The Korean women’s movement, which is seen in both Western and non-Western countries as being exemplary in terms of women’s activism, experienced a dramatic change in its direction and strategy in the early 1990s. At the heart of the new approach was an increasing focus on sexual violence, which has had a huge impact on bringing women’s issues onto the public agenda in Korea. This book examines feminist practice in Korea by analyzing the experiences of the country’s first sexual assault center, the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with activists and extensive participant observation, it explores why feminist activists in South Korea chose to organize around the issue of sexual violence, the strategies it used to do so, what impact the movement has made and what challenges it still faces to achieve its objectives.

Based on the scholarship of a global team of diverse authors, this wide-ranging handbook surveys the history and current status of pro-women thought and activism over millennia. The book traces the complex history of feminism across the globe, presenting its many identities, its heated debates, its racism, discussion of religious belief and values, commitment to social change, and the struggles of women around the world for gender justice. Authors approach past understandings and today’s evolving sense of what feminism or womanism or gender justice are from multiple viewpoints. These perspectives are geographical to highlight commonalities and differences from region to region or nation to nation; they are also chronological suggesting change or continuity from the ancient world to our digital age. Across five parts, authors delve into topics such as colonialism, empire, the arts, labor activism, family, and displacement as the means to take the pulse of feminism from specific vantage points highlighting that there is no single feminist story but rather multiple portraits of a broad cast of activists and thinkers. Comprehensive and properly global, this is the ideal volume for students and scholars of women’s and gender history, women’s studies, social history, political movements and feminism.

The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia is today well-known and uniformly condemned. Transnational activist movements have sought to recognize and redress survivors of this World War II-era system, euphemistically known as “comfort women,” for decades, with a major wave beginning in the 1990s. However, Indonesian survivors, and even the system’s history in Indonesia to begin with, have largely been sidelined, even within the country itself. Here, Katharine E. McGregor not only untangles the history of the system during the war, but also unpacks the context surrounding the slow and faltering efforts to address it. With careful attention to the historical, social, and political conditions surrounding sexual violence in Indonesia, supported by exhaustive research and archival diligence, she uncovers a critical piece of Indonesian history and the ongoing efforts to bring it to the public eye. Critically, she establishes that the transnational part of activism surrounding victims of the system is both necessary and fraught, a complexity of geopolitics and international relationships on one hand and a question of personal networks, linguistic differences, and cultural challenges on the other.

South Korea (Republic of Korea) is the more successful of the two Koreas in both economic and political terms. Even the Asian economic crisis of 1997–1998, which hit badly, was weathered successfully, and when the next crisis came along in 2007, South Korea coped better than many other countries. This economic strength, taken with the steady progress of democratization since 1987, indicates that when the peninsula is eventually reunified, as one day it probably will be, a new unified Korea will follow the South Korea model rather than that of North Korea. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Korea.

"To bring more awareness to the revolutionary international impact of #MeToo, The Other #MeToos brings together chapters that look at specific iterations of the #MeToo movement across multiple communities, cultures, and countries. Going beyond gender, the book takes into account the intersectional assemblage of location, history, religion, ethnicity, race, class, and neoliberal aspects that inform #MeToo and its place in local and transnational feminisms. From Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Tunisia, and Morocco to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to South Africa to Latin America to South Korea, Japan, and China to Czech Republic - #MeToo has inspired local movements and hashtag trends as well as transnational and collective hashtags like #MosqueMeToo. Therefore, by making feminism mainstream, it has rendered possible international feminist solidarities unlike any other feminist movement that precedes it. It is critical to document this defining feminist moment of #MeToo and its variants to acknowledge the diversity and multidimensionality of transnational feminisms, along with looking at the various ways they have been changed by the #MeToo, internationally. To that argument, the contributions in this collection examine, analyze, and interrogate the reception, translation, and adaptation of #MeToo in their local, indigenous, minoritized, othered, and/or postcolonial contexts. Overall, The Other #MeToos highlights the adaptation, translation, and impact of #MeToo in non-Western, postcolonial, minoritized, and othered locales to expand the larger discourse and praxes of the #MeToo movement beyond its Americentric focus to explore other feminist possibilities that the movement has enabled"--

