K-Pop and Feminism

Introduction

Beginning in the early-1990s, entertainment companies of Korean pop music and culture industry brought forth "Idol groups", creating an idol group or group member "worshipping" culture among teens. This culture is still largely active in K-Pop and is continuously expanding internationally. Since the late-2000s, the industry hit a larger Korean Wave (Hanliu) and is experiencing an international success. The Korean government is promoting and supporting the industry as K-Pop became a major part of modern Korean culture.

The K-Pop industry follows certain beauty standards and from artists' physical appearance to their persona, entertainment companies train their artists before official debut according to the gender norms and gender stereotypes. Sexism exists in both male and female groups, objectifying and sexualizing them by making conceptual songs and performances based on fetishes and fantasies.

Meanwhile, girl groups often follow strict and limited femininity and idealized images, more than boy groups. Not only in their music and its concept, but also off-the-stage, when represented in media, most of them are expected to maintain permissive and innocent image. Having or even seeming feministic preferences can be criticized by their fans, in an extreme case, fans would become anti-fans.

While being a rapidly growing and exported industry of South Korea, issues of emphasizing gender roles and stereotypes is beginning to influence the people exposed to mainstream K-Pop. This page will discuss K-Pop industry's emphasis on gender norms, stereotypes, and its relation to feminism, which is currently a counter-culture in South Korea.

Gender Stereotypes in K-Pop

Beauty Standards

Kwanghee, ZE:A member: openly shares plastic surgery experience.

Following the beauty standard, many K-Pop artists (both girl and boy groups) have plastic surgery before their debut stage. Plastic surgery was much more common in girl group members in the past, but is now common in both girl and boy groups. In the past, history of plastic surgery would often be criticized by the general public for not being "natural", while the expectation of beauty standard remained high. Now, many artists who openly share their plastic surgery experience and even use it as a way of humour.

Scholars state popularity of K-pop, featuring flawless appearance of Korean celebrities in media, is likely to negatively affect South Korean women’s body image and health, and encourage modification of physical characteristics to similar features of K-pop stars. In order to cope with such issues, many young Korean women and men are looking to improve their appearances through various surgical procedures. However, study concludes although South Korean participants showed greater acceptance to cosmetic surgery in general, US participants' attitudes towards their favourite celebrities had a positive relation to acceptance of cosmetic surgery. Which suggest cultural influences may have a greater impact on one's acceptance of cosmetic surgery, and may perhaps influence them to have cosmetic surgery.

APink, mainstream K-pop female idol group

Girl Groups

Beauty standards are more harsh and widely expected on women. Many criticize K-Pop girl groups seem "flat, one dimensional in comparison to male counterparts", maintain a "hyper feminine" image - either cute or sexy with flawless skin and very slim bodies. It is not just their physical appearance which follow certain standards, but also their image and persona which appear on mass media. Oftentimes, female artists have a fragile, young, innocent, and "virginal" image, some concepts go even further to looking child-like, satisfying fetishes. They are often expected to be either submissive, obedient and innocent or be "sexy", overly exposing body parts and dance provocatively. While many are, and are expected to strictly follow beauty standards, talented female artists are much less recognized for their music compared to male artists.

Boy groups

Male idol group NU'EST member Ren.

Compared to female idol groups, male idols are much less expected to follow beauty norms and the general public seems to accept diversity in their physical appearance. However, in the mainstream, they too are expected to be within gender norms, to be aggressive, manly, and strong, to have hegemonic masculinity. However, there exists an "East-Asian soft masculinity", which departs from males' traditional and modern gender norms. This ideal has essential features of men being more mindful of women, to be softened and are more feminine than have aggressive features, with is contradictory to the Western hegemonic masculinity. Male artists who do follow a Pan-East Asian soft masculinity, can be viewed as challenging the deeply established gender norms in Korea.

Sexualization and Objectification in K-Pop

K-Pop is not the only music genre that contain sexist context. Other Asian genres like C-Pop, J-Pop contains sexism, and sexism is overly presented in Western music as well, especially in American Hip-hop. Music industries in the world all have fair share of this issue.

