I have been producing a podcast program since summer 2017 with Violet Kim, a Master's student doing her “Abschluss” in the Social Design department at the Angewandte. The podcast was created to generate richer dialogues amongst Korean feminists. As the experiences and topics that interest Korean feminists in Korea largely differ from what we, as Asian women in the west go through, we thought creating content based on our experience and research rotating around themes that touches our daily lives, could add to the feminist discourse currently in Korea which has been reignited since summer of 2015 through the internet.     

 

The main objective of the podcast was to create entertaining, empathetic yet educational contents which give some insight into colonial history, scientific and literary studies, ideology, and most importantly in revealing the complexity of intersectionality that weaves through one’s gender, race, class, colonial history, and sexual orientation.

 

Themes of podcasts differ by episode, but we aim to balance topics that are more focused on female interest and those that bring in broader themes on the creation of otherness- racism based on colonialism, upbringing of nation-state, and so on.

 

Each episode is fully scripted, length approximately 20 pages, and is narrated in Korean since the target audience of our podcast is Korean feminists. We acknowledge the privilege we have as students who can afford to take time to research topics of interest and to analyze cultural products based on our previous experience in the arts and cultural education. We aim to share our experiences and studies with our sisters.

 

Below is the list of topics that have been worked on, or is in the process of being worked on

 

• (1) What makes women to become honorary males (POC to honorary whites)

• (2) Why social minorities – or those who are not of power- constantly and frequently metaphorized as food

• (3) The start of hell-Chosun*: Let’s talk about Confucianism

• (4) Purity $$ Youth $$ Pretty: As long as there’s a pussy (Price of women)

• (5) Unlevel playing field (Race Edition)

• (6) Trans-border VS To fight and win within the border

• (7) Hell-Chosun*’s attitude towards misogyny driven crime

• (8) Transborderers – the non-conforming unicorns, identity politics and moralism

• (9) State-driven prostitution

 

*hell-Chosun is a slang used to describe South Korea’s depressive present condition. Chosun was the last dynasty that lasted for more than 5 centuries before the Korean empire was established. Korea is often named as this slang for its still predominant legacy of Confucianism, social inequality, and concentration of wealth.