Journal of International and Intercultural

Communication

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjii20

“Feminists really are crazy”: The Isu Station

incident and the creation of an androcentric,
misogynistic community on YouTube

David C. Oh

To cite this article: David C. Oh (2021): “Feminists really are crazy”: The Isu Station incident and
the creation of an androcentric, misogynistic community on YouTube, Journal of International and
Intercultural Communication, DOI: 10.1080/17513057.2021.1985589

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2021.1985589

Published online: 12 Oct 2021.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 96

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjii20
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2021.1985589

“Feminists really are crazy”: The Isu Station incident and the
creation of an androcentric, misogynistic community on
YouTube
David C. Oh
Ramapo College of New Jersey, Communication Arts, Mahwah, New Jersey, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Controversy followed news of an altercation in a Seoul bar between Received 9 February 2021
a group of women and men; this was later dubbed the “Isu Station Accepted 20 September
incident.” Cellphone video complicated the women’s account, 2021
providing discursive space to air men’s grievances and to
KEYWORDS
discipline recent feminist challenges. The YouTube-distributed Toxic technoculture; South
video and comments advanced an argument of “enlightened Korea; Isu Station incident;
sexism” in which users argued for gender equality while misogyny; enlightened
demonizing feminism and claiming reverse sexism. Drawing on sexism
hegemonic masculine discourses in South Korea, they created an
affective, androcentric, and misogynistic space in which they
construct themselves as idealized, tolerant victims of feminist
excess.

In the early morning hours of November 14, 2018, an altercation between two women
and several men erupted into a highly visible social fissure (Lee, 2018). According to
reports, two women harassed a heterosexual couple in a bar, loudly accusing a woman
of being a hyungja (흉자), a woman who conforms to patriarchal norms (Go, 2019),
and the man of being a hannam (한남), a man whose inferiority is determined by his
Koreanness. Nearby, three men who were fed up with the disturbance, are reported to
have confronted the two women to tell them to quiet down, which led to a verbal alter-
cation that was captured, in part, on one of the men’s mobile phones. Later, one of the
women suffered a head wound after hitting a stair outside the bar. The women claim that
they were kicked, while the men argue that she slipped after the men wrested themselves
free from the women’s grasps; however, the police found no corroborating physical evi-
dence and declined to press charges, concluding that both parties were responsible
(Yoon, 2018).
A day later, the conflict within the bar spilled into South Korea’s (hereafter, Korea)
highly wired society, creating a gendered, “online melee” (Shim, 2018). What prompted
the online outrage was a social media post from one of the women that showed her
friend’s bandaged and bloodied head and that claimed that the men attacked them for
their short hair and lack of make-up (Lee, 2018). Acting as a metonym for Korean
men’s patriarchal violence, the post garnered wide support, generating more than

CONTACT David C. Oh doh@ramapo.edu

© 2021 National Communication Association
2 D. C. OH

300,000 signatures on a Cheongwadae1 (the presidential residence) petition (Shim, 2018).

