Living
in South Korea as a Young Woman (5):
“Finding Feminism after High School”
By
Choi Jeong-hui (Paeng-paeng)
Published:
May 19, 2016
Translated
by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s note: To begin a new feminist discourse in
2016, Ilda is running a series on “Living as a Young Woman in South Korea.” The
series receives support from the Korea Foundation for Women’s “Funding for
Gender-Equal Society.”
“Go sit by that seonbae”
 |
| My donggi all put on these headbands and became bunnies. ⓒ Paeng-paeng |
Everyone
put on bunny ears and pert bunny tails, and male students put on black ties
over white dress shirts while female students wore aprons with white spots on a
hot-pink background. Some talented donggi
got help from some seonbae [older
students in or graduates from the same department] and drew perfect rabbit
heads (the Playboy logo) on sparkling paper, hanging them up to make an entrance
to our tent.
As
selling alcohol and snacks is the main task at a tent, division of labor was
necessary. Broadly, the divisions were cooking, serving, and attracting
customers. The taste and price of the snacks are important, but in the end, the
factor that decides a tent’s sales is enthusiastically courting customers. You
have to grab someone on the street and pull them in. No one came out and said
it, but we all knew that if you want to earn money, pretty girls have go
outside and attract customers, and plain girls have to fry pajeon [Welsh-onion pancakes] in the kitchen.
Somehow
or another, the roles were divided. A few girls that no one could deny were
pretty were put in charge of attracting customers. I, as someone in a gray area
(which could be known by how no one pushed me to try attracting customers)
thought it seemed like I should just carry and clear away food, so I was one of
the servers. That kind of thing didn’t upset or surprise me, as I also thought
those girls were pretty. And I wanted us to make a lot of money.
But
something that happened on the last day of the festival became my main
motivation for founding the study group “Finding Feminism After High School”
much later. On that day, graduated seonbae
at the festival would come and there would be an after-party just for our
department, so the student head of the department requested that we stay late
and participate. We opened for business and when it became late, as had been
announced, about four or five male seonbae,
who gave off a strong vibe of being office workers, were escorted in. A few of
my donggi, wearing serious
expressions, quickly made a large space for them in the middle of the tent. And
then someone nudged me and said, “Go sit by that seonbae”
In
this way, I and a few other girls were dispatched to sit dispersed between the
men, which we did, blankly. The male seonbae
who had been in charge of escorting them here came into this obviously awkward
situation and livened things up. After the younger seonbae flatteringly introduced the older seonbae to us, the latter started to talk to us. While at first
they had only waved shyly, after a few rounds they began to tell stories from
their school days. I listened and nodded, but found myself mute.
Inside
I was sweating, wondering, “When this story ends what should I say? Is it
enough if I just sit here listening and pour drinks?” and even, “That other
girl is good at chatting and creating a pleasant atmosphere—should
I be doing that?”
Ridiculous university culture—in the
name of feminism, we won’t put up with you!
 |
| Me as a new student who had a lot of complaints but no way to express them ⓒ Paeng-paeng |
What
if there were a picture of that scene? New students wearing bunny ears and
tails, and graduates wearing suits. I didn’t really talk about it for a long
time, but it kept coming back to me. I didn’t know how to describe this
situation, other than as strange and ridiculous. At that time, when a topic was
brought up, [as an art student] I had no language other than the technical
ability to make a picture about it within four hours, and no ability to resist.
And
then, after graduation, when I by chance (an description which also makes me
sad) became active in a women’s environmental group in the area in which I grew
up in, I found feminism. It was not the light at the end of a long and dark
tunnel, but like a stone being thrown at me by someone telling me not to go
farther into the tunnel in the first place. Powerfully attracted to one of the
stone-throwers, I started to carry around feminist books like they were Bibles,
and thought again about that scene. I started to summon up and pass judgment on
not just that scene in my first year, but also the myriad of other things that
had happened to me in university.
As
soon as I entered school, there was the sexy dance we practiced for the talent
show that was part of the welcoming events for new students, the dressing up
male donggi as women and choosing one
of them as “Miss X” (“X” here stands for our department’s name), the event
celebrating [male] military reservists and the female seonbae who were in charge of the food for it, male seonbae making comments like “You’re so
thin that there’s nothing to hold onto” like jokes... these situations flashed
past, leaving me unsure even now at whom I should be angry.
