Gangnam homicide: Led to Gender war
A homicide occurred on May 17th, 2016, which people in Korea have been generating huge conflict between men versus women. More details on this tragedy and chain-effects are listed below:
• 34-year-old man who has mental disorder “schizophrenia “ hid himself in ‘washroom for both men and women’ and stabbed a mid-20 woman several times with a knife and finally murdered
• The suspect was arrested next day and he admitted his commitment to crime, and mass media reported this incident with a tone that supported allegation that a misogyny had done to revenge woman
⁃ The criminal made short comment to reporters for his motivation, “I don’t know the victim but I killed her because I was loathed by women”
What people talked about?
Articles of mass media containing his comment ignited rage over men and women. Some women began making condolence comments and others put framing comment over SNS: Either men are potential criminal or women are put in more exposure to more dangerous crime.
Not many of Korean men but some of them posted opposing opinions to strong hating speech, insisting that Korean men have duty to finish military service and women flip sides for their own sake frequently.
This debate spread over all social network service and two important internet community gathered cyber force strategically to offend against each other. One is “Ilgan best, a.k.a Ilbe” that has been criticizing Korean women generally. Another is “Megalian, a.k.a Megal” that had been feministic but are becoming female version of Ilbe.
Both aggressively provoked each other over SNS and even an woman who is suspected from Megal site made up fake evidence that she was the next victim. Many people expressed strong concern for over-raged conflict between two groups.
What they have been doing?
A war has begun in reality.
There has been a condolence line-up at Gangnam subway station-you are right, that Gangnam from PSY’song. People started putting post-it with their own comment. Some women insisted this incident is women-hated crime and women are having more disadvantages in Korean society. To resist this argument, one men came out to street at Gangnam station with putting on “pink-elephant costume”. He argued, “I am not potential criminal”
Check out this link: you can see pink-elephant guy
With Pink elephant’s show-up, lots of Megalian, aggressive online feminist community, users walked out to street to despise pink-elephant guy. Even some threw swearing loud.
The original meaning of condolence turned to prove who more disadvantaged member of Korean society are.
Why is this happening?
How did this come from? What makes young people jump to street to initiate gender war?
Lots of thoughts are generated on internet communities like Korean version of Reddit. Astonishingly, many are locked with “men vs women” frame. Minor opinions do focus on police’s more detailed report that criminals were prescribed mental-illness pills and have been suffering from schizophrenia. Criminal’s comment was not meant to revenge to despising women because he frequently claimed that he was surrounded by illusion that took him down to floor.
In other words, I might say this sad incident was committed by the mentally-suffered and this is actually the essence of incident. So, the thing people in Korea should do is to remember unfortunate tragedy and express condolence.
Why are young people fighting for no good?
• Tension and stress are too extreme in Korea
• Social security system does not really work out
• Ascending unemployment rate and stuck base salary for ten years
• Young generation giving upon three : marriage, kid, job
• Malfunction or dysfunction of public education
- Income disparity
- Rule to fairness has no effect on Korea
My hypothesis…
Many are factored in pushing the conflict between genders to come out of surface but this happening is another version of many fractions in Korea. “The young versus The old”, “Men and Women”, “Youngnam versus Jeonla” and so on.
People in Korea have enjoyed fruits from economic development and endured the side-effect from rapid development. Key baseline for Korean people was easy mobility to higher social class. In other words, if you work hard and you can buy the apartment. Once you buy the apartment, even with loan, real estate value will be soaring, which is enough to pay debts and leave excess financial asset to buy another apartment.
With this strategy, people in Korea hold onto living against the world’ second longest work hours to get an apartment. For time being, people get tired and hurt by persistent pressure.
It is over now. The world has no dramatic growth to spread over, especially in line with Korea’s industrial structure. Along with that, myth for “Apartment-never-fail” is failing in Korea. Young people have no hope to buy their own house-even if you graduated prestigious colleges, it is extremely hard to get decent jobs. I do not mean six figure jobs. This indicates that you are highly likely to end up your life with paying rent fee. The momentum to back up Korean society is gone. People look for place to burst their rage over frustration. This might explain some part of recent many conflicts from diverse groups in Korea.