However, the aforementioned cell phone video complicated the women’s account by
showing the women’s provocations, and it provided fodder for men, who mobilized to
argue that they are victimized by unruly feminism.
The gendered, online conflict is not uncommon as “Korea’s war between genders” has
intensified (“Korea’s war,” 2019). According to a special report by the Korea JoongAng
Daily, seven of the top 10 issues dominating social media are related to gender
conflict. As such, the Isu Station incident comes against the backdrop of a rising feminist
movement and men’s antipathy to changing social norms that is comingled with resent-
ment about men’s perceptions of unfair labor competition against women who do not
serve in the military (Kim, 2017; Lee & Park, 2012) and their belief that women will
not date or marry men who lack class privilege (Han, 2013). Resentment toward
women has been discursively manifest in various insults. Most frequently, women are
referred to as kimchi-nyeo (kimchi-woman), a generalized insult about all Korean
women (Ha, 2017; Kim, 2015; Yun, 2013). Men also use terms that reduce women to
their genitalia (Kim, 2015; Yun, 2013) and that advocate for domestic violence as a
means of controlling women (Ha, 2017; Kim, 2015). Finally, insults like seonggwe
(plastic surgery monster) and orcnyeo (orc woman) disparage women’s appearance,
and, in the politics of neocolonial, global White supremacy, Korean women are often
compared unfavorably against White women (Kim, 2015).
Online, the most visible space for misogynistic discourse is Ilbe. Similar to conserva-
tive and far-right online movements in the West (Jane, 2014a), the site articulates men’s
backlash against feminism for “reverse sexism,” using sexually vulgar and demeaning
language (Yun, 2013). This is despite the fact that the majority of Ilbe members are
not economically precarious but have class privilege (Ha, 2017; Hur, 2019). In other
online spaces, though the discourse is less extreme, men similarly understand feminism
as men’s oppression (Chung, 2016; Hur, 2019; Kim & Lee, 2017). They argue that they are
unfairly discriminated against as men and that they continue to be blamed for the abuses
of previous generations of men (Kim & Lee, 2017). Notably, then, it is mostly young men,
who participate in online misogyny (Kim & Lee, 2017). This disrupts tropes of younger
people as more progressive, at least in online spaces.
It is against this backdrop that the conflict in the bar and its online disciplining occur.
My attention is particularly directed toward a YouTube video titled “이수역 폭행사건
페미니스트 욕설 영상 FEMINIST SISTER ARE ATTACKING KOREAN MALE AND
COUPLE.” While it might appear that the English text is a translation of the Korean, this
is not exactly the case. The Korean text translates as follows: “Video of the feminist’s
abusive language in the Isu Station violence incident.” While the video is presented as
raw, uncut footage, I understand that it carries ideological meaning because of human
processes of framing, shooting, and editing (Barthes, 1964|1999; Rose, 2001). Because
YouTube is a multimodal site of video and textual comments, I study both sites of
meaning on the page in order to examine the ideological meanings carried in the
video and the ideological disciplining in the comments. I purposively sampled this
video because it was the most popular video about the Isu Station incident (501,526
views as of August 20, 2019). The question I seek to answer is: how do both the
YouTube video and comments function to discipline “unruly” feminism and construct
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 3

ego for an aggrieved, androcentric community that had momentarily gathered in this
cyberspace?
To answer my research question, I, first, studied the video as representation, borrow-
ing from Hall’s (1997) understanding of representation as doing ideological “work” and
Barthes’s (1964|1999) theorizing of the apparently documentary image as constructed
with ideological meaning. Then, I studied the comments, using critical discourse analysis
as my analytical lens. Using critical discourse analysis, I am attuned to the ideological
meanings in the comments and their relationship to patriarchal power. Understanding
the deep structures of language is, of course, the purpose of this interdisciplinary meth-
odology (Fairclough, 2010; Lee & Otsuji, 2009; van Dijk, 2002; Wodak, 2002). As a word
of caution, I use unedited language when quoting the users’ comments. As Jane (2014b)
argues, when studying what she calls e-bile, it is necessary to show the actual words used
because descriptions of it cannot demonstrate its visceral power and harm. To be as
ethical as possible, I do not report the names of the users despite the public visibility
of their comments, and I did not interact on the site.
Because of the shifting, organic nature of Internet spaces, I first took screenshots of all
2,191 comments on August 20, 2019. This resulted in 260 screenshotted pages. I coded
the first 761 comments (first 100 pages), which are sorted by YouTube’s algorithms
for its top comments. I open coded all of the comments, and while doing so, I kept
note of frequently recurring codes. After coding the first 200 comments, the thematic cat-
egories were apparent in men’s discourse: (1) feminists as abnormal and undesirable and
(2) men as tolerant despite their suffering and abuse. Though theoretical saturation had
been fully achieved by the first 500 comments, I continued to code an additional 261
comments in an abundance of caution. Throughout the coding, I produced a concept
map in order to understand the relationship between the different codes and between
the different themes.
In the following essay, I briefly describe the literature on the online disciplining of
women and feminists on the internet, discuss the video-as-representation that positions
contemporary feminist discourse as outside civil, normal, and desirable discourse, and
discuss the ways the comments function to both transform the women in the video as
representative of “deviant” feminism, thereby calling for a return to the patriarchal
status quo.

Online misogyny
With YouTube’s popularity as a space for vernacular, user-created discourse, it is a rich
site of study. In Korea, YouTube functions as the second most popular search engine,
despite the platform not typically being understood in this way (Jun, 2019), and it is
the most popular app in the country (Cho, 2018). Nearly half of the population uses
YouTube (23.34 million users), and users spend an average of half an hour per day on
the platform (Cho, 2018). The attention by scholars, however, has not been proportional
to its popular use in media culture, including in English-language Korean studies nor in
studies of online sexism and misogyny. In one of the few studies about the latter,
YouTube has been demonstrated to be a male-dominated space that symbolically
excludes women as content creators and that includes openly misogynistic content in
25 percent of the comments (Tucker-McLaughlin, 2013). Döring and Mohseni (2019)
4 D. C. OH

