Escape the corset: The simmering feminist revolution in South Korea

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A growing feminist movement is breathing a new sense of freedom into the lives of young South Korean women. They're ditching rigid beauty standards — and spending more on cars — as they 'escape the corset'. But change isn't easy.

Her parents were worried when they first found out.

"They do not talk about it in front of my face," Sohee* says with a nervous laugh, playing with the handles of her blue-and-green tote bag.

She also had her own reservations. Niggling fears of not getting a job; disappointing her family.

But when her hairdresser tried to talk her out of it, she knew she'd made up her mind.

She wanted short hair.

And it wasn't just a matter of taste — it was a statement.

Sohee is part of the growing 'escape the corset' movement taking hold in South Korea, with women taking a stand against rigid beauty ideals and unlacing the metaphorical corset.

"I realised that the makeup and outfits [were] not my decision and I do not actually like it," says Sohee, 26.

"So I choose to take off the corset."

It's part of a broader tide of social change among young South Korean women that has led the socially conservative country to a critical "crossroad".

'They are just beautiful'

On a humid Saturday night in Seoul, hundreds of fans gather around a stage: cheering and singing along to K-pop music booming across Gwanghwamun Square, at the foot of Inwangsan mountain.

Flashes of bright pastel hair blur against the technicolour backdrop as members of one K-pop band dab, lock and glide their way across the stage.

Here, K-pop musicians aren't just stars; they're 'idols'. They attract millions of dedicated fans who have fallen for more than just their shiny, catchy lyrics.

"They are just beautiful, they are just handsome," Yaejin, 20, tells me later at a tree-lined university campus in the capital's north-west.

"They [have] so many surgeries, they lose weight, they put [on so much] makeup, they wear so many expensive shirts and clothes.

"They make teenagers [want] to be like them."

Lauren Lee, the founder of a company importing K-beauty products to Australia, says many K-pop stars are emblematic of unrealistic beauty expectations.

"They've been chosen for their looks … and they're the people that you see represented over and over again in advertisements," she says.

"And they're impossibly skinny. One thing that really, really shocks me is when these girls publish their diets, and they're basically starving themselves. They're eating an apple and a couple of pieces of fruit a day and coffee, and that's their diet."

In the space of three months, three different K-pop stars have taken their own lives — prompting concerns about mental health in the industry, and mental health taboos in the country.

Yaejin, who studies and writes music, acknowledges she's "in the minority" among her peers for disliking K-pop.

For her, it all seems a little too "fake". After all, this is a country where people — and the K-pop stars they idolise — face "so many pressures".

MinYoung, a 27-year-old Christian studies major in Seoul, knows that pressure, and it can be crushing.

As a teenager she was "always exhausted" from studying, and worried about disappointing her parents if she didn't get into university and secure a steady job in an increasingly competitive market.

And the pressure doesn't fade once you have that job.

"Even when we find a job, or when we want to go to a big company, there are rules that women should have makeup, they should always dress up," MinYoung says.

But that is slowly changing.

A brutal crime in Seoul is now seen as a catalyst for this groundswell support for women's rights.

Exit 10

It happened just near exit 10 at Gangnam Station, one of the busiest train stations in Seoul.

In May 2016, a 23-year-old woman was murdered in a public toilet; picked at random by a man who later claimed to have been "ignored" by women throughout his life.

Korean women turned to social media to air their frustration and share their experiences of sexual violence.

They covered the dome walls of Gangnam Station with multi-coloured post-it notes bearing sobering messages.

"It was misogyny that killed her."

"If we are in solidarity we can be strong."

They marched.

"This new generation is emerging to stand up against the patriarchy system with various types of knowledge, expertise and tactics," says Na-Young Lee, sociology professor at Seoul's Chung-Ang University.

"They're insisting that justice, fair freedom, equality and these kind of values are two-sided and they do not involve sexual equality."

In their 20s and early 30s, this is a generation who are largely well-educated, growing up in a Korea bound by a "new freedom ideology".

Lauren Lee sees the escape the corset movement about more than just beauty products.

"I don't think this has anything to do with makeup, or skincare or things like that being bad or whatnot," she says.

"It's just a symptom of a much, much broader social problem."

South Korea was ranked 115 of 149 countries on gender equality in 2018 by the World Economic Forum.

Women face inequality at work; South Korea's gender pay gap widened to 37.1 per cent in 2019.

And in the past few years, women have increasingly been rallying around a mounting list of concerns.

