Notes From Korea

Last month, Irene and Lily went to South Korea to report on a twin set of robotics conferences. Here are a few notes from their travels.

On Korean Beauty

Irene:

Hallyu — the “Korean Wave” of pop culture that began spreading internationally in the 2000s — taught my generation of Asian Americans/Canadians how to style ourselves. We grew up with few relatable points of reference in mainstream Western culture, as our physical features rarely aligned with American beauty standards. K-pop built an alternative, affordable framework during our coming-of-age, and it was impossible to miss its influence even if you (like me) never consumed much of the music or TV dramas.

Goryeo (the royal dynasty that ruled the Korean Peninsula from 918 to 1392) began sending women by the hundreds as tributary gifts to the Chinese empire during the Tang dynasty. The Middle Kingdom, from then on, routinely scoured the Peninsula for beauties. The third Ming emperor, Yongle, was recorded to have favored a concubine surnamed Kwon from Joseon (the dynasty that followed Goryeo). After Kwon died at the age of 20 in 1410, the Yongle Emperor sentenced perhaps thousands of women from his harem to death on suspicion of poisoning Kwon, according to one Korean chronicle.

Japan’s colonial rule forced between 50,000 and 200,000 Korean girls and women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” for the army. After the Second World War, another vast sex trade sprang up around American-led army bases across South Korea, with girls and women trafficked by their own government to provide “morale” to UN troops and bring in millions of foreign money for the economy.

Beauty remains one of Korea’s most prominent exports. Multilingual advertisements for plastic surgery sprawl throughout Seoul’s affluent Gangnam neighborhood. There is seemingly an Olive Young on every street corner and endless high-end options in shining department stores. The industry works hard to conceal the dark historical context behind Korea’s coerced preoccupation with female beauty, while continuing to push what sociologist Rosalind Gill calls the “surveillant gaze”: symbolic images of measuring tapes, cameras, and microscopes that incite women to constantly monitor and regulate themselves. K-pop labels routinely debut girls as young as fourteen to appeal to teens, both locally and internationally. Appearance-based discrimination is endemic; journalist Elise Hu writes in Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital that for Korean women in the 21st century, looking pretty is ...