Gender, Abortions, and South Korea

This is an opinion piece. By no means am I completely knowledgeable in this topic. Neither I am asserting myself as an expert on this topic. I simply found it coincidental that this should happen in South Korea as we found it on our own school campus recently and with our recent topics of gender and sexuality in Humanities core.

Protesters hold placards reading "Abolish punishment for abortion" as they protest South Korean abortion laws in Gwanghwamun plaza in Seoul on July 7, 2018. | CNN

On Thursday, South Korea’s Constitutional Court overturned a 66-year-old law that made abortion illegal. South Korea’s 1953 series of abortion laws were implemented as a movement to control its population. According to Cho Eun-Joo, an author on family planning policies in South Korea, abortion was “seen as a normal means of family planning during this time” (Jeong). Moreover, during the 1970s and 80s, the government took a blind eye to the increasing number of abortions occurring because the government told its citizens that “two children are one too many” as South Korea evolved from a poor military dictatorship to a prosperous country. A couple decades later, South Korea’s government once again changed its mind. Recently, the birth rate has fallen to less than one child per woman and abortion has been made to seem “unpatriotic” (Choe).

South Korean women's rights activists welcome the court's decision | Financial Times

The government’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family called for the abortion law’s abolition because it was seldom enforced and because it forced “abortions underground, exposing women to medical accidents”. The Ministry of Justice argued that it is the “state’s duty to protect a fetus’s right to life” (Choe). Regardless, the constitutional court has deemed the law unconstitutional, “violates a woman’s right to choose,” and gave Parliament until 2020 to revise the unjust law (Choe).

Now, this may seem very black and white to many individuals. As a left-leaning moderate, my political, economical, and cultural views are generally more liberal and I would typically argue, yes to pro-choice. Recently on campus there was a group of people that put up anti-abortion signs in between Humanities and ALP. While I believe that everyone has the right to freedom of speech, I also believe in civil discourse - not blasting images of dead fetuses and shaming people that choose to get abortions. The signs’ intention were clearly lost in its impact on the students on campus. However, this topic goes into the grey scale in South Korea.

Gender is the way social roles/relations/ideologies are tied to a person’s perceived sex. Women are supposed to have long hair, shave, do housework, take care of the kids. Men are supposed to have short hair, not be emotional/be rational and logical (Block). The gender roles in South Korea deeply align with these traditional views, leaving the man going out to work to earn money and the woman at home raising the children and taking care of the house. CNN reports that the severe stigma against unmarried mothers/out of marriage in South Korea has contributed to the number of abortions. Moreover, South Koreans have traditionally preferred sons over daughters - leaving couples to sometimes abort their female fetuses illegally (Seo).

South Korean pro-choice supporters hold banners reading “Decriminalize abortions” during a rally in front of the Constitutional Court in Seoul on May 24, 2018 | Huff Post

Activist Hong Yeon-ji, who works at Korea Womenlink center, one of the largest women's activist groups in South Korea, said the current law was "abused by male partners as it penalizes the women who have the operation and the doctors who perform the operation." Moreover, she said she had encountered cases of men threatening to report their partners to the police for having an abortion, either to hurt them when a relationship broke down or to blackmail them for money (Seo).

The main cast of Mr. House Husband | KBS

In recent times, South Korea has been changing the way it perceives gender norms with the introduction of shows such as Mr. House Husband and The Return of Superman that show celebrity men that do housework and take care of the kids. These shows encourage men to take a more active role in the family and house. This is the first step of many that South Korea will hopefully be taking as time progresses towards a more open society and one that is less conservative towards women.