In October, a woman reportedly suicided after finding out she was secretly filmed in a hospital change room, the latest in a string of spy-camera victims.

It comes after over 12,000 women protested in Seoul's Hyehwa Station in 2018 against illegal spy-camera filming — many of the videos end up on pornography websites.

Korean women have also taken to the streets as part of #MeToo rallies; 70,000 turned up to this year's International Women's Day demonstration.

Jaehyon Lee from the Asan Institute for Policy Studies says protests are considered a "national sport" in Korea, and the female-led rallies are significant.

"There's a growing sense of gender equality in Korea, but not enough," Dr Lee says.

"We have to grow further as gender equality is concerned."

Women buying cars, not cosmetics

It was an 'escape the corset' rally that first captured Sohee's attention.

"There is some big riot in Korea and I saw that several women cut their hair and they shout, 'we need to get out of the corset, this is not for us'," she remembers.

"I heard it and that moves me a lot."

The past few years have seen South Korean women increasingly posting photos and videos of themselves with the #escapethecorset hashtag.

According to recent analysis from News1, sales of cosmetics, hair products and other beauty-related apparel by Korean women in their 20s has dramatically declined between 2015/2016 and 2017/2018.

Cosmetic sales have gone down by 53.5 billion Korean won in that period.

Plastic surgery — another common playground for young South Koreans — has declined by 64.4 billion won.

By contrast, women in their 20s are spending more money on cars.

Car sales recorded the biggest growth of consumption in that two-year period: up over 400 billion won, closely followed by software development (393.7 billion won).

"The money they spent to decorate themselves is now used for them to be free," Professor Lee says.

But not everyone sees the mass appeal of Korean beauty products diminishing.

Lauren Lee's first real encounter with Korean beauty was when she was on exchange in Seoul in 2011.

"It's massive, Korean beauty in Korea … I have heard and I believe this to be true that there are up to 13,000 beauty companies in Korea making and manufacturing products," she says.

Now she's the founder of a company importing Korean beauty products back to Australia — an enterprise the former corporate lawyer started as a "side hustle" that's grown into a full-time career.

Lee says that while she appreciates the sentiment of #escapethecorset, she doesn't see "the [Korean beauty] trend dying down anytime soon".

"I think it's great if people are feeling really constricted by some of the really unrealistic expectations that Korean society has of them … if they feel that they want to break free from that and feel unburdened by that," Lee says.

'I don't need someone else to fulfil myself'

Aside from forgoing makeup, Sohee is also shying away from relationships.

"Getting married is probably quite common in Korean culture," she tells me.

"So when you get [to your] mid-20s, people are talking about 'when are you getting married?' or that kind of thing."

But for her, it's not an immediate priority.

"I need to study more to go to a job and I do not have time to meet a guy, that's one of the reasons," she tells me.

"And I just don't want to meet people anymore … I don't need someone else to fulfil myself."

She's not alone.

Growing numbers of South Korean women are turning their backs on marriage and children; the country's fertility rate fell to world-wide record low in 2019 (at one child per woman).

"There are four movements promoted by women in their 20s in Korea," Professor NaYoung Lee explains.

"No sex, no sexual romantic relationship, no marriage, no birth."

MinYoung says having children is also a distant blip on her future horizon.

"Many of my friends are doing [no relationship] … I don't like getting [into] relationships with men sometimes," she says.

"When I become a mother, in Korean society, I have to give up one thing: career [or] baby."

Sohee isn't ready to give up her career just yet, with ambitions to one day become a lawyer.

With a job interview coming up, she's considering growing her hair out. She doesn't want to harm her prospects.

Change comes slowly, MinYoung says with bitter conviction, recounting a recent example of a woman who was fired from a part-time café job for cutting her hair short.

Sohee says that while many of her university friends are joining the #escapethecorset movement, many outside campus are reluctant.

"I know it [is] quite [a] hard decision," she says.

"But I want I just want some other women [to] see me and get confidence."

*Some names have been changed.

Farz Edraki was in South Korea for the Walkley Foundation Australia-Korea media exchange program.

Credits:

Words and photography : Farz Edraki

: Farz Edraki Editor : Monique Ross

: Monique Ross Interpreter and translator: Bori Choi

Additional images: Getty: Jung Yeon-Je, FrankvandenBergh, Jean Chung, Ed Jones, Seung-il Ryu; K-pop stage: Seoul Music Festival

Topics: women, community-and-society, feminism, social-media, pop, government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, korea-republic-of, australia, asia

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