also found that women are much more likely to be the targets of online hate speech in
“fail videos” on YouTube.
The frequent visibility of misogyny is an unremarkable feature in its banality but is
quite remarkable in its vulgarity (Benton-Greig et al., 2017). Filipovic (2007) refers to
this as “toxic technocultures.” These online spaces include “creep shots,” misogynistic
abuse, doxxing,2 harassment, rape and death threats, and graphic rape fantasies (Jane,
2014a, 2014b). While misogyny is not unique to the internet, digital technologies
provide new tools to control and discipline “unruly” women that were not previously
available (Ging & Siapera, 2018; Shaw, 2014). Feminists, in particular, are targets of
attack because they are viewed as encroaching into male-dominated spaces and
because they expose patriarchy and sexism. For this reason, feminists are frequently
described online as a “monstrous feminine” in SJW (social justice warrior) memes (Mas-
sanari & Chess, 2018, p. 529). The monstrous feminine is argued to be especially danger-
ous because she is corrupting and diseased, thus threatening to spread and destroy
“normal” (patriarchal) society.
Feminists are represented as going against a natural, desirable order. This order
extends to masculine spaces, such as sports, where women are received as unwelcome
interlopers (Jane, 2014a). Feminists’ criticisms, then, are trivialized and seen as the com-
plaints of emotionally weak and overly dramatic “killjoys” (Benton-Greig et al., 2017;
Massanari & Chess, 2018, p. 529). Failing to recognize or care about how women’s plea-
sure and joy have historically been unvalued, men argue that feminists spoil men’s plea-
sure. Because feminists are argued to deprive men of sexual pleasure, they are often
visually and discursively represented as “ugly” and “fat” (Jane, 2014a; Massanari &
Chess, 2018). Online misogynistic attackers argue that feminists have gone too far,
eschewing the legitimate struggles of women for equality and pushing reverse sexism
and men’s systemic oppression (Benton-Greig et al., 2017).
The online vile, or “e-bile,” is connected to both the affective register of the internet as
a space for uncivil dialogue and “flame wars” (Coe et al., 2014) and to the hegemonic
strategy of demonization. Artz and Murphy (2000) argue that hegemonies resort to
demonization when counter-hegemonic movements are perceived as a threat. Unlike
other strategies of omission, marginalization, trivialization, polarization, and co-opta-
tion, demonization is a brute force means of gaining consent. Online misogyny can be
understood as a response to perceived threats to patriarchal order, which feels addition-
ally emasculated in a time of neoliberal precarity. The disciplining work attempts to
coerce consent until such point that the coercion can be replaced with more subtle
forms of hegemonic power (Chung, 2016). As such, it can be expected that demonizing,
online misogyny will happen alongside other hegemonic strategies, depending on the
nature and extent of the perceived challenge.

Illusion of objectivity and patriarchal hegemony

The one-minute YouTube video shows a blurred image of a woman and a man posi-
tioned opposite one another at a table. The video is pixelated, so the details are
blurred, but it appears that a man in a blue parka and a black cap is standing to the
right of the frame near the foreground while a woman in a white hooded sweatshirt is
seated opposite him while drinking a glass of lager. The video is a single edit inside a
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 5

colorfully decorated bar with cartoon images painted on a nearby wall. The man and the
woman are physically separated by the table, and their actions on screen do not appear
aggressive. However, the verbal invective by women’s voices is pronounced.
“내가 6.9 센티 꼬추로 태어났으면 자살했다 (sing song inflection). 내클리는 너보다 더
커.” [“I would have killed myself if I was born with a 6.9-centimeter penis. My clitoris is
bigger than yours.”].

“아니 저새끼들 여자 만나본 적이 없어서 클리가 뭔지도 몰라. 미친놈들이야 (laugh-

ter).” [“No, those assholes (literal translation refers to baby animals but is a common, dehu-
manizing slur) have never met a woman, so they don’t know what a clitoris is. They’re crazy
men.”]

The video continues with the women repeating the insults, saying them in sing-song
chants. The men’s voices are not audible. Importantly, the video includes another
woman, shouting off-camera.
“야 이 메갈년아! 오빠 나가라고.” [“Hey, you Megal-bitches! Obba (kinship term literally
referring to an older brother but used for any man who is older), let’s go.”

