Misogyny and the Politics of Affect in South Korea

Abstract

This article traced the discourse of misogyny that has caused intense controversy in South Korea recent years. Hatred, which is global phenomena in neoliberal era is also the affect that were amplified by the memory of hostility of cold war being strongly specified south Korean society. In this paper, we examined the process of amplification and conversion of misogyny in south Korea, through the several events that occurred after 2015.

The controversy of South Korean's misogyny which inspired by the case of Gangnam station women killing, created a new feminist group called Megarian. Megarian adopted a mirroring strategy, which is not just a copy of the original hatred but a critical reflection how exactly the original was covered by discrimination and disgust. They subverted gender norms by overthrowing a hate speech and daily pornography by men. Megarian had an explosive ripple effect, as a result of resonance of contemporary empathy and feeling of liberation among women.

However, the anti-misogyny movement was exposed to more complex divisions than just conflict of male and female. Especially the response to the LGBT produced a variety of confrontations between the right and left, generation, and religion. For example, the word “pro-north gay” named by the Christian conservative group has condensed hatred and disgust with the inner enemies of Korean society by combining anti-communism and anti-homosexuality. This paper revealed that the hatred to feminism and LGBT is a sign of various ideological conflicts accumulated in south Korean society.