Note: This event is based on an article that will be published in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies in August 2021.
University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jinsook Kim delivered a talk on new feminist practices in South Korea on January 22. Titled “Sticky Activism,” Dr. Kim examined the role of handwritten sticky notes and social media following the 2016 Gangnam Station murder in Seoul.
Hyun-Chul Kim, a University of Toronto PhD candidate, opened with a land acknowledgement, followed by extending thanks to the event’s sponsors, the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University and the Centre for the Study of Korea (CSK) at the University of Toronto. She highlighted Dr. Kim’s research interests and expertise in South Korean political activism and digital media.
Dr. Kim introduced herself as a feminist media scholar. She added that the following talk would be based on her forthcoming article in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 60(4). Her dissertation had also recently won the Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2021 honourable mention.
On May 17, 2016, a twenty-three-year-old woman was stabbed to death in the public washroom near Gangnam Station. Home to high-end malls and entertainment companies, the Gangnam area of Seoul had, until the murder, been known as a highly public space. The murderer killed the victim at random because he said that women had “always ignored” him. The police charged him for mutjima sarin, a random killing or motiveless crime, and concluded that his actions were not a hate crime against women, but the act of a patient with mental health issues.
The decision sparked an outburst on social media for men and women alike. One Twitter account encouraged people to leave tributes to the victim at Gangnam Station. Citizens left over a thousand sticky notes at Gangnam Station Exit 10 with messages of written sadness and anger and wishes for change. The movement prompted peaceful protests as well; the Moonlight protest called for night-time safety for women and street filibusters protested violence against women.
Women began speaking out to define the Gangnam Station murder as a misogynist hate crime, instead of a random killing. Dr. Kim noted how South Korea has no set definition for femicide, the act of killing a woman for being a woman. Although the murder was not the first incident of femicide in Korea, it was the first incident to be commonly described as femicide. She also provided context for the resurgence of feminist activism. The new generation of feminists in South Korea, she said, called themselves the “post-Gangnam Station subjects” or the “Gangnam Station generation” as part of a more widespread “Feminism Reboot” in the country.
Dr. Kim’s research examined how the new generation’s handwritten sticky notes led to new feminist practices in political engagement. Her research methods consisted of sticky note and social media analysis and interviews with participants and activists from the movement. She first considered sticky note activism as an alternative feminist media practice. She coined the term “sticky activism” to convey the concept of academic stickiness in material protest. The scholar observed how the notes employed emotion to capture the public’s attention and participation; hence describing the phenomenon as the “circulation and accumulation of affect”.
As an alternative media practice, the notes connected feminist media through physical materiality and digital media. Activists made the conscious choice to combine “old” (physical) and “new” (digital) media to strengthen people’s affective relationships to the issue. Additionally, sticky notes were easy to remove, which put less of a burden on the predominantly female cleaners following the protests.
Dr. Kim also interviewed several activists and participants. One interviewee stated that they preferred the sticky note format for engagement due to its universality and authenticity. Everyone could readily participate, regardless of their organisation or affiliation, and it gave people the agency to write their thoughts without a hierarchical structure. Overall, Dr. Kim found that sticky notes were regarded as more heartfelt and human than social media posts.
Another interviewee noted the role of what Dr. Kim calls “affective counterpublics”, the production and circulation of feminist counter-discourse, following the murder. “Gangnam Station Exit 10 was a place where women’s anger and screaming burst out… women who had the same experience would have felt a hot and intense explosion, catharsis, and unity, the magnetic field of this resonance”. Others hashtagged #saranamatda (survived) on social media, saying that they survived only by luck and that all young women could be victims of misogynist crimes. The shared sense of gendered vulnerability underscored by the gender, age, and location of the murder victim provided resonance for young women.
Dr. Kim acknowledged that the dominant rhetoric of gender equality and reality of life as a woman in South Korea could, at times, be disjointed. Since the 1980s, women’s movements have placed gender-based violence at the forefront of their work. However, many movements have placed women’s issues in separate categories and are not consolidated enough to mobilize public. For instance, she said that people are now realising that the gender gap and crime rates are related topics with regards to gender-based and domestic partner violence.
Ultimately, the Gangnam Station murder was a pivotal moment for many young women. It showed the mobilization power of combined online and offline sticky note activism and formation of feminist publics. It also shed light on the challenges and limitations of affective publics for feminist politics, specifically with regards to what is considered “acceptable” female presentation in South Korea. The murder’s after-effects were profound because the victim was depicted as an “ordinary” cis young woman; if she were a trans woman, perhaps the societal consequences would have been different. Dr. Kim stressed the need to think critically about affective publics, affective inclusion, and marginalization in South Korea’s new feminist practices.
Elizabeth Shaw is an event reporter and contributor for the East Asia section of Synergy. a fourth-year double major in Peace, Conflict and Justice and Contemporary Asian Studies. She enjoys learning, researching, and writing about various topics surrounding Asia, including gender and migration and social movements.
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