In the context of the video and intertextual knowledge likely gained by audience
members, viewers would ascribe this voice to a woman who was with her boyfriend.
The heterosexual couple was argued to be the initial target of the women’s harassment.
Her voice frames the harassing women as associated with Megalia, an online community
of women interested in feminism.
Megalia started with a group of women who “mirrored” misogynistic discourse used
by men with sarcastic “misandrous” language about Korean men. Common mirroring
insults are hannam (한남) and 6.9 cm (Steger, 2016). Hannam literally means “Korean
man,” and it mirrors the term, kimchi-nyeo (김치녀), which means “Kimchee
woman.” These are both essentializing terms that carry the connotation that Korean
men and women are comparatively deficient. Usually, this is in direct or implied com-
parison to White people because of US neocolonialism and the internalization of US
racial hierarchy (see Moon, 1997). 6.9 cm is a reference to a debunked study that
claimed that Korean men have the smallest erect penis size in the world (2.7 in.). This
discourse is poached from White supremacist, neocolonial discourses but is problematic
because it reifies Western racism, specifically about Asian/American men’s asexuality
and emasculation (Ha, 2017), and this constructs notions of non-Korean others, and
especially White men, as physically more masculine while also culturally more cosmopo-
litan and gender-progressive (see Kim, 2006). Indeed, the romanticizing of White men
has led to the use of a neologism, gatyangnam (갓양남), which translates to “god
Western man” (Ha, 2017).
Support for Megalia grew markedly in the context of renewed feminist activism fol-
lowing the murder of a young woman near the Gangnam subway station (Chen,
2016). Because the killer did not know the woman but committed homicide out of a gen-
eralized misogyny, her death catalyzed a renewed feminism that coincided with the
#metoo movement. The movement was furthered with the discovery of spycams in
women’s public restrooms (Ha, 2017). Women demanded increased protection,
changes to hate speech and gender discrimination laws, and mandatory sexual discrimi-
nation training for men (Chen, 2016). Nearly as immediately as the feminist movement
6 D. C. OH

was energized, widespread anti-feminist backlash emerged (Kim, 2017). Men were
angered by women’s growing economic strength that was seen as further threatening
their economic precarity (Kim, 2017). They are particularly angered by their compulsory
military service in which they believe that they risk their lives for the service of the
country while, at the same time, becoming less competitive than women peers in a
highly competitive labor market (Kwon, 2019). There is anger that men are expected
to maintain traditional gendered practices that are seen to benefit women such as
paying for the wedding home while no longer being in positions of economic privilege
(Koo, 2019). On sites like Ilbe, young men have mobilized online to express casual,
caustic misogyny (Yun, 2013).
In response, trolling men through the practice of mirroring became the signature sati-
rical style for members of Megalia. Users created community that comforted one another
by sharing their struggles with patriarchal oppression and amused one another by satiri-
cally flipping and exposing the banality of men’s misogynistic speech (Ha, 2017; Jeong &
Lee, 2018). As such, the group differed from previous feminist movements because of the
group’s pleasure in provoking and trolling men (Jeong & Lee, 2018). The trolling took the
form of mocking men and crude objectification of men’s looks (Jeong & Lee, 2018). The
site was short-lived, however, ending roughly a year after the Gangnam Station murder
with an internal division over the site operator’s banning of anti-LGBT slurs (Go, 2019).
The splinter group, who named themselves “Womad” (Woman + Nomad), was a
woman-centered online movement that continued the mirroring practices of Megalia,
but it has been criticized for narrowly defining its womanist orientation to be anti-
man, anti-trans, and anti-hyungja (흉자). The latter is an insult that literally means a
“mimic” and is used for heterosexual women in relationships with men, particularly
for heterosexual married women (Go, 2019; Na, 2018). Erasing these complexities,
anti-feminist movements lump Megalia and Womad together, despite Megalia’s dissol-
ution, and Megalia has become a target of men’s invective, and the term Megalnyeon,
which combines Megalia with a curse word for women, came to signify feminists who
are argued to be extremist. Indeed, feminists, commonly referred to as “Megal” are
argued to be abnormal (Kim & Lee, 2017).
If the video is interpreted as real, the content is damning. The women are represented
as sexually harassing, confrontational, and mean-spirited. Further, the women are rep-
resented as advancing phallo-centric notions of masculine value. Because 6.9 centimeters
is a common trope of Megalia and its offshoot, Womad (Na, 2018), the women’s ideo-
logical position is located within these online feminist groups. Further, their provoca-
tions suggest that men who have not had sex with women are marginal men; their
insults read as fitting within a heteronormative, patriarchal disciplining logic. Though
it is important to deconstruct the women’s troubling discourse, what is more important
for the purpose of this analysis is the invisible mediation of their discourse and the ways
that the taken-for-granted invisibility frames users’ comments.
Barthes (1964|1999) argues that the “rhetoric of the image” is to persuade its viewer
that it is “real,” that it is only the denoted meanings, thereby lacking connotative, ideo-
logical work. The YouTube video does this, as well, with its intentional presentation of
what appears to be raw, documentary footage. The illusion of objective, denotative
reality is produced through several production choices. First, it features a single edit,
which suggests un-edited reality. Second, it is shot vertically, suggesting that this is
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 7

