When Yuna arrived on her first day at work, as a clerk at a large bank, she was not expecting the tasks that would be assigned to her. First was to make lunch for my team. Later, she was ordered to take hand towels from the men’s restroom and wash them. These jobs fell into her hands, she was told she was the newest female member of staff.
At first he politely refused. Couldn’t the men take their towels home to wash, she asked her boss, but he replied incredulously: “How can you expect men to wash their towels?”
“He got very angry, and I realized that if I kept fighting him, the harassment would escalate, so I started washing the towels,” says Yuna. But since he complained, he was flagged.
As she wanders the dark alleys of her local food market in a black baseball cap, oversized jeans and a T-shirt, she tries to disguise herself while recounting her experience. It’s a small town, and he’s done something he could have been fired for. He filmed everything and gave the bank’s report to the government, to be investigated.
What pushed him over the edge wasn’t just the abuse, which continued to get worse, but the lack of support from his female peers – who were in their 20s, like him.
“It’s like that everywhere, don’t make a fuss,” he had pleaded.
South Korea may have become a cultural and technological powerhouse, but after its rapid transformation into one of the world’s wealthiest countries, women have been left behind. They are paid on average a third less than men, making South Korea the largest gender pay gap of any rich country in the world. Politics and boardrooms are dominated by men. Currently, women hold only 5.8 percent of executive positions in South Korea’s publicly listed companies. They are still expected to do most of the housework and childcare.
This can include a pervasive culture of sexual harassment. The booming tech industry has contributed to an explosion of digital sex crimes, where women are filmed with small hidden cameras as they use the toilet or undress in changing rooms.
But instead of promising to address these issues, South Korea’s new president, Yoon Seok-yul, has said that structural sexism is “a thing of the past.” They were brought to power by young people who claim that efforts to reduce inequality mean they have become victims of reverse discrimination.
Upon entering office, President Yun abolished government gender quotas, and announced that people would be hired on merit rather than gender. He appointed only three women in his 19-member cabinet. Now he is trying to dismantle the government’s Ministry of Gender Equality, which supports women and victims of sexual assault, claiming it is obsolete. More than 800 organizations have come together to protest the closure, which they say could adversely affect women’s lives.
Hoping to fight him was 28-year-old Park Ji-hyun, a women’s rights campaigner who, after a divisive election, was asked to lead the liberal opposition party. The party told her they needed her help to reform politics and represent young women. And so, never having been a politician, she agreed.
But just six months later, when we meet in a cafe on the outskirts of Seoul, he is no longer at the post. He had to leave his home because his address was leaked, and he was receiving many death threats. She says that the ones who stick with her are the ones who threaten to feed her acid or throw it in her face. It has been the hardest six months of her life, she admits, after experiencing first-hand the sexism and misogyny that permeates politics.
Park tells of her frustration that she will be the only woman at meetings, and that no one will respond when she speaks. “They just ignored me, and I ended up screaming,” she says. “When I wanted to talk about the economy or the environment, he would say: ‘You just focus on what you know – women’s issues and sex crimes’. I felt like I was a puppet in that position. , which is being used to garner women’s votes.”
