To return to the abstract index press the back button on your browser
Kyungja Jung
School of Social Science and Policy, University of New South Wales
'Practicing Feminism in Asia'
This paper explores feminist practice in South Korea on the basis of a case study of a feminist rape crisis centre (RCC). Feminism has been regarded as 'Western culture' in most Asian countries. Feminists in Asian countries have been criticised for the introduction of feminism to their countries and for the careless application of 'Western thought' to their local contexts. However, some Asian countries like Korea have developed their own feminist practice rooted in their specific socio-political and cultural context. Through an analysis of development of the first RCC in Korea, this paper shows how Korean activists have operated RCC as a site of a broader feminist movement, even though the idea of RCC was introduced from Western countries. This paper concludes that feminist practices can be a dynamic process, constituted by social contexts and feminist activists in their local context.
Bio: Kyungja Jung was born in South Korea. She has majored in Women's Studies at Ewha Woman's University in South Korea. She has also been actively involved in the women's movement there. She was a major founding member of the first rape crisis centre in South Korea and worked as executive staff there. In 2002, she obtained her PhD at UNSW. Her thesis is on 'Constitution and Maintenance of Feminist Practice: A Comparative Study on Sexual Assault Centres in Korea and Australia.' She has been interested in NESB women's issues, violence against women, women's policies and feminist practice. She is undertaking research on women's policy in the Kim Dae Jung government in South Korea, and at the Social Policy Research Centre at the UNSW.
<kyungja@unsw.edu.au>