When former South Korean president Park Geun-hye was elected the country’s first female president five years ago, she won the largest-ever vote share of the country’s democratic era.
However, after her term ended in impeachment and disgrace, only one of the 13 candidates to succeed her is a woman.
Analysts say the near all-male panel — epitomized by rows of campaign posters dominated by middle-aged men in dark suits — demonstrates the enduring patriarchal nature of South Korean society.
Photo: AFP
The only exception is Sim Sang-jeung, a former labor activist who is the left-wing Justice Party’s candidate.
Park — the daughter of the late South Korean president Park Chung-hee — was in March ousted from power over a massive corruption and influence-peddling scandal centered on a secret female confidante that prompted millions to take to the streets calling for her ouster.
She is detained and awaiting trial for charges, including abuse of power and bribery, and the public outrage unleashed a storm of sexist remarks online such as: “Don’t even dream about having a female president for the next 100 years.”
Sim condemns what she calls a sexual double standard, saying no one took issue with the gender of two previous presidents — both men — who were imprisoned in the 1990s for their part in crushing the Gwangju Uprising against the military-backed dictatorship.
“We had two other ex-presidents jailed for slaughtering countless citizens who were protesting against army rule, but not a single person said: ‘No more male presidents,’” she said in a campaign speech.
Park is a conservative who did little for women’s rights while in office and female politicians struggling with the glass ceiling say her humiliating downfall has done nothing to help.
“I’ve seen recently many male voters, or even male politicians, saying: ‘This is why women should never be in politics,’” said Han Jeoung-ae, a two-term lawmaker with the center-left Democratic Party.
“We have no shortage of male politicians brought down by corruption and other crimes, but no one ever frames it as the failure of entire male politicians like they do over women,” she told reporters.
Female politicians are still a relative rarity in South Korea, accounting for only 17 percent of parliamentary representatives, ranking it 30th among the 35 nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
That is an advance on the 6 percent of 2000, but it is still “extremely hard” for female politicians to secure electoral nominations, said Nam In-soon, a Democratic lawmaker, who is pushing for parties to be legally obliged to select women as at least 30 percent of their candidates.
“We have made some progress over the years, but most internal networking within a political party’s leadership is still based on the good old boys’ club,” she said. “We still have this hard, thick glass ceiling all over our head.”
Park rose to power largely due to the popularity of her father, who remains widely revered by older voters who benefited from rapid growth under his 1961-1979 iron-fisted rule.
South Korea remains a deeply conservative society in many respects and, along with Japan, is seen as one of the worst places for working women among economically advanced nations.
The two Asian neighbors were this year ranked at the bottom of the Economist’s glass ceiling index, which measures gender equality at work among 29 advanced nations.
Sim has no chance of victory at the ballot box, with South Korea’s leading pollsters both putting her in fourth place in the final surveys of the campaign, on 7.3 percent according to Realmeter and 8 percent for Gallup Korea, far behind Democratic Party front-runner Moon Jae-in.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
RSS