Transnational Korea 4. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2019. viii, 169 pp. (Table.) US$22.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-55729-182-0.
Gender and Class in Contemporary South Korea broadens the existing scholarship on these issues by foregrounding “intersectional and transnational” perspectives (3). Although extensive research has already been done in these areas in the field of Korean studies, the focus has often remained on each category separately rather than on the overlaps and interactions between issues of gender and class. As the editors explain with admirable clarity, the concept of intersectionality first emerged in black feminist scholarship as a means to connect multiple and overlapping axes of identity and oppression with gender. They make the interesting argument that scholars have been slow to apply intersectionality as an analytical concept to the study of gender and class in Korea, in part owing to the myth of a homogeneous Korean race and culture that manifests as a kind of methodological nationalism in Korean studies. However, the notion of the nation-state as a stable and bounded entity characterized by racial and ethnic homogeneity has been challenged in Korea by various global developments, including the increasing permeability of national borders and demographic changes resulting from the influx of marriage migrant women and immigrant workers beginning in the late 1990s.
Informed by these developments, this edited volume begins an important and much-needed scholarly discussion about the interwoven and intersectional relationship between gender and class in the context of globalization in Korea. The book is organized around three main themes. The first part of the collection includes essays that examine gender and class in the (post-) developmental era. Jin-kyung Lee analyzes how two types of contemporary TV dramas (the “switched-at-birth” and Cinderella plots) both reflect and reproduce a post-development ideology and the fantasy of class mobility. Next, Myungji Yang discusses middle-class housewives’ investment in the real-estate market and their desires for social mobility in Korea’s developmentalist period. Seo Young Park’s essay, focusing on the experiences of successive generations of garment workers and narratives, challenges the dominant view of this sector as engaged in the “work of the past.”
The second section deals with the construction and transformation of new forms of class-based masculinity and femininity. Yoonjung Kang analyzes the commercialization of the post-partum care practices of urban middle-class mothers through the concept of aesthetic health, arguing that these practices reflect changing social norms regarding feminine beauty. Hyejeong Jo then demonstrates that meaning-making in relation to the transition to adulthood by work-bound youth differs according to gender in terms of being either optimistic or pessimistic.
The final section addresses the question of citizenship and national membership in an era of global migration. Hyun Mee Kim investigates the exclusion of ethnically mixed men in the Korean military and the status of “multicultural soldiers” in the country’s hierarchical model of normative male citizenship. Finally, Hae Yeon Choo explores how middle-class women volunteers in immigration integration programs for marriage migrant women position themselves as “maternal guardians.”
The contributors to this volume share an interest in revealing the role of gender as a fundamental organizing principle of Korean modernity, nationalism, and citizenship and mapping its mobilization to (re)configure the class system on which contemporary Korean society rests. Their research also demonstrates the intersection of the axis of gender and class with other social categories such as age (e.g., Park and Jo) and race/ethnicity (e.g., Kim and Choo).
As a feminist media scholar of digital feminist activism in contemporary Korea, I found the book’s special strengths to be its historical insights and in-depth explanations of current issues in this evolving and increasingly diverse country. For example, Myungji Yang’s chapter shows that the public criticism of middle-class housewives for being selfish, unethical, and even dangerous resonates with the “kimchi girl” construct and similar contemporary misogynistic discourse. Likewise, Hyun Mee Kim’s study reveals the construction and mobilization of such hierarchies as gender, class, sexuality, disability, and race to have been fundamental to the Korean military despite its rhetoric of universal service. The recent controversy over the discharge of the first known transgender Korean soldier corroborates her description of the Korean military as a contested domain in which divergent masculinities and femininities have been challenging normative male citizenship. Thus, the book’s thoughtful theoretical discussions and empirical case studies broaden the ongoing conversation about the politics of gender and class in Korea.
In addition, intersectionality not only provides a fresh perspective on social inequality but also serves as a social movement strategy for a critical praxis (Jennifer Chun et al., “Intersectionality as a Social Movement Strategy: Asian Immigrant Women Advocates,” Signs 38, no. 4, 2013; Safiya Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes, eds., The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online, Peter Lang Publishing, 2016). The book thus provides a basis for future research examining the dynamics of class and gender inequality in Korea brought about by the rise of digital feminist activism using intersectional frameworks as well as the potential of intersectionality in the reconstruction of contemporary feminist movements. For example, many of the contributors discuss gender and class-based social expectations and scripts in relation to heterosexual marriage, thereby raising such questions as how the increasing embrace by young Korean women of the so-called 4B (“Four Nos”) Movement and rejection of dating, marriage, sex, and child-bearing along with rigid patriarchal and heterosexual norms will impact middle-class-based norms of femininity.
This comprehensive collection, then, foregrounds intersectionality in a manner that makes it a prerequisite for future studies of social inequality and change. It is recommended both for educators seeking to engage students in critical conversations about contemporary politics in undergraduate classrooms and for scholars in the fields of gender and class studies, (post)developmentalism, globalization, and migration.
Jinsook Kim
University of Texas, Austin