Sex as Power in the South Korean Military

(Source: anja_johnson)







Highlights of the results include (all emphases mine):



(Source: anja_johnson)





As reported by the perpetrators (p. 1033):


Reflecting on the discrepancies, Kwon et al. found that:








Moreover, perpetrators:






(Source: Journey to Perplexity)


But continuing with why:




({2-365} Tick Tock by Dee’lite)

But what to make of all this?




(Band of Brothers by The U.S. Army Photostream)









22 thoughts on “Sex as Power in the South Korean Military

  1. Another great and informative post. It’s one thing to assume stuff like this happens, but another when you can actually see numbers as to how prevalent it is.

    It’s a shame, really, that this happens, because sexual abuse and violence is an endless cycle. Someone loses power from being abused and tries to regain it by becoming an abuser, the very thing they hate so much. As much as I take pride in the sacrifices my forefathers have made to ensure I can live in a free democratic society, I must admit that the applications of power and sometimes lax policies regarding acceptable and unacceptable behaviour need to be changed in the military organizations of some (if not all) countries.

    There was a story a few years ago in Canada where a soldier drowned himself (or had accidentally drowned, I can’t seem to find the story at the moment) after being hazed by superiors and when he was in the water, noone did anything to help him.

    There’s also another news article about a soldier seeking government action after severe hazing he encountered. That story can be read here:

    • Thanks. One of those rare cases where on the one hand it’s good to have actual numbers, but also bad in that they confirm the stereotype. Still, the necessary first step towards dealing with a problem is acknowledging that it exists.

      Like you say, a strong theme that emerges is cycle of being abused and then abusing. But one worrying point to add to that in the Korean context, is the number of people who see their roles as authority figures as not so much opportunities to break that cycle, but more to treat inferiors as badly as they were once treated, a “reward” for tolerating abuse from their own superiors earlier.

      Sounds like a generalization and complete exaggeration of course, but then I think only to people who’ve never lived in Korea really, and I’ll always remember the freshman students I taught in my first year here, inordinately angry that their major was being phased out at their university (no more freshman classes in that major the next year). When I asked why, I was told that it was because it meant they wouldn’t have any freshmen to pick on and do various duties for them and so on themselves when they became sophomores and juniors etc., let alone MA & PhD students.

      • That’s an interesting point about students and military alike hoping for a chance to deal out damage as they had once been dealt. Do you think that there is a general vindictiveness among the Korean population. It sounds almost like a tit-for-tat society. Instead of trying to get over one’s behaviour or seriously look at the cycles involved, they just give into emotion and remedy pain by dishing it out.

        Although I understand that young adults and children are “scientifically-speaking” (up until mid-twenties in some studies) not fully developed in their reasoning faculties, but I’m surprised that freshman students would jump at the opportunity to haze other students. I would have thought they would just let it go.

        I know the societies are almost incomparable, but when I went to high-school and university, the whole atmosphere of masculine competition and trying to “prove something” just went out the door. People just moved the hell on from such behaviour, except for emotionally troubled individuals. <—– NOTE

        Perhaps Korea has to look deeper into itself to see the troubling and possibly far too common trend of male aggression.

        • The freshmen being angry at not having other freshmen to lord over, at least, was just reported to me by a few students moaning about in my class (and 10 years ago at that), so I’m not sure how accurate or representative it is.

          I’m pretty certain of the fact that Masters students here though, do the vast majority of their supervisors’ day to day work though, like marking undergraduate essays, even much of their research (for which they’ll receive no credit), as well as mundane things like making coffee, cleaning the office, and picking up his or her dry-cleaning.

          Sucks to be the MA student of course, but I can sympathize a little with students completely used to life like that and contemplating having to do everything for themselves with no helpers later on.

          That’s just between professors and Masters students though, don’t know what was involved in relationships between different years of undergraduate students; hell, that there’s any duties due from younger ones to older ones may just be in the latter’s heads really. But regardless, bear in mind that unlike in Western universities, Korean students tend to from friendships with and do all classes with the same group of students doing their major that they came in with (ie freshmen bio with freshmen bio, sophomore computing with sophomore computing etc. etc.), divisions compounded by Koreans’ habit of never referring to anybody as simply their “friend,” but rather “senior” or “junior” depending on their age.

