Virginia Review of Asian Studies
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Brief essays on a variety of topics by editor Daniel A. Métraux
THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION IN SOUTH KOREA: BENEFITS AND RISKS
Whenever I teach my course on Modern Korea, I place a major emphasis on the 1987 Democracy Movement that brought momentous change. This revolution brought massive changes to almost every aspect of Korean life and reinvigorated the nation’s already robust economy. Koreans are now free to choose their own destinies and elect their own leaders. The greatest change brought on by the 1987 revolution, however, is the greatly enhanced role of Korean women. While they remain in the minority in many of the traditional professions, the transition to democracy has provided Korean women with access to better jobs and opportunities to pursue their own dreams.They have taken a quantumleap forward and are now far better prepared to determine their own destinies.
There are, however, several problems brought on by this development including the world’s lowest birthrate and a rapidly aging population. This combination could in the future threaten South Korea’s rapid economic expansion since an older population and fewer younger workers might mean a future drop in economic productivity and critical tax revenues.
When I walked through Seoul in the spring of 1987, I was startled to see so many young and middle-aged women participants in demonstrations declaring their fervent desire for democracy and greater freedom to determine their own futures. I see the fruit of the revolution today in my classes at MaryBaldwinCollege where eight to ten Korean college students spend full academic year learning about American culture. These students all have clear professional goals, a strong adventuresome spirit, and a strong determination to work hard and succeed. They represent a Korea that will be even stronger and wealthier in the future.
The Democracy Movement quickly developed measures and attitudes that enhanced the status of women. Before 1987 Confucian tradition had restricted the rights of women to inherit property and to have access to their children in case of divorce, but women’s organizations after 1987 took direct political action to confront legislators. They told them that they would urge women to vote for candidates that supported women’s rights and would oppose those candidates who did not.
The result was that the National Assembly passed a series of laws that enhanced women’s rights, including the Equal Employment Law passed in 1987 and the new Family Law of 1987 that improved the rights of women in the family. In 1999 the Assembly passed the Law to Prohibit and Regulate Gender Discrimination and it created the Ministry of Gender Equality to promote greater participation of women in social and economic activities. These laws plus the growing presence of Western ideas of gender equality went a long way to improve the status of women.
The most obvious change in Korea since 1987 is the vastly increased role of women throughout society and in the economy. Increased educational opportunities and the rapid transition to democracy have brought many more women into the work force and in positions of authority. While they remain in the minority in many of the traditional professions, their presence has taken a transition to democracy have provided women with access to better jobs and opportunities to pursue their own dreams. A clear indication of this trend is the vastly increased workforce participation of women from 36.6 percent to 50.3 percent in 2006. In 1990 only 7.7 percent of women held managerial or administrative jobs, but that number jumped to almost 19 percent by 2006. In 1985, only 15.2 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-one attended college, but by 2004 half the same age group was in college.Further, in 2006, 44.7 of people receiving master’s degrees were women as were 27.3 of doctoral recipients.[1]
My own students reflect these trends. As they have begun graduating from SungshinUniversity in Seoul, about half have set their sights on graduate school while all of the rest are doing internships, are working, or are actively looking for work. As one of these students noted in 2011, “I want a career that will combine work for the accounting division of a major corporation or government ministry. I studied in the U.S. to familiarize myself with the West and to improve my English and I hope in time to return in a few years for graduate work in finance and accounting.”
Negative Consequences of Social Change
The improved status of women, however, has caused a new set of problems for Koreans. Gender equality has boosted the professional skills and career aspirations and potential for women all over Korea, but these gains are coming face to face with an older corporate culture that is not used to the rise of women and which often marginalizes mothers or pregnant women altogether. Despite new laws proclaiming the equality of women in the work place, there is still visible discrimination in terms of pay and job advancement. In a country where people work longer hours every week and get less sleep than any other place in the developed world, women are still deprived. When they have jobs that are also held by men, they make 38 percent less money than men, the largest gender gap in the developed world.[2] Further, when women become pregnant, they face pressure to leave their jobs or to not take a legally guaranteed maternity leave.[3]
Sadly, it appears that women who try to combine work and family find themselves saddled with feelings of guilt and the sense that they have too little time to accomplish anything. Women feel guilty when they are forced to neglect the education of their children, when they cannot meet their many family obligations, and when they cannot attend to their hardworking husbands. One of my students noted, “My mother must work a full time job, but there is so much stress because she gets too tired to attend to her duties at home.”
