One non-dominant group in South Korea are woman. At first, when I came to Korea, I didn’t realize it was a big issue because I would mostly engage with foreigners in my program. However, I talked to this Korea-born male student who studied in the States for high school, and out of pure curiosity, I asked him about sexism in South Korea, and he did not want to talk about it at all. The tension became awkward and I could tell that he was trying to avoid the conversation because of what he believed himself. This surprised me, so I asked my closer Korean-American friend, and she told me that a lot of the males in this country, specifically putting emphasis on the younger generation (20s-30s), are “anti-feminist”. I put emphasis on younger generation males because I think that it is more normal (not making it right) for the older generations to have these views, but I was surprised to hear that the the majority of the males of the younger generation share these views as well.
I did a little more digging, and I found a load of information about the country’s views on feminism, especially the views of the current president of Korea. The president is not shy on sharing his views on anti-feminism, and I was talking with one of my friends who is writing a paper about anti-feminism for her class, and she made a good point that a reason why a lot of people are more open about their anti-feminist views might be that the new president is giving the male citizens an excuse to act on their own anti-feminist beliefs. My friend also pointed out the low percent of women in government and board positions, the leniency of sentencing when it comes to sexual crimes against women, and how women are paid significantly less than their male counterparts.
The next non-dominant group in South Korea I want to talk about are foreigners, as I think it is important to address the current situation foreigners go through when living in or even visiting Korea . Since I am studying at an international program, I am surrounded by foreigners from all over the world. The people I see and interact with every day are not Korean citizens, but foreigners, so I have both experienced and seen first hand how we are treated, and it shows the severity of xenophobia that occurs in this country. I also talked to both foreigners and local Korean citizens and they said that the xenophobia has gotten worse over the years. Examples I have heard from others and have experienced are taxi drivers not accepting our request late at night when we try to wave them down, but then accepting a Korean citizen right after, getting cut in line by Korean citizens when they see we are clearly in line, and getting food served to you after Korean citizens when we ordered before them. Keep in mind that a lot of these experiences happened in Seoul, which is the capital of South Korea and Korea’s largest metropolis. I have mainly lived in Seoul during my trip, so I do not know if it is different in other parts of South Korea.
As I progressed through the trip, I learned that this behavior definitely reflects a lot of the values Koreans possess. I was talking to a Korean American classmate that has lived in Korea all her life until she went to America to study, and she told me a lot about how in Korea, it is predominantly a single-race nation. In contrast to America, which homes people with backgrounds from all around the world, Korean citizens are most likely Korean. I know this is pretty obvious, but this fact influenced the mindsets of a lot of Koreans. Koreans have only grown up and lived with other Koreans, so living with and interacting with people of different race and ethnicity isn’t normal for them. I know there are a lot of issues that stem from this like the concept of homogeneity and the shamefulness of dating or being in a relationship with a foreigner. For example, I talked with my aunty back in the States who isn’t Korean, but married a Korean man, and she told me how her parents-in-laws hated the idea of their son marrying her and would treat my aunty horribly just because she wasn’t Korean. There is this prejudice Koreans have on foreigners because they have lived in a society with only their own ethnicity. However, I did observe that the younger generation is more open to meeting and interacting with foreigners, and that when I talked with a lot of the people I “interviewed”, they said that the Koreans that treated them not so kindly were people of the older generation, which was interesting to see how Korean’s mindset is changing over the years and how they are staying the same.