ARE South Korean Women really SEXY?
My personal vote is: Ohhh yeahhh....definitely! :)
Follow the link and then let's share some thoughts in the comments section below!
PSY - Gangnam Style
And here are just
few of the existing insights on the common ideas and perceptions about women from the aforementioned
geographical area…which from my point of view, are rather outdated and don not
correspond to the realities… and a modern South Korean woman is way more
emancipated, independent, strong, sexy and controlling her own destiny…
But here again,
who am I to judge… I would be more interested in starting a discussion with you
all here…by sharing our thoughts and opinions on the matter. What I'm also interested in is how is their overall sex life currently developing and what (if) can we learn anything here? :)
As such, history
tells us that the traditional role of a Korean woman was one of submissiveness.
The Korean culture was (and to a large extent still is) hierarchical and the
woman’s role is one of maintaining harmony in the household and avoiding
conflict. Her primary goal was to be a good daughter, a good wife and a good
mother. She was expected to sacrifice herself for her family, similarly to
almost all cultures around the world in the not so distant past.
Although increasingly less frequently over the last 20 or so years, when a woman married, she accompanied her husband to live in her in-laws house and spent much of her life caring for her in-laws and her husbands’ needs. These days the in-laws may come and live in their son’s home or even a daughter and her husband, but many are opting to live on their own and visit their children/grandchildren as opposed to living together.
A woman was expected to produce sons and even today may be held responsible if the children are all girls. To have many sons was highly regarded because they brought wives (workers and breeders) into the family. Since parents lived with their sons’ until their death; power was equated with the number of sons in a family and it was considered "shameful" to depend on daughters.
"Blessed with boys" was a familiar refrain to those that had only daughters. It was common practice for a man who had no sons to take a concubine, whose children would become assets to the 'first wife'. The conbines name would not be listed in the family register, only that of her children should their father decided to register them.
Although increasingly less frequently over the last 20 or so years, when a woman married, she accompanied her husband to live in her in-laws house and spent much of her life caring for her in-laws and her husbands’ needs. These days the in-laws may come and live in their son’s home or even a daughter and her husband, but many are opting to live on their own and visit their children/grandchildren as opposed to living together.
A woman was expected to produce sons and even today may be held responsible if the children are all girls. To have many sons was highly regarded because they brought wives (workers and breeders) into the family. Since parents lived with their sons’ until their death; power was equated with the number of sons in a family and it was considered "shameful" to depend on daughters.
"Blessed with boys" was a familiar refrain to those that had only daughters. It was common practice for a man who had no sons to take a concubine, whose children would become assets to the 'first wife'. The conbines name would not be listed in the family register, only that of her children should their father decided to register them.
During the Koryo
and early Choson Dynasties, it was customary for the married couple to
live in the wife's parents' household. This arrangement suggests that the
status of women was then higher than it was later during most of the Choson
Dynasty. Neo-Confucian orthodoxy
dictated that the woman, separated from her parents, had a primary duty of
providing a male heir
for her husband's family. According to the custom, once married, a woman had to
leave her parents' household permanently and then occupy the lowest position in
her husband's family. She was often abused and mistreated by both her mother-in-law
and sisters-in-law--at
least until the birth of a son gave her some status in her husband's family.
The relationship between wife and husband was often, if not usually, distant,
aptly described by the Korean proverb: "By day, like seeing a
stranger; by night, like seeing a lover." Choson Dynasty law prohibited
widows from remarrying, though a similar prohibition was not extended to
widowers. Further, the sons and grandsons of widows who defied the ban, like
children of secondary wives, were not allowed to take the civil
service examinations and become scholar-officials.
The duty of a woman to her husband, or rather to her
husband's family, was absolute and unquestionable. In the traditional society,
only men could obtain a divorce. A husband could divorce his spouse if she were
barren—barrenness being defined simply as the inability to bear sons.
Even if a husband did not divorce his wife, he had the right to take a second
wife, although the preferred solution for a man without a son during the Choson
Dynasty was to adopt a son of one of his brothers, if available. The
incompatibility of a wife and her in-laws was another ground for divorce.
In contemporary society, both men and women have the
right to obtain a divorce. Social and economic discrimination, however, make
the lot of divorced women more difficult. The husband may still demand custody
of the children, although a revision of the Family Law in 1977 made it more
difficult for him to coerce or to deceive his wife into agreeing to an unfair
settlement. The rate of divorce in South Korea is increasing rapidly. In 1975
the number of divorces was 17,000. In the mid-1980s, the annual number of
divorces was between 23,000 and 26,000, and in 1987 there were 45,000 divorces.
The tradition of total female submission persisted in
Korean villages until relatively recent times. One Korean scholar who came from
the conservative Chungcheong region recalled that when a high school
friend died of sickness during the 1940s, his young bride committed suicide. Her act was commemorated in her own
and the surrounding communities as an outstanding example of devotion to duty.
Traditionally, men and women were strictly segregated,
both inside and outside the house. Yangban women
spent most of their lives in seclusion in the women's chamber. It is said that
the traditional pastime of nolttwigi, a game of jumping up and down on a seesaw-like
contraption, originated among bored women who wanted to peek over the high
walls of their family compounds to see what the outside world was like.
Economic necessity gave women of the lower classes some freedom as they
participated in farm work and sometimes earned supplemental income through
making and selling things.
