The Grand Narrative

(Photo by jasonkrw)

To recap, back on Tuesday, I discussed an editorial from the Chosun Ilbo about the Lee Myung-bak Adminisration’s plans to merge the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) with the Ministry of Health and Welfare. I refer to that post a lot here, so rather than constantly linking to it I’m going to assume that you’ve read it.

Was it as good for you as it was for me? Now, I know I have a worldwide reputation as a Korean social issues guru, but sorry, I confess that even I wasn’t familiar with the exact histories or purviews of either ministry, so I originally saw no reason to question this statement from the Chosun Ilbo:

…many netizens are calling for the abolition of [MOGEF]. Now even president-elect Lee Myung-bak’s Transition Committee is considering disbanding the ministry, according to its government reorganization plan. A wide difference of opinions clearly exists between those who face the reality of sexual discrimination and those who view reality from their own standpoint. This is the key point of the debate over whether to maintain or abolish the ministry. It is high time that we had a thorough discussion of the issue. It has been exactly 20 years since the ministry was established in 1988 by the president who was elected the previous year (1987). Its founding was actually the fruition of the democratization movement. (italics added)

But then I read the article I give below on this proposed government reorganization from the Korea Times, which said that MOGEF was only three years old, so I finished that last post with by promising to get a third opinion. I honestly wasn’t looking forward to spending my first weekend in Korea poring over dense official ministry texts with my electronic dictionary (the things I’m prepared to do for you guys), but I needn’t have worried: a simple search on Yahoo brought numerous English hits, most notably the ministry’s own English webpage. Naturally as a ministry it does put quite the spin on all of its activities, but it has such a wealth of material and downloadable publications on it that I could easily spend the next month studying it all, and I’m very glad to have found it. It was a bit much to take in all at once though, so instead this speech by Minister Dr. Jang Hajin in New York in July last year provided a more easily digestible introduction.

And despite what the Chosun Ilbo says, I can’t find any mention of a gender-related Ministry of any form being set up in 1988. What I do know is that Korea did ratify the Convention of the the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1984, but little else seems to have happened until the establishment of the 41-member Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs in 1998, which went on to become the Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001, further expanded into MOGEF in 2005 like the Korea Times says. Knowing this, and with all the other mistakes in the Chosun Ilbo’s editorial that I mentioned in the earlier post…is it too much to suspect that the background for the article was simply made up? After all, MOGEF has been targeted in the past because of fake news stories about it produced by its opponents, so the use of such tactics by a supporter may also be nothing new (and shocking only to newbies).

Regardless, what’s most disturbing is that it’s only by chance that I noticed the mistake at all, which makes me worry that everything else I’ve read and blogged about in the English-language press in Korea, the main source of materials for most Korean bloggers, has been equally sloppy and/or misleading. I’m again reminded of Baltimoron’s endeavors to include at least two opposing links in each post, “preferably opposing each other,” and I resolve to do the same from now on.

With that in mind, here is the Korea Times’ take on the same issue:

President-elect Lee Myung-bak’s transition team is formulating a plan for the major realignment of government organizations. A dispute has been simmering over the properness of the possible merging of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family into the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The team has maintained the ministry should be subject to restructuring as part of efforts to slim down the government with many of the ministry’s operations overlapping with those of the Welfare Ministry. The ministry has been cited as the first target whenever it comes to government reorganization. In this context, the next government is likely to refer the ministry’s affairs - about women, nurturing and family - to the Health and Welfare Ministry.

Why is MOGEF always cited as the first target in any government reorganization? By whom? Since when? Surely not the socially progressive but flawed Roh Muh-hyun Administration, which expanded it only two and half years ago…so is the article referring to “conservative” Lee Myung-bak instead?

(Photo swiped from reader’s blog shelooksjustlikethatdeadgirl. Hope that was okay)

Women’s groups have been protesting the move - seven of them led by the Korean Women’s Association United issued a statement saying: “Only three years have passed since the ministry was born. It is deplorable to see attempts to abolish a nascent ministry before it takes firm root.” They called on President-elect Lee to abide by his pledge to strengthen the role of the ministry in order to further protect the human rights of women and promote gender equality. As a matter of fact, Lee said during presidential campaign that he would keep the ministry afloat as it has its own unique role. The women organizations urged the need to expand its role with the ministry converging services now separated among various ministries (italics added).

I give up. What I am aware of though, is that regardless of what I’ve said about the source, simple corporate interests would have meant that the Chousn Ilbo is probably correct when it points out that the Ministry of Health and Welfare would have resented losing some of its purview to MOGEF, and some (again unnamed) feminist groups certainly had reason to complain that lumping childcare with women’s affairs ultimately reinforced stereotypes (as Baltimoron pointed out in the comments).

Moreover, it may sound like mere semantics, but in Korean it is known as the Ministry of Women and Family/여성가족부 (thanks to Andy at gopkorea for pointing that out), and this has been latched onto by some male netizens who call for its abolition, even producing parody Ministry of Men and Family websites in retaliation. That reaction was a bit extreme (as arguably was the government forcing the owners of those websites to shut them down), but then this is the same ministry that is best known overseas for offering cash prizes to men for not having sex with prostitutes (see gopkorea again here and here). That sounds silly but harmless, but with a 2007 budget of 1.3 Billion US dollars, up from a mere 27.8 million US dollars in 2001, then it is not unreasonable to ask if the money is going on similarly useless and naive endeavours.

(Photo by theturninggate)

The ministry said it has made a great contribution to promoting women’s rights through the abolition of the “outdated” family registration system called “hojuje,” and the introduction of a special law for prevention of the sex trade. It has been pushing new projects with the goal of helping working women.

But the ministry is facing renewed scrutiny due to the criticism that there are no similar ministries in any other countries. Additionally, some experts claim that nurturing and the protection of women can be classified as a welfare policy. They say the current government system is flawed and inefficient as similar welfare policies are dispersed among several ministries.

The transition team has yet to make a final decision over the possible closure of the ministry. It needs to take into consideration that the nation’s women still wield less authority though their rights have been greatly improved over recent years. There exists discrimination against women in the workplace and many of them still suffer difficulties in raising children and housekeeping. Regardless of the realignment, the value of gender equality and family should be respected above all.

Lest I give the wrong impression, despite pointing out MOGEF’s flaws above I’m still undecided on it’s effectiveness since 2005, whether or not it should be merged back to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and whether or not is correct to have family-related policies to exclusively fall under the rubric of a ministry devoted to women’s affairs. At this stage though, I think I’m unlikely to change my mind on MOGEF needing more than 2.5 years to fulfill its goals, and, given the centrality of childcare issues to Korean women’s abysmally low GEM measure, then I have no problems with the MOGEF’s new “family” purview, at least for the next couple of decades or so. Finally, I now have in my possession hundreds of pages of PDF files outlining MOGEF’s achievements, and despite the spin I mentioned, some of the achievements are real, and I plan to study them in more detail because they impact on my areas of interest so intimately. Given my plans for the blog till March/April, I’m tempted to say that a proper examination by me will have to wait until sometime after that, opportune timing because by then Lee Myung-bak’s final reorganization plans will be clear, but this issue is interesting and will provide a nice balance to January’s topic of “developmental states”, so I’m quite happy to keep blogging about it.

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