The women behind Korea’s fight for equality
2026.03.07 16:01
From courtroom battles to public testimony, voices that changed attitudes toward women
| From left: Na Hye-suk, Lee Tai-young, Kim Hak-sun, Cho Nam-joo and Seo Ji-hyun, figures who contributed to the advancement of women’s rights in South Korea |
Alongside South Korea’s rapid modernization, women's lives have been profoundly transformed.
Korean women continue to face structural barriers, including one of the widest gender pay gaps among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and persistent gender-based violence. The push for equality has also fueled intense debates over feminism and gender relations in Korean society.
Yet there have been major gains in education, employment and political participation. Across literature, law, politics and social movements, generations of women have challenged entrenched norms and risked their livelihoods to expand the boundaries of opportunity.
To mark International Women’s Day on Sunday, The Korea Herald revisits the lives of pioneering figures who helped reshape women’s rights in Korea and laid the foundations for the progress seen today.
| A statue of Na Hye-suk stands on a street named after her in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province (Lim Jae-seong/The Korea Herald) |
Na Hye-suk (1897–1948)
Artist challenges the double standards of chastity
Korea’s first female Western-style painter, Na Hye-suk, stirred fierce controversy in Seoul in 1934 with an essay describing her own divorce, at a time when traditional gendered moral expectations still strongly shaped Korean society under Japanese colonial rule.
The essay "A Divorce Confession" detailed her love marriage to an elite Korean husband, growing disillusionment, her extramarital relationship with political figure Choe Rin, and her divorce in 1931.
Public backlash followed the exposure of her private life and intensified as she denounced society’s double standards on chastity. Na argued that women faced social exclusion for affairs or divorce, while men were largely tolerated.
Though widely criticized by contemporaries who saw the essay as self-justification, later scholars came to recognize her as one of Korea’s earliest modern feminists, challenging entrenched patriarchal norms.
“Men of Joseon are strange,” she wrote. “They lack chastity themselves, yet demand it from their wives and from women in general, while even attempting to deprive women of it.”
| Self-portrait of Na Hye-suk (Suwon Museum of Art) |
Na had already gained recognition as Korea’s first female Western-style painter through exhibitions in Seoul and Tokyo. She also published essays and novels questioning unequal moral standards and domestic expectations imposed on women.
The divorce marked a turning point in her life. While her former husband and Choe retained their social standing despite their affairs, Na endured severe stigma as a divorced woman and struggled financially.
She continued to argue that ideals of female chastity functioned primarily as social restraints, limiting women’s participation in public and professional life. Korean society at the time remained largely unreceptive to her arguments, and she later died in poverty at a shelter in Seoul.
Her name now lives on in a central street in her hometown of Suwon, as the city has embraced her as one of its cultural icons.
| Lee Tai-young (center) poses during a campaign urging reform of South Korea’s male-dominated family laws. (Ylhyung Chyung & Taiyoung Lee Memorial Foundation) |
Lee Tai-young (1914–1998)
Korea’s first female lawyer dismantles male-centered family law
South Korea’s modern family law system was rooted in the male-centered Confucian order of the late Joseon era (1392-1910) and later influenced by Japan’s patriarchal civil code during the colonial period, influences that persisted even after liberation in 1945.
After becoming Korea’s first female lawyer in 1952, Lee Tai-young found that family laws contradicted the constitutional principle of gender equality. She began providing legal aid to women disadvantaged by a legal structure that privileged male authority.
At the time, men were granted primary rights in matters such as inheritance, family headship, and child custody. The system constrained women’s legal standing and was widely seen as reinforcing the country’s longstanding preference for sons.
Over four decades, Lee played a key role in challenging those provisions, contributing to revisions that gradually dismantled the foundations of male family headship.
At the center of that framework was the household head system, which passed legal status primarily through the male line, placing women, including mothers and grandmothers, under male authority. Lee called for its abolition as early as the 1950s, even though similar systems had already been dismantled in Japan and North Korea in the late 1940s.
The system was eventually struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2005, years after her death.
| A poster criticizing male-dominated family-related regulations of South Korea (Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations) |
“A sound tradition and beautiful practice from the perspective of men can cause deep resentment for women, and then it cannot be objectively sound and beautiful,” Lee said during a 1957 National Assembly hearing on civil law revision.
“The tears of Korea’s wives, daughters, daughters-in-law and mothers flowed endlessly under the outdated feudal family system.”
Lee received international recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1975. Her legacy continues through generations of female lawyers and through the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations, which she founded in 1956 to provide legal assistance in family matters.
| Kim Hak-soon (right) protests a plan to compensate victims of Japanese military sexual slavery through a private fund at a rally. (Ahn Hae-ryong) |
Kim Hak-soon (1924-1997)
First public testimony on wartime sexual slavery breaks decades of stigma
On August 14, 1991, Kim Hak-soon publicly testified in Seoul that she had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II, marking the end of nearly half a century in which victims had hidden their scars while suffering in silence.
Since Korea’s liberation in 1945, no public testimony on wartime sexual slavery had occurred for decades, largely because societal attitudes often stigmatized and marginalized the victims themselves in cases of sexual violence.
