South Korea: Women and Sport in a Persistent Patriarchy

This chapter examines the historical relationships between women, sport and gender equality in South Korea’s patriarchic society. It argues that despite the advancements made in gender equality in the country, a persistent patriarchal structure and insufficient governmental and institutional effort to make a change in general, and through sport in particular, have determined the relationship between sport and gender equality. It identifies a historical pattern of harnessing sportswomen for the bigger cause of serving the overall good, namely, the nation and the state. It also demonstrates how the appropriation of female sporting role models in such a way, together with references to their bodies under both the nationalist and the sexist gazes – with a serious problem in the background of sexual harassment in society at large and in sport in particular – has derived from the androcentric sociopolitical arrangement, and at the same time has helped maintain it.