Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society, Part 1: Their Neo-Confucian Heritage

Different Read of Neo-Confucianism’s ki and the Korean Female Body

The Grand Narrative

Dasepo Naughty Girls 2006(Screen capture from the movie Dasepo Naughty Girls/다세포소녀. Source: martin francisco)

“Koreans are conformist because of their Confucian heritage…yada yada yada”

Even though I’ve chosen to live in Korea a long time, like most expats I often find it to be a frustrating and exasperating place sometimes. That’s not necessarily a criticism, and indeed this love-hate relationship may even be part of it’s charm — certainly my adopted hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, never aroused such strong emotions in me. On the other hand, it does lead to so many one-liners about the place, endlessly repeated by fresh rotations of expats.

But are they always wrong? Don’t some have a grain of truth? To answer, let me examine one that (frankly) I and probably most readers have made at some point in our stay here, but which I personally wouldn’t have been able to justify before I did my research for…

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