Modern Korea: The Age of Beasts

“We endured gender discrimination for a long time, and now we’re starting to speak out.” Sound familiar? This is from a KBS talk show taped sometime in the 1980s/1990s, when the Republic of Korea was faced with a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, economic growth and social reforms had changed the situation of women in principle – but not in practice, as White Slavery was rampant and rape a widely downplayed crime, while men behaved grosso modo as if nothing had happened and blah-blah’ed about women as flowers and some such.