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Korea as a Social Laboratory: The Impending Depopulation Crisis
( Source: kimwoojong ) Introduction While the Korean public seems to lack any sense of urgency about it, raising Korea’s extremely low fertility rate looks set to become one of Korea’s most pressing...
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Pregnancy, Caesareans and Body Image in Korea
(Celebrity mother Byun Jung-soo (변정수), posing in July 2005 and then July 2006. Source) I’ve been reading a lot about Korean modernization recently, and it’s been interesting to see how the few feminist...
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For Every Birth, a Korean Career Dies
( Source: I Believe in Advertising ) Not technically Korean sorry, and surely the advertisement in Italian women’s magazine Grazia would have been much more effective in things both sexes read? Still,...
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Angry Asian Men
( Source left: unknown; Source right: GR × HERMARK ) Well, angry Chinese men to be precise, for in 2005 there were 32 million more Chinese boys under the age of 20 than girls, some of the oldest of...
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Korean Sociological Image #1: Motherhood for Son Tae-Young
With apologies to the authors of the blog Sociological Images for copying both the name and the idea, but then my own images will be few and far between, and naturally confined to only Korean examples!...
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The Grand Narrative in TIME Magazine
( “Going Down” by David Smeaton ) For the article in full, on Seoul Mayor Oh Se Hoon’s “Happy Women, Happy Seoul” plan involving the provision of such things as more women’s toilets and the notorious...
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Newsflash: Korean Doctor Sent to Jail for Performing Abortion, Korean Woman...
( Source: Dramabeans ) Yes, those really did happen in the last couple of months. Perhaps it was naive of me to be so shocked and surprised however? After all, according to the Korea Herald, “about 30...
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Resisting the Criminalization of Abortion in South Korea
( Source ) Like Lindsay Lohan says, some stories do indeed keep on growing. And the more I’ve learned about abortion in recent weeks, the more certain I am that if it doesn’t become a hot political...
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Sex and the University, Part 4: A Scared 19 Year-Old’s Ob-Gyn Experience
(Source: Dramabeans) With thanks to Marilyn for translating it, allow me to present the fourth and final article in the Sex and the University series: 겁많은 스무살 기자의 산부인과 검진 체험기 / A scared 20 year-old...
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It’s Official: UNDP Says Korea Now Feminist Paradise (NOT April 1 Joke!)
(Source: unknown) If there was only one statistic that best sums up contemporary Korean society, then that would be its “Gender Empowerment Measure” (GEM). Calculated by the UNDP, it is: …an indicator...
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Ministry of Health and Welfare: “Unwed Mothers are Ignorant Whores”
(Source) What? It said that? In 2011?? No, hopefully not so recently, especially with the increasing criminalization of abortion since last year. But as you’ll soon see, the Ministry of Health and...
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“Single Mothers are Ignorant Whores”: Update
(Source) As you’ll recall from last month’s article, about the Ministry of Health and Welfare (보건복지부; MOHW) once defining single mothers as having “low levels of education [and] impulsive sexual...
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Korean Family Planning Advertisements, 1960s-1980s — Are Today’s Young...
…American military officers helped make abortion the population control tool of choice in those Asian countries where they wielded influence, first in Japan in the late 1940s and 1950s, then South...
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Help Sought for Pregnant Rape Victim — Update
(Source: unknown) Last month, a reader emailed asking for help and information about in-vitro paternity testing, after his wife was raped and became pregnant while they were already trying to have a...
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Horror Stories(?) About Korean OBGYN Clinics
(“Pretend not to know”, “Pretend not to go”, “Pretend it’s the first time”. Push! Push! {1997}. Source) This was the most read society news story on Naver last week, undoubtedly because of the recent...
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Announcements: Two Very Worthy Causes to Support!
Today, some information about two very worthy causes. First, on ongoing volunteer opportunities for the Korean Unwed Mothers’ Families Association in Daegu and the 3rd Single Moms’ Day Conference this...
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Korean Women Angry at Being Promoted Less Than Men
(Source: J. David Allen) A snapshot of some of the different forms of sexual discrimination experienced at Korean workplaces, from the January 15 edition of Metro Busan: Women Workers’ “Promotion...
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Korean Sociological Image #89: On Getting Knocked up in South Korea
As in, how many Korean women are pregnant when they walk down the aisle? How many get married after giving birth? How many mothers don’t get married at all? And how have public attitudes to all those...
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Calling all Korean-Western Couples!
(Source, edited: ufunk) I’ve been asked to pass on the following by Dr. Daniel Nehring, a British sociology lecturer: My project looks at the experiences of Korean-Western couples currently living in...
View ArticleTIL About Eugenics in Singapore in the 1980s. Was This a Thing in Korea too?
Remember that hilarious Singaporean government birthrate campaign ad from the 1980s? Which I mentioned in my look at the demographics of Korean dating agencies? Twenty-plus years after laughing at that...
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