Past studies have investigated gender-role stereotyping in music videos and other media forms and found that compared to men, women are more likely to be sexually objectified and held to stricter appearance standards. While some K-pop groups and idols appear to challenge traditional gender roles through their "androgynous" imageries (for example, Amber from f(x), Jo Kwon from 2AM, and Lee Hong-gi from F.T. Island) and encourage more "egalitarian" gender attitudes, most of mainstream K-pop artists, particularly girl groups, have been conforming to common stereotypes.

Major K-Pop girl group, Girl's Generation.

Pužar (2011) uses dollification to describe this fantasy narrative of women being objectified into sexy-yet-submissive dolls in K-pop. In the lyrics, choreography, and music videos of the most representative mainstream girl group, Girls’ Generation, scholars argue that "although they do not perform in a way that conforms to westernized sexiness, their hypergirlish-femininity reaffirms the conventional femininity to the global audience," which prioritizes submissiveness, fragility, pureness, and cuteness to conform to the "patriarchal expectation" of Korean womanhood.

Along with sexual objectification and dollification, another issue regarding female artists in K-pop that scholars and fans are often concerned about is lookism. Subject to extremely narrow beauty standards set by the industry, K-pop idols, particularly female idols, have been struggling to create and maintain their facial and bodily perfection, which usually involves endless dieting, regular skincare, and plastic, cosmetic surgery. Without a doubt, females are not the only ones being sexualized and subjected to lookism in K-pop. Many male idols are also often asked to show off their chocolate abs for the viewing pleasure of their female fans and are held to strict standards of an ideal body.

Music, Music videos, and Choreography

Both in Western and East-Asian music industry, sexualization and objectification of women was easily observed in male artists and in female artists' music, in its music videos and lyrical content. In male artist's music videos, to emphasize male empowerment, they often use female back-up dancers or models as if these women are worshipping and wanting them. The visual representation of male's popularity seems to require women's strong desire for men, looking as if they desperately want men's attention.

Feminism in South Korea

Current Perception of Feminism

Currently in South Korea, feminism movement is still a counter-culture. Many articles say negative views on feminism come from the country's deeply rooted patriarchal culture, and from Confucianism. Along with this, the negative views often come from wrongly established image of Feminism on internet and social media by extremists and radical feminists promoting pure hatred towards men. Feminism is defined to be "the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes". Some extreme feminist groups in South Korea emphasize women are oppressed and unequal in all systems, including societal pressures to follow beauty standards, and are subject to appearance discriminations, but do not really stand for women's rights or promote on equality of all genders.

With the counter-culture still present in Korea, many K-Pop artists are criticized and called down by the negative viewers of feminism. Many female artists are harshly criticized by these people for calling out for feminist actions or even just for showing a hint of their knowledge of feminism.

There is also recent disruptions in South Korean entertainment industry from #MeToo. Industry radically facing introspection by #MeToo actions of top stars, but still yet to have an active movement in the industry.

Although many male idols are challenging deeply rooted gender norms on masculinity, female artists still struggle to break the gender norms placed on them. The entertainment industry is still conservative in female artists' looks and "angelic persona", to display flawless and feminine looks through make-up and "pretty" clothes continuously following up-to-date trends.

Examples

APink member Na-Eun Son

Female idol group F(x) member, Amber.

This member posted a picture of herself holding her phone in a seemingly innocuous Zadig & Voltaire case that read “Girls Can Do Anything”. Na-Eun was criticized for "intentionally promoting" feminist ideals. When the public opinion started to heat up, her agency publicly stated it was a gift from the brand, but Na-Eun had to delete the picture in the end.

Red Velvet member Irene

Irene read Nam-Joo Cho's best selling fiction on casual sexism of South Korean society. Some fans claimed they no longer support her for reading feminist novel, even uploaded videos of themselves burning Irene's pictures. While South Korea's male president JaeIn Moon and many male stars and artists like Jae-Suk You and BTS RM claimed to have read the book, they did not have to go through such major fan drop-outs or criticisms.

F(X) member Amber

In such conservative environment of Korea's entertainment industry, Amber is one of the only female artists who took to social media that herself and her fellow loved ones have also gone through sexual harassment. Maintaining short hair cuts, less emphasizing femininity and freely expressing opinions, she is an inspiration for people to be true to themselves, rather than restrict oneself to follow society's expectations and norms.