amateur cellphone video. One of the primary appeals of user-created content is the rep-
resentation of authenticity, often with low-production value (Tolson, 2010; Kim, 2015).
Its low-quality production, then, works to secure its conformity to YouTube expec-
tations, and it communicates a lack of edited artificiality.
Despite the visible aesthetics, the video is constructed. Most importantly, it features
only a single minute from the overall interaction. Most significantly, there was
different video aired on a Korean Broadcasting System’s news program that shows a
woman being pushed away. Though some viewers may understand this as reasonable
given the provocations, it would not represent the men as innocent or particularly toler-
ant. Further, the video is pixelated, which, as a practical matter, protects from possible
libel charges, but it also borrows from the visual language of news in Korea, which
gives the footage more legitimacy. It also hides action on screen, and, particularly,
facial expressions that would provide deeper insight into the people’s intentions and
behaviors.
Finally, the video’s title functions as anchoring text, which frames viewers’ interpret-
ation of the video. The Korean title is described as a “video of feminist’s abusive
language” (페미니스트 욕설 영상), and the accompanying English-language title
refers to the “feminist sister” as “attacking” men and a couple. In both cases, “feminist”
is repeated, indicating the importance of the term. It operates to vilify feminists while
being intentional about not naming women, generally, as a problem. It creates a
dualism in which bad women are understood as feminists while good women conform
to the patriarchal order and do not cause trouble. This is particularly notable as the
women, while using the slogan of Megalia, do not self-identify as feminists in the clip
nor in their later Cheongwadae petition. The selection of the video and the framing of
it functioned to shape the interpretive parameters of viewers, leading to the disciplining
work in the comments. The comments’ reified the status quo by casting the women as an
embodiment of the dangers and abnormality of feminism and by creating a homosocial,
androcentric space for men to engage in the ego work of protest rhetoric.

Disciplining unruly women

Because of the representational work suggesting objective truth, there was no disagree-
ment about the confrontation and the women’s blameworthiness. Users did not chal-
lenge the representation of the video or its framing. Instead, users’ comments reflected
a universally shared assumption that the women’s taunts were shameless and vulgar.
천박하다 저런 말이 욕설으로 나오는구나 [That’s vulgar that this kind of profanity is
actually said aloud]

천박하다는 말 이전에 진짜 심각한 성희롱인데 … .;;; [But, at this point, those vulgar
words are, serious sexual harassment … .;;;]

와.. 진짜 개더럽다 … … .ㅠㅠ [Wow.. That’s seriously disgusting … … ㅠㅠ]

오프라인에서 진짜 저렇게 말하고 다닐 줄;;;; [They actually go around saying those

things offline;;;;]

Similar to civility discourse that is used to discipline dissent (Harris, 2003; Young et al.,
2010), the discourse of vulgarity argues that the unruliness of the speech is necessarily
8 D. C. OH

problematic. This reifies patriarchy while escaping scrutiny. The shared belief about the
women’s vulgarity, then, is the foundation upon which the commenters created a
common, androcentric community. Common to discourses of otherness, the men con-
structed an us-them binary distinction (Horsti, 2009). Feminists are demonized as a
threatening other while men are understood as a victimized, tolerant self.
In order for this logic to make sense, the women in the video must first be established
as a metonym for Korean articulations of feminism.
이게 현재 한국 페미니즘의 실체입니다. 양성평등이 아닌 여성우위성향으로
공격적인 남성혐오를 하는 집단입니다. [This is the real substance of contemporary
Korean feminism. It’s not gender equality but an aggressive misandry within matriarchy
that’s wanted.]

한국의 페미니스트 대표들입니다 Χ [They are the representatives of Korean feminism Χ]

(매갈=페미) 공식입니다 정상인분들은 항상 기억하고 조심하세요. [(Megal = Femi).

This is official. Normal people should always remember this and be cautious.]

