"Sexuality and Public Politics": Temporality of the #MeToo Movement in Contemporary South Korea

1. Introduction

The term, #MeToo, was first introduced by African-American activist Tarana Burke when she coined the phrase in 2006. The #MeToo campaign emerged when American actress Alyssa Milano "encouraged women who had experienced sexual harassment or assault in public domains to share their stories on social media by posting the term as a hashtag."² Its slogan, "Brave women who broke the silence," has exposed the perpetrators of sexual assault in their pasts, using the "politics of outing" to prevent further damage in hopes of keeping him out of the same position.

The #MeToo movement aimed to uncover the incidence of sexual harassment and aggression in public realms by persuading sufferers to communicate their ordeals on social media.³

Though global, the South Korean #MeToo campaign is local in character. In South Korea, for example, feminist activists have translated "#MeToo movement" directly into Korean as mit'u undong. It has led to numerous women joining in the form of cheering, legal support, and series of revelations which we call the "With You" movement. Prior to the #MeToo movement entering feminist and public discourse in 2018, the hashtag #my_sexual_abuse_in_00 (#00_kye_nae_sŏngp'ongnyŏk) began trending online in 2016, prompting Kwon-Kim (2018) to argue that the popularity of these hashtags awakened a collective, public (occasionally anonymized) method of sharing personal experiences.⁴ Feminist scholars and activists point to this hashtag as defining the start of a "revitalization" or "reboot" of the movement against sexual violence in Korea.⁵ Without these earlier hashtags laying the foundation of women sharing their personal stories collectively online, #MeToo could not have gained the wide popularity it reached in 2018.

South Korea's version of the global campaign is breaking through social taboos on issues that have been previously hushed up. The turning point came in January 2018, in a televised interview with the public prosecutor, Seo Ji-hyeon. In the televised interview (JTBC Newsroom), Seo accused her senior prosecutor and Ministry of Justice official of groping her while attending a funeral in 2010. Her public revelation became a rallying cry. Prosecutors are the elite of South Korean society. Korean women started to think, if it can happen to her, and she can speak up, well why can't I? They have traditionally faced mockery for bringing up these issues; female victims of sexual harassment or assault have had to overcome suspicion, even as men in power try to silence or tarnish them.

The #MeToo movement has drastically changed the concept of sexual violence. It is not simply a matter of unwanted sexual contact between men and women, but a matter of gender inequality that has deeply misguided and undervalued women's labor in the workplace and the public domain. A string of South Korean women has come forward to report sexual abuse by prominent men, including politicians, professors, prosecutors, theater directors, and athletic coaches. An Hee-jung, the highest-profile South Korean political figure from the progressive camp, was publicly accused of a sex crime by his former secretary, Kim Ji-eun. An originally offered a lukewarm apology to her for assaulting her, but has since rescinded his apology. On August 14, 2018, the courts cleared him of charges of sexual assault, but on February 1, 2019, Seoul's High Court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison. Ko Un, who has often been named as a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been accused by fellow poet Choi Young-mi of targeting vulnerable young women who did not dare to blow the whistle on his "sexual indulgence." Lee Youn-taek, a renowned stage director and writer, was accused by sixteen women from his theater company of sexual violence including rape and molestation. South Korean competitive sports have also been hit by a growing #MeToo movement, which highlights deep-rooted problems over a brutal training culture and highly hierarchical relationships between coaches and athletes.

Sexuality has emerged as a major issue in South Korea, one that has shaken the...