CW: mentions of sexual violence

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Gender is a social construct whose meaning and significance is determined culturally and historically; contrary to popular beliefs, gender has no basis in biology or genetics. In present-day South Korea, the rigid enforcement of binary gender norms can be traced back to Japanese colonial rule on the peninsula and the nationalist movements that rose up in reaction to colonial oppression. Although gender-expansive identities and expressions have long been an integral part of Korea’s history and culture, both colonialist and patriarchal nationalist ideologies had a vested interest in ignoring these legacies and instead enforcing strict cisgender heterosexual norms. 

Japanese Occupation + gender roles

During Japanese colonial rule in Korea, the colonial government enforced a strict binary of “women” and “men” through various government policies. Notions of femininity and masculinity were similarly made to be a rigid dichotomy rather than a fluid spectrum, and gender-expansive individuals were treated as social threats by both the Japanese colonial government and Korean nationalist publications. 

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For the Japanese colonial government, gender “deviance” was synonymous with threat to colonial sovereignty. The Japanese government began regulating local religious practices in Korea in 1906 with the issuance of the Shūkyō no Gifu ni Kan Suru Kisoku (Regulations on Religious Activities) followed by the Shūkyō no Senpu ni Kansuru Kisoku (Regulations on Religious Propagation) in 1915. These regulations criminalized local ritual leaders like mudang (shamans) and fortune-tellers, who were painted as being morally corrupt for their fluid gender and sexual expressions, which consequently justified violent police actions against local shrines and ritual spaces. “Imperial subjects” (hwanggukshinmin) who displayed any form of gender and sexual nonconformity to state-mandated binary norms were branded as threats to colonial governance, which relied on rigid cisgender and heterosexual norms to keep up with imperial capitalist standards of production. 

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For contemporary male Korean nationalist thinkers, gender nonconformity was seen as a threat to the Korean nationalist movement. Colonial subjugation under imperial Japan was deemed as an emasculating event that could only be overcome by “re-masculinizing” the nation, and the survival of the Korean people was thought to depend on the strict adherence to cisgender heterosexual norms. Gender-expansive expressions and sexual “deviance” (i.e. any sexual act that did not result in procreation to build up the Korean nation) were therefore perceived as a direct threat to the security and survival of the Korean people. This nationalist vilification of gender and sexual nonconformity can be seen in the historical nation-building projects led by Choe Namseon and Yi Neung-hwa, which reclaimed shamanism as a source of past national strength and simultaneously rejected contemporary shamanism as the cause of Korea’s shameful colonial present. Choe and Yi proposed that the origins of Korean shamanism were masculine and strong, tracing its roots back to Dangun; in this age, ritual leaders were largely male. The emergence of female ritual leaders and the feminization of male shamans (i.e. “deviance” from rigid binary gender roles), they argued, were directly tied to the deterioration of Choseon’s greatness. When the colonial government switched from exterminating local shamanism to a policy of “cultural rule” (munhwa tongchi) that allowed select forms of state-regulated rituals in the 1920s, Korean media accused the government of allowing shamanism to flourish unchecked as a way to assimilate and weaken the local population.

Image of the Masculine Soldier in the Park Chung Hee’s Regime

Gender roles became more rigid during Park Chung Hee’s regime. Park Chung Hee was South Korea’s president from 1963-1979 (“Park Chung Hee”). Over three thousand South Korean troops and hundred civilian workers were dispatched in the Vietnam War. During his regime, Park defended and used South Korea’s role in the Vietnam War to claim that it was recovering the nation’s dignity and advancement by transforming South Korea’s young men into masculine men. Indeed, he did all that he could to promote patriarchal nationalistic ideologies (Lee, 37). 

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Grand public ceremonies followed the soldiers when they left for Vietnam and returned to South Korea. During these ceremonies, Park emphasized how military deployment to Vietnam tied in with South Korea’s ethnonational masculinity. He referred to the military troops as the “descendants of Hwarang (Lee, 42). Hwarang were an elite youth military group in the Silla Dynasty that were trained heavily in academics and martial skills (“Hwarangdo”). Park insisted that the endeavor in Vietnam was demonstrative of South Korea’s bravery and manhood to the entire world. He even claimed that the military deployment in Vietnam was symbolic of South Korea’s rise as a superior nation that could use its power to help other nations instead of being on the receiving end of help (Lee, 42). 

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One of the popular songs from the early 1970s was called, “Sergeant Kim Who Returned from Vietnam'' and was sung in the perspective of a young woman waiting for a soldier’s return in South Korea. The song illustrates an immature single soldier — referred to as ch’onggak in the song — becoming more reliable and mature after returning from the Vietnam War — referred to as Sergeant Kim. Kim is depicted as more masculine and desirable as a result. He is then described as having fulfilled all of the requirements to marry and lead a family. The song well characterizes Park’s view of how South Korea’s involvement in Vietnam entails ethnonational advancement (Lee, 42-43). 

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Although there was a large number of women working in the industrial sector in the 1960s until the mid 1970s, their work was not recognized. Park mainly emphasized how military labor was central to the nation's advancement during that time (Lee, 44). His strategy of closely linking the nation’s status and prestige with the advancement of collective masculinity was widely effective in South Korea following its liberation from Japanese colonialism and political and economic suffering and military subordination to the US since 1945 (Lee, 34). South Korean working men were hungry and poor —  to them, the prospect of utilizing American food, clothes, and currency to gain income seemed highly desirable. As these men didn’t have many options, getting deployed to Vietnam was an economic opportunity. Indeed, “militarized masculinity became an instrument of socioeconomic mobility for those working- class young men.” Park’s tactic was successful and the South Korean government always found people who were willing to be deployed to Vietnam (Lee, 45). 

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For both sexual and military acts — in different degrees — aggression, violence, and the power to conquer others were viewed as key to masculinity. As a result, military prowess was also put together with sexual prowess (Lee, 51). During their time in Vietnam, many South Korean soldiers engaged in commercial sexual relationship with, or forced sexual violence upon Vietnamese women — both enemies and allies. These instances have been documented and attested to by many Vietnamese victims and witnesses. As rigid views around masculinity were promoted for the sake of the South Korea’s prowess in Vietnam, sexual violence for Vietnamese women also became futher encouraged and justified (Lee, 53). 

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During his reign, Park Chung Hee actively regulated film content and censorship more than ever before (Henry, 178-179). The films enforced a rigid view of family structures with strictly regulated depictions of gender roles (Henry, 179). During the 1960s, the South Korean government avidly tried to censor and control gender nonconformity and sexualities as they reinforced masculinity as key to the nation’s progress and hetronormative family standards  (Henry, 186). 

Conclusion

Gender is complex and is culturally and historically constructed. Many of South Korea’s current rigid views of gender trace back to many parts of its history, and are influenced heavily by the Japanese colonial era and Park Chung Hee’s regime. Under these historical projects, gender expansive identities and expressions were frequently villainized and erased for the sake of colonialist and patriarchal nationalist agendas. 

Questions for Consideration

• Why does colonialism and patriarchal nationalism share a similar interest in erasing gender nonconformity?
• Why are rigid gender binaries so important for imperialism? Why were they so important for Korean nationalism in reaction to Japanese occupation?
• In what ways does militarized masculinity continue to show up in present-day South Korean society?

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