by liberal japonicus
Been watching the videos of Dr Jonathan Tam, and if I had come to them through his channel page, I would have hesitated, cause his brand is doom and gloom about Asia, oh, and by the way, it’s coming for everyone else. We are all screwed. And like and subscribe to my channel please.
But I saw this video first, one of his earlier efforts, and I thought it was interesting and pretty much on target. To be fair, I think all of his other videos are correct, but seem single-minded in their focus that 1) East Asia has huge social problems followed by 2) the problems are coming for you, pasty western folks!
Tam is a sociologist who is part of the Chinese diaspora from Hong Kong, so I imagine the urge to link his experiences to the larger world and say they are at the center is pretty strong, and he did his PhD at Oxford, so that tendency is reinforced in spades as can be seen from his Researchgate page (which lists him as a doctoral candidate, so I don’t know if he’s gilding the lily a bit when he says he has his doctorate, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do if your goal is monetizing your channel. Or maybe he is like me and can’t be bothered to update his researchgate page because the company takes that as an invitation to try and extract money from you).
But that aside, and taking the fact that I haven’t been back to Korea since I returned just before COVID into account, I think that he’s right about the Korean gender war and all of the issues it brings. When I was there, I felt like all these issues were bubbling up, and it sounds like they have taken full flight. (I’ve not been back to Korea, sadly, for a number of reasons that don’t have anything to do with Korea, but more with what’s happening with me) I know a lot of you don’t like sitting through a youtube video, so a quick summary.
- Korea is at the breaking point in terms of gender polarization
- Politicans are taking advantage of this
- Structural issues, in particular housing and motherhood, are pouring fuel on the fire
- As Korea goes, so goes the world
It goes into some particularly interesting incidents and conditions including molka, military conscription, conservative PM’s election and appeal to anti-feminists, the age-based nature of Korean honorifics, housing, and the 4B movement. (I’m sure I’m missing some, so if there are any that you think I missed, please let me know) One point that he doesn’t mention that I think is pertinent is the fact that South Korea, despite making up of only 29% of the population, could be classified as a Christian nation. I mentioned some of this in my earlier post on Korea and Christianity on the old site. I’ll also flog my other posts, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, so people who want to catch me out can do so. I think the Christian connection is important because there is a pretty strong bias towards men in the religion generally, and the whole idea of ‘tradwife’ seems to not be just a US thing.
An interesting (to me, at least) point Tam makes is how Japan and Korea have essentially the same conditions, but various Japanese conditions attenuate these trends, while in Korea, they exacerbate them. The unmentioned religion aspect is one of them (Japanese are incredibly non religious, or perhaps incredibly syncretic, meaning that aspects of one particular religion never weigh too heavily on the scale). He also suggests that the hikkikomori culture as well as the rise of the soushoku-kei danshi (草食系男子) (which translates as herbivore men) reduces the issues, despite the fact that the term is perjorative. There is no system like the crazy jeonse system. I’m sure I’ve missed others, but the result is that the gender wars are not as marked in Japan as they are in Korea.
Asia is often suggested to be a mirror of the West, with trends and tendencies arising from exposure to Western fads and fashions, but often reworked in a way that makes them unrecognizable. While t’s possible to say that gender relations in the West have been imported to Asia, and then reworked, I feel like this is pretty ethnocentric, but since my frame is unavoidably a Western take on gender relations, I’m not sure how to look at the three East Asian cultures take on gender relations and be able to set aside my preconceptions. I’d be interested to know which of these conditions are seen in the West. Have at it.
As a resident of the Puget Sound, I used to meet Korean immigrant women, often married to American servicemen, fairly often. In fact, I worked for the Korean Women’s Association. It was noticeable to me how many were Christians in the worst rightwing way.
Anyone arguing that Western misogyny was imported to East Asia ought to be expected to, at minimum, show historic evidence that things were otherwise back in the day.
I don’t know about Korea. But traditional Chinese culture is pretty strongly prejudiced againsy women. That’s why the One Child Policy so drastically skewed the sex ratio for that generation: lots of female infanticide because having a son was considered so critical. Given how strongly China influenced Korea and Japan, it wouldn’t be amazing if some of that spilled over (even assuming it wasn’t there already).