Korean corporations do little to accommodate working mothers. South Korean law permits a full year of subsidized parental leave, but due to severe peer pressure, I am told that very few working mothers take time off. This and other developments foster a situation where women in South Korea and drastically postpone marriage and motherhood. A survey of twenty-five young Korean women who have attended Mary Baldwin over the past three years indicates that while many of them have boyfriends back home, they plan to work and pursue their careers upon graduation. Only one spoke of getting married in her mid-twenties, but the others made some vague reference to getting married in their early or mid-thirties. Upon their return to Seoul and their graduation from college they will join the surging number of unmarried Korean women in their twenties and thirties.
There also appears to be some degree of discrimination against young college educated women seeking their first jobs. According to 2010 figures released by Statistics Korea, the number of female college graduates without jobs hit a record high of 196,000 in February - a whopping 57.5 percent growth from the same month a year earlier, when the number stood at 124,000, and around 40 percent of the 459,000 women unemployed last month.[4]
A disturbing consequence is that South Korea must contend with a new issue: decreasing childbirth rates. As the number of women who do not marry, or marry young, soars, the average number of births per woman continues to decline. In 1995, only a quarter of the women between 25 and 34 were unmarried, but that number soared to half in 2005. South Korea’s fertility rate is the lowest in the entire world at 1.19 in 2010. Therefore, the average family size decreased from 4.5 in the early 1980s to 2.9 in 2007.[5]
At the same time that the birthrate is in rapid decline, the life expectancy of South Koreans is rapidly increasing. In 2010, the population over 65 was 11 percent, but this number is expected to rise to nearly 40 percent by 2050. During the same period the estimated population is expected to decline from nearly 17 percent to nine percent and the average age of the total population is expected to rise from 38 to 57.[6]
Another casualty of the times is a rapidly increasing divorce rate. The number of households in South Korea that are headed by divorced adults has passed one million, according to a new government report. It says the number of divorced householders hit 1.26 million in 2010, accounting for about 7 percent of all Korean households. More than 80 percent of these divorced households are headed by people aged over 40, with 57 percent of them headed by women. This is a steep jump of 40 percent since 2005, but part of a trend that shows the divorce rate skyrocketing since the early 1990′s, when it was virtually unheard of and very much frowned upon. Divorce rate in Korea are far higher than in Japan and the rest of Asia.[7]
The demography of South Korea has changed drastically in the past two to three decades, benefitting women after a long history of male domination. The negative consequences of these changes, however, could threaten South Korea’s economic growth in the future. Means must be found to encourage working women to marry earlier and to have children without fears of losing their jobs and the critical income that comes with their work. And as South Korea’s population ages, there must be added attention to building care facilities, retirement homes and nurseries to accommodate the aged.
COLOMA CALIFORNIA WHERE JAMES MARSHALL’S DISCOVERY SET OFF THE GOLD RUSH AND BROUGHT CHINESE AND JAPANESE CIVILIZATION TO NORTH AMERICA
It was an exciting moment in my life, a cool sunny October day in 2011 when I approached a small gulley dug in the ground amidst some scrub trees growing alongside the American River in the hamlet of Coloma California, about an hour’s drive from Sacramento. There was a small discolored sign simply stating that on this exact spot in this man-made sluice by the river one James Marshall discovered gold. It was with a tremendous sense of exhilaration that I stood on the very spot where history was made—that rapidly led to the populating of California and the start of the massive immigration of Chinese and Japanese to California. I also felt it was odd that although California had made the whole village of Coloma into a state historical park, there was nothing more than a tiny sign at the spot where one of the great events of American history actually began.
The story of Marshall’s amazing discovery is very well known. Early in 1848 James Marshall was busy building a saw mill for his employer, Captain John Sutter, using water from the South Fork of the AmericanRiver.His discovery of gold in the sluice for the mill triggered the famous California Gold Rush and the admittance of the former Mexican province as a state only two years later.Marshall’s discovery also brought on the first mass migration ofChinese to North America and played a crucial role in starting Japanese immigration here as well. Indeed, Coloma is indeed the birthplace of Chinese and Japanese civilization in the New World
The spark that ignited the gold rush brought hordes of Chinese and a stream of Japanese first to Coloma and then later to the region as a whole..There were only fifty-four Chinesein California in 1849, butby 1855 there were 20,000 and by 1876 there were 151,000Chinesein the United States, 116,000 of them in California.