Before deconstructing the comments, it should be clarified that like most online dis-
course, they do not intend to engage in thoughtful deliberation (Hartz-Karp, 2014).
Instead, the comments are primarily affective in order to build shared beliefs and soli-
dify identity positions. Interestingly, the men did not argue against specific feminist
purposes but, rather, against feminists as an identity group. For instance, sexual har-
assment was argued to be a criminal offense worthy of punishment as well as gender
equality a desired societal goal, so the commenters do not take typical postfeminist
positions that argue that meritocracy is already achieved and, thus, feminism no
longer necessary (Chung, 2016). Rather, they specifically construct Korean feminism
as problematic through the conflation of broad, diverse feminist groups with
Megalia, thus reflecting an unwillingness to seriously engage feminist change or to
understand feminism with complexity. Thus, while their comments acknowledge fem-
inism as appropriate, they simultaneously minimize feminism through its demoniza-
tion of Korean feminists.
Similar to the literature on online misogyny, the commenters also constructed femin-
ists as grotesque, as manly, as animals, and as a cancerous threat. Through this dehuma-
nizing discourse, feminists are constructed as an undesirable other, disciplining other
women from considering feminism and legitimating men’s grievances. Drawing on the
women’s taunts about the men’s penises as smaller than clitorises, the men reversed
the taunt by ignoring the emasculating intentions and arguing that the women are gro-
tesque, instead.
클리가 6.9cm이신 그분들 … .ㄷㄷ 개징그럽다 [For people with a 6.9 cm clitoris, brr brr
disgusting]

클리가 6.9cm면 하마ㅂㅈ네 [If her clitoris is 6.9 cm, then it’s a hippotamus’s p**sy]

ㅅㅂ클리가 고추만하면 남자지 여자냐? [F**k,3 if her clitoris is as large as a penis,

wouldn’t she be a man rather than a woman?]

The intended use of humor in the comments draws readers into agreement through
shared mocking laughter. This strengthens affective connections and works rhetorically
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 9

to persuade readers into viewing the sisters as sexually grotesque and undesirable, and it
reverses the trope of 6.9 centimeters as an insult against men to the mockery of
“feminists.”
Reflecting common insults in the local cultural terrain that insult through associations
with animals, the feminists and the citizens who signed the Cheongwadae petition were
frequently referred to as “개돼지 [dog-pig].” This portmanteau combines the common
insult of “dogs” as analogous to ignorant and “pigs” as dirty.
개돼지들 30만 [300,000 dog-pigs]

뭐여 돼지 두마리가 꿀꿀거리며 인간인척 코스페레하네;; [What is this, two pigs oink

oink-ing and cosplaying as people;;]

개만도 못한 멧돼지 두마리가 주작질해서 이수역 사건만들었네∼ ㅋㅋㅋ토나온다∼

[(These people who) aren’t even dogs but two boars fabricated the Isu Station incident∼
Hahaha I’m throwing up∼]

Laughing with the jokes draws users further away from feminism and toward patriarchal
conformity. Indeed, a few self-identified women joined with the men in the online forum,
adding comments such as “하 진짜 같은 여자입장에서 개쪽이다 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ [Ha,
actually, as a person who also has a woman’s standpoint, (they) are dog-like.
Hahahahahaha].”
Another common insult is to refer to someone as “crazy.” Unlike Western insults,
which are generally rooted in sex or bodily waste, most Korean insults are rooted in criti-
cisms about someone’s substandard humanity as reflected in a lack of mental soundness,
i.e., ignorance, stupidity, and insanity. It is perhaps for this reason that the insults did not
share the violent imagery and rape fantasies expressed in many Western spaces (Jane,
2014a, 2014b). The insults were also not about irrationality and hysteria, a common
trope in Western misogynistic discourse (Jane, 2014a; Massanari & Chess, 2018), but,
rather, it was about how being a feminist is predicated on stupidity or as a condition
of mental illness (Kim & Lee, 2017).
진짜 페미는 정신병이구나 [It turns out feminism really is a mental illness]

인터넷으로만 보던 저런말을 현실에서 저따구로 하는 미친년들이 있네 [There really

are crazy bitches who use the words in real life that I only used to see on the internet]

페미들은 뇌가 없음 [Feminists don’t have a brain]

