Abstract
This article examines the three representative forms of Korean men’s groups and movements, including men’s rights, conservative evangelical, and profeminist groups. By analyzing how the discourses and practices of each group relate to hegemonic masculinity, this paper will demonstrate how hegemonic masculinities are expressed, enacted, renegotiated, or challenged in public and political spheres and how each of these three groups is complicit with, reinforces, or resists the politics of hegemonic masculinity. Based on the critical evaluation of these three forms of masculinity politics in Korean society, some of the challenges and prospects for profeminist politics of masculinity are discussed.
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The OECD Report 2017: The Pursuit of Gender Equality illustrates the status of gender equality in Korean society in terms of political empowerment (As of 2016 women hold only 17% of seats in the National Assembly which is in the fifth-lowest among OECD countries), representation in the private sector (only 10.5% of management positions, the lowest in the OECD), the income gap by gender (37.2%, the largest of the OECD nations in 2016), and equal treatment at work (Korea was the most unequal of the OECD nations) (The OECD Report, n.d.).
Whether or not these can be seen as a social movement has been a point of dispute among scholars in studies of social movements. Some scholars, such as Stephen White (2002), argue that it is inaccurate to consider men’s movements as representing a social movement given their loose, less formal, and decentralized nature. In contrast, others, such as Fidelma Ashe (2007), claim that men’s movements can be viewed as a social movement given that contemporary social movements are marked by relatively informal organizational processes, fluid structures, loose forms of belonging, and diverse and shifting perspectives.
Although Messner’s conceptual framework is useful in categorizing men’s organized responses to changes, challenges, and crises in the social organization of gender, it has some limits. First, Messner’s framework depends on the group’s “emphases”; that is, the most salient foci in terms of the movement’s visions, goals, and practices, which could be shifting and inconsistent in nature; therefore, it is obviously difficult for these themes to fully capture the complexity and ambiguity of reality. The identification of a group’s emphases also runs the risk of being affected by the researcher’s own emphases and perspectives. More fundamentally, Messner’s themes themselves demonstrate the inner mechanism and rationales behind a men’s group’s emphasis on each of the themes; that is, these categories cannot address why men’s groups and movements emphasize what they emphasize. Each group might emphasize a particular theme for dramatically and strategically different reasons.
Since this group was known as Man of Korea until recently, in this article I will use this name instead of NGO for Equality.
The Gender Inequality Index is reported annually by the United Nations as part of the Human Development Index. This index reflects “gender inequality along three dimensions—reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market—as rated by five indicators: maternal mortality and adolescent fertility for reproductive health, parliamentary representation and educational attainment for empowerment, and labor force participation for the labor market” (United Nation Human Development Reports, n.d.)
However, a recent report by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family notes that Korean women in corporations and civil offices continue to experience the existence of the “glass ceiling” and “glass walls,” invisible barriers that structurally obstruct women’s promotion to higher positions.
Interestingly, the group’s emphasis on sacrifice is also revealed by the organizational culture and practices of its leadership. As a way of promoting public interest in the organization, MOK’s former representative Jae-Ki Sung planned a performance that might draw greater public attention to the organization yet would risk his own life. Regarding his decision as “sacrificial,” he fell off a bridge over the Han River and drowned. Earlier, he had left a message on a social network service that appealed strongly for moral and financial support from the public. He was found dead a few days after the “accident”; it was unclear whether he had intended to kill himself or just to make a dramatic and attention-grabbing performance. According to a posthumously published essay by Sung, he had also made personal sacrifices by selling his small business to provide financial resources for MOK and by devoting himself so wholeheartedly to the organization.
I conducted a participant observation study of sessions of the FS held at a Korean American church located in the southeastern region of the United States in 2012. Even though participant observation often employs more than just observation in the process of conducting research (e.g., interviews of various sorts, checklists, and questionnaires), this study relied primarily on the extensive observation of both volunteers’ and participants’ actions and of verbal and nonverbal expressions of emotions demonstrated during five weekend sessions of the FS. I also undertook a document analysis of written materials and resources such as student handbooks and monthly magazines published by the FS headquarters in Korea.
The existing literature in the United States has barely examined the Promise Keepers’ connection to religious men’s movements in other cultural contexts. Moreover, the transnational vibrancy of the FS movement has not yet gained scholarly attention outside the circle of Korean scholars.
PK, an evangelical men’s movement founded by Bill McCartney, former football coach at the University of Colorado, emphasizes a man’s commitment and accountability to seven subjects: to Jesus Christ, his prayer group, his wife, his children, his church, racial harmony, and the world. Even though stadium conferences are the most visible PK public appearances, the organization also relies upon grassroots church-based support by organizing local meetings called “Wake-up Calls” and small “Promise Builder” prayer groups for men. PK has garnered mixed responses and contradictory criticism from the public. Scholarly studies and mass media have depicted the movement paradoxically as both an antifeminist and reactionary movement and as a movement rejuvenating “godly manhood” and sensitive husbands and fathers, both impeding social transformation and promoting it and both apolitical and political (see Donovan 1988).
Based on their evangelical Christian faith, participants are encouraged to accept gender ideals that are combined with theological language as proper and legitimate. The participants’ religious identity, specifically as conservative evangelicals who adopt a literalist reading of the Scripture, functions as an ideological glue for reconciling the contradictory discursive resources for undergirding hegemonic masculinities.
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Yun, M. The interplay between Korean men’s movements and hegemonic masculinity: Identity, complicity, and resistance. Pastoral Psychol 67, 689–706 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-018-0835-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-018-0835-z