The rate and size ofChineseimmigration was rapid even in comparison to the general increase in the new state’s population.Mid-nineteenth century was wracked by incredible hunger and poverty due to the recent Opium War with Britain and the subsequent Taping Rebellion which led to the death of over twenty millionChineseand the destruction of much of the nation’s prime farm land.Shipmasters, hoping to gain profits by filling their ships with fare-paying passengers, spread the news of California’s great wealth potential.Tens of thousands ofChinesein southeastern China responded by making the difficult voyage to North America. Japan too was wracked by civil war as forces loyal to the declining Tokugawa shogunate met defeat to the armies of the Meiji Emperor in 1867 and 1868. Refugees from that war also found their way to Coloma.
Many incomingChinesemade their way toColomaas quickly as possible.While there is no exact count of how many set up camp near Sutter’s mill, a huge Chinesesettlement grew up in an area of more than fifty acres along what is now Route 49 from what is now the center of the historic site down to the picnic area almost a half mile away.. As the region’splacer mines petered out and were abandoned by other miners,Chinese miners took them over. Their patience and frugality allowed them to make a profit from these supposedly "exhausted" placers.They worked hard, but kept to themselves unlike many of the American miners who spent much of what they earned in liquor and gambling.
Among the most wealthy of the Coloma Chinesewere the many merchants who opened small stores and banks to service the wider community.These businesses offered a wide variety of services including foodstuffs, herbal medicines, banking and postal services, and places for social gatherings.These establishments also served as communications lifelines to the miners’ families back in China.
At first theChinesereceived a fairly mild reaction from the other miners. They often provided basic services as laborers, carpenters and cooks and were respected for their hard work, cleanliness and frugality.But this tolerance began to dissipate in the late 1850s as many Caucasian miners, disappointed over their failure to “strike it rich,” turned their frustrations on Coloma’s Chinesecommunity.
The situation became desperate for theColoma Chinesein 1861.There arose a dispute over the right tomine land under a structure that was serving as a hotel.SomeChinesehad purchased the land, but a group of rowdy Irishmen filed a counter-claim. When the dispute ended up in court with a judge ruling in favor of the Chineseclaim, a drunken mob of Irish led by one James O’Donnell attacked the Chinese community.They killed a fewChineseand wounded many more.Many buildings inColoma’s Chinatown were totally destroyed by fire and vandalism.The town constable brought order by arresting 16 of the rioters a day later, but the damage was done.
TheChinese community survived this initial onslaught, but gradually went into decline as mining operations in the region gradually petered out. As late as 1870 there were 202 Chinese in Coloma, 157 of them miners. However, what was left of the community met its destruction when a fire in 1880 raged through the town.Coloma, like many other California towns in the mid-1800s that had boasted vibrant Chinese communities, was left with only memories.
Two stone buildings that once housedChinesebusinesses survived the fire and today are used as museums.One of them, theWah Hop Store contains an exhibit of a typicalChinesestore during the California gold rush, with authentic artifacts.
The end of mining and the gradual departure of Chinese, however, by no means marked the end of historic Asian settlements in Coloma. For a few years starting in 1869 the Gold Hill section of Coloma was the site of the first Japanese settlement in North America. The history of this Japanese venture is worthy of note.
During the 1860s John Henry Schnell, a German weapons trader and merchant, went to Japan and was employed by the daimyo (lord) of Aizu Wakamatsu (now Fukushima Prefecture north of Tokyo), Matsudaira Katamori. Schnell trained samurai associated with Matsudaira to use western guns and later fought with Matsudaira who supported the faltering Tokugawa shogunate against a superior force of imperial troops supporting what became the Meiji government of Japan. Schell had married a young woman of Matsudaira’s clam known as Oyo who was pregnant in 1868.
Following their defeat Schnell was in a hurry to leave the country. With Matsudaira’s backing, he organized a group of about two dozen colonists from Aizu Wakamatsu that set out to California to hunt for gold and to set up a farm to produce tea and silk in California. They arrived in 1869 and quickly moved to Coloma where they purchased 160 acres and began to farm the land. Drought and other miscalculations doomed the farm from the start and in 1871 Schnell sold his land to one Francis Veerkamp.
A young Japanese girl, Ito Okei, who had come with the Schnell family as a nursemaid, stayed on with the Veerkamp family for a while until she died at age 19.
Her grave remains to this day on the Veerkamp property close to the GoldTrailSchool.
A shrine dedicated to Okei stands near the school and is a popular tourist destination for Japanese tourists to this day.
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When the Luxurious Homestead in Hot Springs Virginia was a Japanese Internment Camp