In South Korea, short-haired women are harassed as ‘antifeminist’ movement grows
- South Korea is seeing growing online harassment and a recent series of assaults targeting women, especially those with short hair
- Online hate speech against women could be fuelling physical violence against them, says writer who chronicled South Korea’s #MeToo movement
A few weeks ago, South Korean middle school student Lee witnessed a friend with short hair getting harassed by a group of male teenagers on a bus in Yongin city.
“We were sitting on the bus on our way home. They approached her, giggling and said: ‘Are you a feminist?’” Lee said, requesting to be known by her surname. “She then moved to the door to get some distance from them, but they followed her, and tapped her on the hands as if they were forcing her to let go of the bus grab handles she was holding.”
Lee and her friend found the situation intimidating, but nobody around them said anything or tried to intervene. Lee said she heard the boys using terms she could not understand, which she assumed are widely used in male-dominated online communities.
The cases of Lee and Kim bear similarity with a recent late-night assault by a man in his 20s against a short-haired woman working at a convenience store. The attacker identified himself as a member of the antifeminist Man on Solidarity group, and roughed up the victim on the assumption that her short hair meant she was a feminist, who he believed “deserves to be assaulted”.