The
more depressing thing was that the department that I graduated from was thought
to be relatively okay, when it was actually terrible. It’s always like that,
but no one explains why these kinds of events exist within university
departments or why they continue. It gets covered up in the name of tradition,
and it gets passed down to and carried on by hubae [students in the same department or school that entered later
than oneself] without a chance to realize how weird it is. In a situation where
even a relationship with one’s seonbae
has become a type of job qualification, those who have just tossed their school
uniforms and entered university or the working world are faced with two
choices: keep quiet or be excluded.
My
beloved (and mostly female) dongsaeng
[younger siblings or, in this case, younger friends], whom I met when I was
doing local activism and we took humanities classes together, and who are now
graduating from high school, are soon going to enter this culture... this
thought is very upsetting. I thought about the high school students trapped in
the Sewol ferry who were uncomfortable when told to stay put, but could do
nothing but that. I wasn’t going to stay put.
Proselytizing feminism to young
women barely out of high school
Of
course, discovering feminism is painful. Your everyday life becomes
uncomfortable and dissatisfying. But you also experience a freedom and pleasure
- whose source is at first unclear, sudden desires to talk about things, and a
safe, supportive group that listens wholeheartedly to your thoughts and
feelings. I wanted to give this experience to my dongsaeng. So I rounded up two strong-willed friends and suggested
that we start a feminist study group. We would target dongsaeng who had just thrown away their school uniforms and were
about to go to university or get jobs.
One
of my two friends had majored in Women Studies, and the other one was active in
a women’s group, so even though we weren’t teachers or experts, it seemed like
we could pull it off. Before this study group, we had successfully worked
together to run a three-class course called “Think Kindly of Same-Sex Love,”
which dispelled misunderstandings and stereotypes about same-sex love. In order
to enrich our learning and listen to everyone’s voices in turn, we had an
activity called “writing and recitation,” and bought pretty notebooks to give
each dongsaeng.
 |
| One of the reading summaries for one session of “Finding Feminism After High School.” We three presenters had to study hard but also learned a lot. ⓒ Paeng-paeng |
A
few of the dongsaeng that I knew had
shown a lot of interest in feminism, saying they wanted to learn about it. We
planned to hold the five sessions of “Finding Feminism After High School”
group, including an orientation and a feminist movie-watching session, and to
take the most hot-button incidents of the times and connect them with feminism.
So the topics were Japanese “comfort women,” Megalian,
and taljoseon [a derogatory term for
the phenomenon of South Korean youth immigrating out of the country]. Each
session focused on a topic like this.
First
we three leaders would create a short reading summary—as
a PowerPoint presentation or a handout—about the issue, and then each
of us would toss out a question at the end. The participants considered the
questions and jotted down their thoughts in their notebooks. And after
exchanging notebooks with the person next to them, they would take turns reading
the other person’s writings aloud. Then we would pass the notebooks around and
write “real-time replies.” You could express your agreement, your different
feelings or way of thinking, anything. Summary →
questions →
writing →
reading aloud →
replying. Three hours wasn’t enough! As an example, let me introduce an excerpt
from materials for the second class, which was entitled “Is Megalian the Female
Ilbe?”
“When
I first saw Megalian last year around June and July, my honest response was to
burst into laughter. Sure, it made some people uncomfortable, but for some
reason I thought it was really funny. Endlessly and irrepressibly. The feeling
that came over me after I finished laughing was a clear sense of pleasure. Why?
Actually, when I think about it, it was because I had been scared, worried, and
tired, even though I had pretended not to be. Because the woman who
said one wrong thing, “loser man,” disappeared without a trace and is still
being cursed, and (old, rich, powerful man) Park Jin Young was on fucking TV
asking who your mother is, singing about how he likes girls with big butts and
if your butt is small you’ll be ignored. (...) You say it, so why can’t I? I
mean, there are times when I too want to express my desires in rough and coarse
ways.”—Park
Bo-hyeon (Dodam)
When
the presentation of the reading summary ended, we three leaders asked the
following questions, making everyone think about their experiences and leading
to an enriching discussion. “What is a way to fight enjoyably?”, “Have you ever
seen a case where violence quelled violence? How was it?”, “Among Megalian,
Womad [another Internet community], inclusive feminism, etc., where do I lean?”
