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A Must-read on Japan’s (and Korea’s) #MeToo
Korea’s #MeToo movement was much more successful than Japan’s. This must-read 2025 interview from Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus suggests some of the differences responsible. Estimated reading time:...
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Korean Sociological Image #78: Multicultural Families in Korean Textbooks
Over at Korean Circle and Squares, Emanuel Pastreich has scanned some pages of the Korean ethics textbook currently used in Korean elementary schools. He comments that the very existence of such an...
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Is too Much Study Indoors Destroying Students’ Vision?
In a word, yes. To find out why 9 out of 10 Korean students require glasses, compared to only 2 out of 10 in the UK, check out my latest article for Busan Haps.
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Korean Sociological Image #77: Sexualized Girl-Group Performances at Schools
Back in August, I wrote the following about girl-group performances for the Korean military: With 300-350,000 new conscripts annually, one of the longest conscription periods in the world, and a...
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“Body Changing” Diet-Drink Generously Donated to High School Students
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. (Source) Young Korean women—not men—are the only demographic in the OECD that are getting more underweight than obese. Call me making a mountain out of a molehill,...
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Quick Hit: Cheongju Sex-Education Camp for Teens
(Source) Sex-education is still so severely neglected in the Korean education system, and still so stuck in the 1980s, that it’s easy to think that things will never change. Especially with an...
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“Japan is Famously—or Notoriously—Known for its People Not Being Able to Say...
Turning Boys Into Men? The Performance of Gender for South Korean Conscripts, Part 8 Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Photo (cropped) by Jim Flores on Unsplash. Am I just projecting when I say...
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ZOOM TALK: “Missing Voices that Matter: a history of Japanese women law...
Pervasive sexual inequality can feel like death from a thousand cuts. No one source of pain or minor irritation isn’t possible to dismiss or play down in favor of other, more visceral struggles against...
View ArticleRecent Studies Show it’s Hands-On Fathers That Have More Children, NOT...
One recent study demonstrates the more of their fair share of housework and childcare fathers do, the more children they’ll probably have; another, the many entrenched workplace and social welfare...
View ArticleThe Hidden Roots of Korea’s Gender Wars
Universal male conscription and rampant discrimination against working mothers will always grab headlines, but a recent ruling against segregated seating in study rooms is a stark reminder of the...
View ArticleKorean High School Girls Complain They Can Barely Breathe in Uniforms Smaller...
Even university students are astonished at how short and restrictive they’ve gotten. Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash. Ten years since I first wrote about it, I’m...
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How Slut-Shaming and Victim-Blaming Begin in Korean Schools
From the moment Korean schoolchildren start developing, and their hormones start raging, Korea’s school uniform codes give them a daily reminder that girls’ bodies should be hidden and controlled....
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Feminazi Killjoys Target Cute Children’s Song
And I’m one of them: (Source: Instiz) Here’s a transcript: ‘아빠 힘내세요’라는 동요 아시죠. Anchor: You know the song Cheer Up Father, yes? 어깨 축 쳐진 아빠에게 아이들이 용기를 줬던 노래인데 이 노래가 양성평등을 저해한다는 판정이 나와 문화관광부가 해명자료까지 내는...
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Male Privilege at Korean Universities
(Source: Michael Sean Gallagher; CC BY-SA 2.0) Turning Boys Into Men? The Performance of Gender for South Korean Conscripts, Part 2 In Korean universities, the male students are usually two to three...
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Brains & Beauty: With Korean women achieving higher education, why do so many...
(Source: Republic of Korea; CC BY-SA 2.0) “I believe in equality and love the Free the Nipple movement. After four years in Korea, I am still intrigued by its thirst for modernity mixed with its fear...
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“Sexy Concepts with James Turnbull”
(Source) Ahem. But really, they’re just a very small part of my July interview with Colin Marshall for the Notebook on Cities and Culture podcast, where we also discuss: …what Westerners find so...
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Korean Sociological Image #88: Unhappy Korean children
(Source: Kevin Thai; CC BY-ND 2.0) Via a friend of mine last year, came this OECD survey that found Korean children to be the least happy of all those in developed countries. Much more interesting than...
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Sunday Fun: Bottoms!
My 8 year-old daughter Alice is really into comics these days, often hiding our home phone under her pillow so she can keep reading them when she’s supposed to be asleep. To my chagrin, she couldn’t...
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Policing the Student Body: Sookmyung Women’s University students told to...
(Source: TVChosun) Watching a news report about the controversial new dress code for last week’s festival at Sookmyung Women’s University, I was surprised to hear that it was the student union that was...
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Korean Sex Ed Takes to the Road
(Source) Korean sex education gets a bad rep on my blog, and deservedly so. But there are many professional and committed sex educators out there (I’ve met some!), and the quality and quantity of...
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