The effect of these insults is not, then, to engage in deliberation but, rather, to disci-
pline “unruly” feminism. It uses the women as a metonym for feminism in order to
convince people to reject a generalized, vilified feminism. For example, a self-identified
woman commented, “여자 망신시키고 ㅈㄹ이고 [Your sh*t is ruining women].”
Another, also commented, “제발 부끄러움 좀 느끼고, 같은 여자들한테 피해 좀
주지마세요. 당신들은 여성 인권을 노이는게 아니라, 오히려 낮추고 있어요
[Please start feeling some embarrassment. You’re harming women. You’re not pursu-
ing women’s rights but, rather, bringing them down].” More notably, in these spaces,
the comments function to affectively construct an androcentric space to build commu-
nity. Even more than the vilification of feminists, this was the primary function of the
YouTube comments.
10 D. C. OH

Ego rhetoric and the construction of the victimized, great man

In the 716 coded comments, only one called for men to mobilize to challenge their per-
ceived marginalization, and the comment received zero likes. As Johnson (2007) states,
protest rhetoric is often used for a group’s ego maintenance. In her analysis of The Man
Show, Johnson notes that the show resembles consciousness raising through the airing of
personal grievances but without calls for systemic change. For the men, their grievance
was explicitly expressed as their belief in a cultural double standard, and it was implicitly
expressed as resentment about women’s lack of appreciation for the nation that men
created. Unlike Ilbe, which blames feminism for a loss of male privilege (Kim, 2018;
Yun, 2013), the comments blamed feminism for reverse sexism. As such, they blamed
feminism for perceived inequality, even if this perception is not based in reality but
only in their affectively felt truth. As Lee and Park (2012) argue, the trope of “new
female power” has become commonplace in the local mediascape (p. 353). Men have
responded to the trope with claims of a loss of interpersonal power and by legitimating
their resentment and sense of victimization (Lee & Park, 2012). The incident, represented
through the YouTube video, then, becomes a manifestation of men’s grievances that
allowed for a homosocial, androcentric shared space.
This articulation of shared grievance works hegemonically by giving legitimacy to
patriarchal power. It disciplines men from joining women in their calls to systemically
reform patriarchal disadvantages by flipping the question of morality. In this logic, the
appeal to social justice is not to transform society in ways that decrease sexism against
women, but, rather, the appeal to social justice and morality is to end reverse discrimi-
nation against men. More than criticisms of feminism or any other coded category, it is
the claim that there is a double standard that appeared most frequently and that received
the most likes.
남자가 둘이서 저렇게 성희롱 했어봐 ㅋㅋ[If two men sexually harassed like that haha]

남자가 여자들한테 니네 클리 내 자지보다 작지? 클리 6.9mm지? 이랬으면 성희롱으로

고소감인데 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 우리나라는 여자가 살기 정말 좋은 나라인듯 [(If) a man said to
women your clitoris is smaller than my dick? Your clitoris is 6.9 mm, right? If he did this,
they’d be arrested for sexual harassment hahahahaha. Our country is a really good country
for women]

남자가 저렇게 성희롱 했으면 인생깥나는거맞죠?? [If a man sexually harassed like that,
their life would be over, right?]

As Lee and Park (2012) argue, men aired grievances over a perceived sexual double stan-
dard, rooting their frustrations in interpersonal differences in treatment while ignoring
systemic sexism that disproportionally advantages men. Indeed, the second comment
imagines the nation as more favorable to women than men. While those grievances
are usually abstractly argued, this incident gives tangible form to the users’ perceived
disadvantage.
Unlike in the West in which men’s backlash leads to hegemonic masculinity, charac-
terized by hyper-aggression, risk-taking, and sexual domination, this is less visible on this
page. This expression of masculinity is generally understood as reckless, immature mas-
culinity (Lee et al., 2019). Instead, in the South Korean conjuncture, there are two strands
that feminist scholars have observed that may superficially appear at odds, particularly
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 11