Gender in Modern East Asia explores the history of women and gender in China, Korea, and Japan from the seventeenth century to the present. This unique volume treats the three countries separately within each time period while also placing them in global and regional contexts. Its transnational and integrated approach connects the cultural, economic, and social developments in East Asia to what is happening across the wider world. The text focuses specifically on the dynamic histories of sexuality; gender ideology, discourse, and legal construction; marriage and the family; and the gendering of work, society, culture, and power. Important themes and topics woven through the text include Confucianism, writing and language, the role of the state in gender construction, nationalism, sexuality and prostitution, New Women and Modern Girls, feminisms, "comfort" women, and imperialism. Accessibly written and comprehensive, Gender in Modern East Asia is a much-needed contribution to the study of the region.

Over the past two decades, human rights as legal doctrine and practice has shifted its engagement with criminal law from a near exclusive condemnation of it as a source of harm toward increasingly invoking it as a necessary remedy for abuses. These shifts are most visible in the context of sexuality, reproduction, and gender. Criminal law appears in modern states as a tool for societies to define forbidden acts (crimes) and prescribe punishments. It authorizes the state to use force as an aspect of expressing and establishing norms—societal expectations for acceptable behavior which when breached permit individuals to be excluded and stigmatized as unfit for inclusion. But the core principles of human rights oppose exclusion and stigma and embrace the equality and dignity of all. Therefore there is an insuperable tension when human rights actors invoke criminal law to protect and vindicate human rights violations. Beyond Virtue and Vice examines the ways in which recourse to the criminal law features in work by human rights advocates regarding sexuality, gender, and reproduction and presents a framework for considering if, when, and under what conditions, recourse to criminal law is compatible with human rights. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary fields and geographic locations offer historical and contemporary perspectives, doctrinal cautionary tales, and close readings of advocacy campaigns on the use of criminal law in cases involving abortion and reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, sex work and prostitution law, human trafficking, sexual violence across genders, child rights and adolescent sexuality, and LGBT issues. The volume offers specific values and approaches of possible use to advocates, activists, policy makers, legislators, scholars, and students in their efforts to craft dialogue and engagement to move beyond state practices that compromise human rights in the name of restraining vice and extolling virtue. Contributors: Aziza Ahmed, Widney Brown, Sealing Cheng, Sonia Corrêa, Joanna N. Erdman, Janet Halley, Alli Jernow, Maria Lucia Karam, Ae-Ryung Kim, Scott Long, Vrinda Marwah, Alice M. Miller, Geetanijali Misra, Rasha Moumneh, Wanja Muguongo, Oliver Phillips, Zain Rizvi, Mindy Jane Roseman, Esteban Restrepo Saldarriaga, Tara Zivkovic.

North Korea is in the throes of economic and social, if not political, transition. These changes have a pronounced gender dimension: the crisis of the command economy and the gradual emergence of an informal market economy, where, remarkably, the vast majority of North Korea’s traders and merchants are women. This book examines the complex relationship between gender roles and economic and social changes in North Korea. The book, based on extensive original research, provides rich details of this development, considers how women’s roles in North Korea have developed over time and highlights how women are driving change in other areas of North Korean life too, including family relationships, women’s sexuality and reproductive issues and women’s cultural identity.

Body Image and the Asian Experience: Asians, Asian Americans, and Asian Diasporas Across the Globe discusses the lack of knowledge and misinformation about body image for people of Asian descent, including Asian nationals dwelling in Asia and those in the diaspora (Asian Americans, Asian immigrants in the UK, Australia, etc.). The first section reviews the past and current theories of body image, specifically for people of Asian descent. The next section presents the current research on body image an Asian Americans and Asians around the globe, including specific demographic and social identity groups. The last section examines practical implications in the aspects of mental health, interpersonal and social relationships, and identify development as informed by body image issues. - Examines body image of individuals of Asian descent from existing major theories of body image - Identifies factors critical for understanding body image issues among sexual and gender minority males of Asian descent - Reviews concerns related to body image, including mental health, relationships with others, and sense of self

This book explores feminism, the women’s movement and gender relations in the Asia Pacific region. Through a comparative analysis of ten countries, both Asian and Western, it examines important issues such as attitudes towards feminism, family relations, sex and same sex sexual relations, abortion rights, nudity and pornography.