          Hell, kinda glad I didn’t go to a Korean university…

  2. In the first table it states that there was 1 victim for forced masturbation and then 24 witnesses?

    I stopped reading there as I think there may be other inaccuracies and its one long ass article.

    • It isn’t an inaccuracy: of the people interviewed, 1 person reported that he personally was the victim of forced masturbation, and 24 witnessed other people being the victims of it. Perhaps if you had a longer attention span you might have realized this.

      Probably there were more direct victims, but they were reluctant to reveal it, for reasons explained in the text.

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  4. Absolutely stunning post, James.

    This is one of your better ones, which is saying something because you have written many fantastic posts.

    I thoroughly enjoy your writing, perspective and this blog.


  5. Wow, very informative post. From what you posted, it’s not just sexuality and military rank issues going on here, but class relations as well. Officers picking on rich kids and such, simply because they were (presumably) from a wealthier background. The Korean military needs some serious reform!

    • Actually, class and other issues of privledge are very important, and some people theorize that one reason student protests were often met with such violence on the part of police and soldiers during the 80’s was that the ranks were filled with young men from the countryside who were mostly denied opportunities to do things like go to college, so class issues aggrivated and increased the violence of the encounters.

      I’ll ask my boyfriend and host brother about their time in the military, although both their experiences seem to have been atypical.

  6. Reading this makes me glad that we don’t have national service here!

    We already here some “interesting” things (ie horrible, bizarre, and WTF) which happen from time to time.

  7. I’m sort of surprised that the interviewees reported “hugging” as sexual abuse, because in a country where physical contact between men is not deemed so homosexual…..

    • When the hugging is not wanted, I guess that’s where the abuse part comes in. It’s one thing to hug a friend, but another to have a military superior you only met a few months ago do it. Besides, a military superior takes advantage of his/her position to do this, whereas a friend usually doesn’t have the authority to get away with such things, so when it’s done, it’s usually allowed because the person is a friend.

  8. Hmm, is hugging, touching in general considered more normal in Asian countries? I’m not sure I would consider the hugging, kissing (which seems odd anyway) or touching necessarily to be sexual abuse. Definitely, its harassment, but is it sexual in nature?

    Ah, and this caught my attention. “Among perpetrators, 83% had experienced sexual violence in the military when they had been lower ranked soldiers. This feature of high number of perpetrators having previously experienced victimization themselves could be seen as the most unique feature of sexual violence among men in the military.”

    Like Curtis was saying, it is an endless cycle unless greater efforts are made to address and educate people about this problem.

    • I admit that I too am a little puzzled by all the hugging: I do accept that it is abuse in a literal sense at least, just like – as far as I know – simply touching someone can legally be considered assault, and I also accept that it is abuse for the reasons Curtis gives too.

      However, I still find it very difficult to imagine how hugging someone that doesn’t want to it can be an effective means of demonstrating one’s authority over them to others, and their masculinity as a whole. Or in other words, while that narrative certainly works for the other forms of abuse, I’m struggling to view forced hugging in the same terms. Perhaps there are indeed cultural overtones to hugging, hinted at by HiExpat, that weren’t really addressed by the authors?

      Regardless, while the other forms of abuse seem self-explanatory, I guess the article should really have provided a definition of forced hugging at least, and elaborated more on what occurred and what it implied exactly.

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  10. Hmmm was regular skinship taken into account… ? The results would be very different if the people giving the information were asked to describe the sexual abuse then the answers were documented versus being asked “were you hugged” but hugging and physical contact is different in Korea than in North American cultures…. you don’t have to apologize when bumping into strangers and friends do things like shoulder touching and leaning on each other and such… But if skinship was dealt with and the results are accurately reported as not skinship but sexual abuse then I can see how hugging can be an assertion of power. You’re forcing a level of intimacy that hasn’t been consented to.

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