven’t passively accepted the toxic masculinity. They’ve organized raucously, from Asia’s most successful #MeToo movement to groups like “4B,” which translates to the “Four nos: no dating, no sex, no marriage and no child-rearing.” The country’s feminist movements have won the decriminalization of abortion and harsher penalties for an epidemic of spycam-porn crimes.
Many young Korean men, however, have declared themselves victims of women’s activism. President Yoon rose to power last year by leveraging this resentment. He echoed the dog whistle of men’s rights advocates, declaring that structural sexism no longer exists in South Korea and vowing tougher punishment for false reports of sexual assault.
Mr. Yoon’s government is removing the term “gender equality” from school textbooks and has canceled funding for programs to fight everyday sexism. “If you find gender equality and feminism so important, you can do it with your own money and time,” said one lawmaker in his party.
Meet ‘Thailand’s most beautiful trans model’, Poyd Treechada Petcharat: the newlywed beauty pageant queen and LGBTQ activist attends Bulgari events and stars in films with Andy Lau and Carina Lau
Thai fashionista and transgender icon Poyd Treechada Petcharat got married this month to a wealthy businessman – they wore ensembles worth US$580,000 for the ceremony, plus glittering gold
https://sites.google.com/perwol.com/cuevana4-ver-sper-mario-bros-2
https://sites.google.com/perwol.com/cuevana3verspermariobroslapelc
https://sites.google.com/perwol.com/pelisplusverspermariobrospelcu
https://sites.google.com/perwol.com/cuevana-3versupermariobros2023
https://sites.google.com/perwol.com/pelisplus-ver-sper-mario-bross
https://sites.google.com/eradell.us/cuevanaversupermariobroslapeli
https://sites.google.com/eradell.us/descargarspermariobroslapelcul
https://sites.google.com/eradell.us/ver-sper-mario-bros-la-pelcula
https://sites.google.com/eradell.us/supermariobroslapelcula2023pel
https://sites.google.com/eradell.us/pelisplusverspermariobroslapel
https://sites.google.com/kaisrat.com/cuevana3verspermariobroslapelc
https://sites.google.com/kaisrat.com/pelisplusspermariobros2023pelc
https://sites.google.com/kaisrat.com/cuevana3-versper-mario-bros-la
https://sites.google.com/kaisrat.com/verspermariobroslapelcula2023g
https://sites.google.com/kaisrat.com/pelisflixspermariobros2023peli
https://sites.google.com/creator88gaming.my.id/justwatchverspermariobros-pelc
https://sites.google.com/creator88gaming.my.id/pelisplus-sper-mario-bros-la-p
https://sites.google.com/creator88gaming.my.id/ver-super-mario-bros-la-pelcul
https://sites.google.com/creator88gaming.my.id/repelisspermariobrosverpelcula
https://sites.google.com/creator88gaming.my.id/verspermariobroslapelculapelcu
https://backlinktool.io/p/GFCOysRPp3TsW3STysyb.html
https://paste.intergen.online/view/19e6a13a
https://pastehere.xyz/aqIX5bnri/
https://fnote.net/notes/dXZ5V2
https://yamcode.com/vdfdfs-922
https://pastelink.net/tue0wkiy
https://homment.com/vwYWeC5EoJFFEv1qV9ql
https://www.wowace.com/paste/736b4d1c
https://dev.bukkit.org/paste/b916323c
https://paste.toolforge.org/view/22df40ba
https://paste.drhack.net/?7d5ce4157f83371b#7j8QkzcDvhMUmppzVwsG294bkso7bgXoidK3Qx9hLWj3
https://paste.imirhil.fr/?ee146a2055791186#AyaJl1IAskmx3nfJ0/QK8aiM/oi9Iavh+nFqViCrZU0=
https://www.onfeetnation.com/photo/albums/whatsapp-image-2023-04-19-at-22-47-38sad
https://caribbeanfever.com/photo/albums/whatsapp-image-2023-04-19-at-22-47-38sad
http://allabouturanch.com/photo/albums/whatsapp-image-2023-04-19-at-22-47-38sad
https://healingxchange.ning.com/photo/albums/whatsapp-image-2023-04-19-at-22-47-38sad
https://www.onfeetnation.com/profiles/blogs/dsgffb
https://caribbeanfever.com/profiles/blogs/dfsdfsd
http://allabouturanch.com/profiles/blogs/dsfvdsf
https://healingxchange.ning.com/profiles/blogs/dsfvdsfb
https://healingxchange.ning.com/forum/topics/fvdbfd-fvdbfd
http://snaplant.com/question/vds-edsdedegvdgvd/
https://searchtech.fogbugz.com/default.asp?Suggestions.1.115931.0
https://marketing.ning.com/forum/6773344:DiscussionEntry:902
http://www.fitclimb.com/forum/topics/dsv-vcdddsdaz
https://argueanything.com/thread/fdbv-dfvfd/
https://www.signalmacc.org/group/holiday-market/discussion
https://ibusinessday.com/meet-thailands-most-beautiful-trans-model-poyd-treechada-petcharat/
accessories
The Instagram sensation is no stranger to her home country, winning Miss Tiffany’s Universe and Miss International Queen, and wearing fashion brands like Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Off-White
The government is also working to dismantle its own headquarters for women’s empowerment — the gender equality ministry. Established in 2001, it’s been transformative in normalizing parental leave for fathers and helping more women achieve workplace seniority.
Comments by the gender equality minister under the Yoon administration illustrate its abandonment of women. In September, Kim Hyun-sook rejected the idea that misogyny was at play when a Seoul Metro worker stabbed a female colleague to death in a subway bathroom after stalking her for years. Ms. Kim also initially declared that the rape and killing of a college student on campus last June was not violence against women and shouldn’t be used to fan “gender conflict.”
Poyd Treechada Petcharat, who is lovingly dubbed Thailand’s “most beautiful transgender woman” by many, recently married businessman Oak Phakwa Hongyok in a traditional Peranakan-style wedding in Phuket. (Peranakans are descendants of the first Chinese settlers in Southeast Asia, including Thailand.)
Petcharat looked like a glittering goddess in her traditional hand-embroidered Peranakan gown and handmade pure gold flower crown, while Hongyok’s western-style tuxedo was stylishly accessorised with two gold brooches at the left lapel.
So far, none of the measures implemented by successive governments have flipped the trends in marriage and childbearing. Worse yet, the current government seems to be actively undermining efforts that gave women hope. “This is a historical regression,” says Ms. Chung, who was the gender equality minister from 2017 to 2018. Society can’t end the birth strike without acknowledging women’s grievances, she says.
Motivating Korean women to reconsider marriage and children involves infusing every aspect of their lives with agency and equality. A feminist approach would remove obstacles to motherhood simply by enforcing existing laws against workplace discrimination. It would destigmatize births outside of marriage and make domestic duties everyone’s responsibility. It would condemn gender violence as reprehensible. A feminist approach would admit there’s a systemic problem.
It’s clear that countries with a disproportionate division of child care or lacking national paid parental leave, like Japan and the United States, also have plunging fertility rates. It’s the same with China, where women inspired by South Korea started their own “Four nos” movement; government data this month reveals its population is shrinking, too. But countries with cooperative fathers and good family policies, like Sweden, or that recognize diverse companionships, like France, have been more successful at stabilizing or even bumping up births.
The United Nations projects that South Korea’s 51 million population will halve before the end of the century. Survival of the nation is at stake.