 |
| Answers of dongsaeng to questions from the leaders, and others’ replies ⓒ Paeng-paeng |
Finding
Feminism After High School was held in the living room of the house where I
live, and our circle was sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, but usually around
10 people. Having to do a reading summary every week put enormous pressure on
us, but I also looked forward to that time. Gathering in the living room to
listen to presentations, writing while listening to the scratching noises
coming from all around, reading someone’s writing aloud, someone reading my
writing aloud, passing the notebooks around and writing replies... the personal
histories, feelings, and resolutions contained in the cramped writing made us
look at the dongsaeng in a new way.
I
didn’t tell them about this, but after the dongsaeng
left I would sit in a quiet corner and read and reread the comments on my
writing. The words filled with surprise, agreement, or consolation about my
writing made me feel warm and comforted. After a few classes, I could tell who
the writer was by their handwriting, and as their expressions, voice, and even
their personality showed through, each student became a special and precious
part of my heart.
This time it’s finding feminism
during high school!
The
study group ended. Some of the dongsaeng
entered university. I was curious about how they were all doing, when I
happened to do some work with one of them for a short time. It was around March
of this year. Telling me that she wanted to complain, she spilled out all of
the embarrassing things that had happened to her at the new students’
orientation.
“The
really ridiculous thing is that on the first day, each group had to pick a
leader and a mascot. But because the group leader had to drink a lot and the
mascot had to flirt a lot, they had to be a man and a woman, respectively. And
at night when we were sitting in our groups, drinking, we ran out of snacks. So
we sent the mascot to headquarters to get some. But she didn’t come back for a
long time. It turned out that the male sunbae
at the headquarters had made her put on a talent show and given her snacks
according to how well she performed. And if a male student went to get snacks,
they would yell at him.”
“The
second time, I couldn’t stand to send the mascot alone so I went with her. When
we got to the headquarters, they were like, “One snack is 3,000 won, but you
can get one free for each talent demonstration.” Sitting there drinking, like,
“Go on, do it.” It was really uncomfortable, and when I got the snack I wanted
to throw it in their faces. Who do they think are? This was the first way I was
treated in university. This kind of thing really needs to be gotten rid of. So
next year I’m going to go along and protect the new female students, no matter
what.”
University
culture is the same, but listening to my dongsaeng
talk made me unreasonable proud. She went on, with force.
“Really,
everyone should study feminism. Because when I didn’t know about feminism, I
didn’t know about discrimination, either. Because I was used to it. But after
waking up to it, I see it everywhere. And a big change in myself that I’m
feeling these days is a rebellion against others’ standards. When I was a
student, I was caught up in grades and teachers’ orders. But now I try to live
a little more for myself and the things that I think are right. And I feel more
sure about the things I like and dislike. I feel more confident talking about
those things. The more that happens, the more I remember that I have to keep my
ears and my mind open.”
 |
| At the last session of “Finding Feminism After High School,” the lovable sisters who shared flowers, alcohol, and writings ⓒ Paeng-paeng |
I
started with the wish to give to my dongsaeng,
but instead January was packed with lessons for me. Perhaps because my heart
missed the stimulation of these lessons and touching moments, I became the
organizer for the fourth year of a local youth humanities lecture series. This
time, I plan to sit down with people who are still in high school. It’s
“Finding Feminism During High School.” We have a budget, so I’ve recruited two
teachers, I’m going to bring a ton of snacks, and we’re going to have fun, while
even learning some self-defense.
And
the people who took the earlier class are participating in the planning and
carrying out of this one. So much strength! We have to preach feminist thought
to our sisters with twice as much power. When I imagine my dongsaeng’s dongsaeng,
and then their dongsaeng, sitting in
a circle with our knees touching, my heart feels full. Finally, I’d like to end
this essay with a prayer for my sisters and to the goddess of feminism.
“Goddess
of feminism, who art in our cells. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy
will be done, in Korea as it is in Northern Europe. Give us this day the
language to resist, and forgive us our anger, as we understand those who
discriminate against us within the system. And do not let us fall into the trap
of trying to become alpha girls, but deliver us from patriarchy. For thine and
our sisters’ is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
*Original article: http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7472
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