However, Kim Hak-soon’s first-ever public testimony encouraged other survivors to come forward, bringing long-overdue attention to the human rights violations experienced by women during wartime sexual violence.
In South Korea alone, 240 survivors later registered with the government, while survivors from the Philippines, China, Taiwan and the Netherlands followed Kim to speak publicly about their experiences.
Together, they challenged the Japanese government’s previous denials of direct involvement in the comfort women system and the forcible recruitment of women, calling for accountability for these wartime atrocities.
| Kim Hak-soon (Herald DB) |
Even after the testimonies, survivors faced persistent negligence and harsh treatment in Korea for years. However, consistent advocacy efforts contributed to reshaping Korean society’s stance on sexual violence.
Society gradually moved away from blaming victims and began valuing collective voices on sexual violence, influencing future women’s rights initiatives such as the #MeToo movement in Korea, which emerged across diverse sectors of the country in the late 2010s.
“The #MeToo movement is about publicly testifying to one’s own experiences to create social change,” said Kim Hye-jung, director of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center. “Precedent cases like Kim Hak-soon’s gave later survivors the belief that raising their voices is not only right for society but also empowering for themselves.”
Following her initial testimony, Kim Hak-soon continued to speak out about her experiences both in Korea and abroad until she died in 1997, becoming a central figure in the international campaign for justice for former comfort women.
| Covers of "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" in Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English (Herald DB) |
Cho Nam-joo (1978- )
Shedding light on embedded discrimination in everyday life
“Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,” a novel by Cho Nam-joo that portrays everyday sexism and misogyny faced by Korean women in their 30s, has become one of the most sensational works in contemporary Korean literature.
Within two years of its 2016 publication, it sold over a million copies, marking the first time in nine years that a Korean novel achieved such success.
Cho, who spent 10 years as a scriptwriter for current affairs programs at a Korean broadcaster before leaving to raise her child, explores a wide range of social issues in the book. These include selective abortion of daughters, career stagnation and the prevalence of hidden cameras — all challenges encountered by relatively young Korean women as they navigate adulthood.
The protagonist also reflects the challenges of younger women: fewer institutional barriers, yet persistent glass ceilings and societal expectations, making everyday discrimination palpable.
The novel’s massive popularity made "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" a symbol for younger women facing everyday inequality and gender-based crimes. It also helped spark a resurgence of feminism in mid-2010s South Korea, coinciding with public outrage over murder cases of women in public facilities and the global rise of the Me Too movement.
| A screenshot of the movie "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" (Lotte Entertainment) |
Despite its calm narrative style and use of statistics to highlight real-world issues, the novel drew strong backlash from some men, who argued that it focused exclusively on women’s experiences of discrimination.
When the novel was adapted into a film in 2019, it faced rating campaigns by detractors, and female celebrities were also criticized on social media for posting about reading the book.
However, the novel also found international success, ranking first among translated Korean literature in the five years following its release, selling over 300,000 copies overseas in 10 languages by 2020.
Its influence also extended beyond print: webtoons, adaptations and other media exploring everyday gender-based discrimination emerged, fostering both resistance and empathy among audiences.
| Picture of former prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun speaking. (Herald DB) |
Seo Ji-hyun (1973– )
Igniting nationwide #MeToo from Korea’s prosecutorial core
The global #MeToo movement, which had brought attention to long-hidden cases of sexual violence since 2017, gained unprecedented visibility in Korea when prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun publicly testified about her own experience on a broadcast program on Jan. 29, 2018.
This followed her posting an anonymous report on the internal prosecution bulletin, alleging that she had been subjected to unwanted sexual advances at a funeral in 2010 by a senior prosecutor, who at the time was a Ministry of Justice official.
She further claimed that reporting the incident had resulted in professional setbacks imposed by the senior, rather than receiving support from her organization.
“I agonized over posting the anonymous report, but people around me told me that the victim herself needed to speak for the truth to carry weight. That gave me the courage to come forward,” Seo said in the interview.
While testimony of sexual harassment had occurred before in Korean society, Seo’s testimony had a profound impact because it highlighted that such abuses could happen regardless of education, professional status or social standing.
| Former prosecutor Seo Ji-hyun testified about her experiences of sexual violence on the local news program JTBC on Jan. 29, 2018. (JTBC) |
Her courage inspired others across different sectors to come forward with their own experiences.
The #MeToo movement spread to the cultural sector, where allegations emerged against prominent actors for ongoing sexual harassment.
The movement also reached top politicians, including the mayors of Seoul and Busan and the governor of South Chungcheong Province, within about two years after Seo’s testimony. In education, it sparked a wave of sexual violence reports from students against teachers, with allegations emerging from around 70 schools across Korea within a year.
After Seo’s testimony, the senior prosecutor was prosecuted only for alleged professional disadvantages, as the sexual harassment claim was time-barred. However, he was acquitted after the Supreme Court recognized broad discretion in personnel matters.
Nevertheless, Seo has continued her advocacy in solidarity, supporting sexual violence survivors, including those who suffered during the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising crackdown.
저작권 보호를 위해 본문의 일부만 표시됩니다.
원문 보기 →댓글 (0)
첫 번째 댓글을 작성해보세요!