from a Western lens, but unify in a culturally specific articulation. These include the Con-
fucian ideal of the cultivated, gentle scholar and the Cold War ideal of the disciplined
soldier. According to Jung (2006), the normative masculine ideal is the seonbi (선비),
the scholar. For centuries, there has been more respect for scholars than military
leaders, and this view was buttressed in modern times under successive, authoritarian
military dictatorships (Kwon, 2001). Even during pre-modern times, physically strong
men who did not also manifest social graces would be seen as morally suspect (Tikhonov,
2007). For the scholar, he was not only learned, enlightened, and socially skilled, he was
expected to be beautiful. Because of the traditional belief that there is a “unity of the body
and soul,” an enlightened mind would be expected to manifest physically as a beautiful
appearance (Jang et al., 2019). Indeed, the aristocratic class (양반) has worn makeup even
in the premodern period, so men’s interests in beauty and grooming have not conflicted
with masculinity norms as it does in the West, and, indeed, seonbi masculinity validates it
(Jang et al., 2019). In today’s society, the use of cosmetics and interest in grooming is also
seen as a way of competing in a hyper-competitive labor market, a condition that was
created in the neoliberal aftermath of the International Monetary Fund’s bailout con-
ditions during the Asian currency crisis.
However, the focus on education, social graces, and beauty should not be confused
with progressive gender values. It also presumes that the role of the scholar, who is
limited to men, is in the public sphere, limiting women’s activities to the domestic
space. Further, because of its contemptuous view of physical labor for the scholar, house-
hold work is understood as unbecoming of men because their energies should be dedi-
cated to their intellectual, not physical, endeavors (Jang et al., 2019). In Korea’s
increasingly global landscape, there is also an explicit, simultaneous disavowal of homo-
sexuality, especially when challenged by Western cishetero masculine norms (Jang et al.,
2019). In this conjuncture, the seonbi is in discursive negotiation with what I. Kwon
(2001) refers to as “militarized masculinity” (p. 31). Through compulsory military
service, men are socialized into abandoning the reckless masculinity of youth and accept-
ing a version of masculinity that is disciplined, mature, and self-sacrificing for the social
organizations to which they belong (Lee et al., 2019; Tikhonov, 2007). Because conscrip-
tion is limited to men and the able-bodied, it also valorizes the soldier as a heteronorma-
tive, able-bodied patriotic, and cisgender man as the “ideal citizen subject” (Park, 2016,
p. 22). In addition, soldiers are socialized into violence and sexual objectification of
women (Park, 2016). This constructs those outside of this particular identity configur-
ation as marginal, including “cisgender women, LGBTQIA+ communities, and inter-
national migrants” (Lee, 2019, p. 208). Thus, idealized masculinity is a dialectic of the
scholar and the soldier – a disciplined, self-sacrificing patriotic, able-bodied cisgender,
heterosexual man, who is socially and intellectually enlightened and physically beautiful.
For this reason, perhaps, the commenters do not engage in the same kinds of violent
threats and imagined rape fantasies seen in studies of online misogyny in the West;
instead, they position men as uniquely enlightened and good. This was not well-reasoned
as logic and deliberation are not the standard discursive modes of YouTube or most
online spaces. The arguments are not intellectually logical but, rather, affectively
logical for men who feel aggrieved. Drawing upon the representations in the brief
video that edited out the physical altercation afterward, comments lionized the men as
tolerant in the face of injustice. Commenters argued that physical violence was
12 D. C. OH

justified while not taking seriously the claims that the men physically assaulted the
women. This is most clearly expressed in the following comment: “쳐맞을 짓을 했네
저러고도 피해자 코스프레 ㅋ [They actually did do something that deserves getting
hit; after doing that, they cosplayed as victims].” The comment avoids the question of
whether the men struck the women by claiming it was justified because of the excessive-
ness of the provocation. Self-identified women on the site made similar claims, e.g.,
“같은여자지만 니네는 쳐맞아도싸다 [Even as a woman, you all deserved to be
hit].” With the addition of sympathetic women’s comments, it naturalizes the belief
that provoking men justifies violence.
Yet, for the most part, the men involved were assumed to not have assaulted the
women. There were numerous comments about the emerging facts of the case that
emphasized the women’s lack of credibility and disingenuousness as evidenced above
in the comment that the women are merely “cosplaying” like victims. Set in opposition
to the comments about the women, the men were represented as enlightened philoso-
phers, thus idealized as the seonbi. This was accomplished through several joking com-
parisons to historic philosophers and religious leaders.
남자분들 실명 떳다네요.. 예수.. 부처 … 공자 … 소크라테스 … . 라고 … .. 저걸 참다니
… . [The men had their real names revealed … Jesus.. Buddha.. Confucius.. Socrates … I
can’t believe you put up with that …]

근데 저걸 참았냐 ㅋㅋㅋ 보살이네 보살 [But (how did) you put up with that hahaha It
turns out that [they’re] the Bodhisattva]

간디: “아니 이걸 참아?” [Gandhi: “You put up with this?”]

The jokes function rhetorically like a syllogism. The stated premise is that the men were
more tolerant than the greatest philosophers and religious leaders. The unstated premise
in the joke that is manifest in the other comments is that the feminists were especially
brutal and demeaning. Thus, the conclusion is that tolerating feminists is exceptional.
This not only marginalizes feminists, but I would argue, more importantly, supports
the ego function for men to argue that their magnanimity counters some feminists’
use of hannam as a derogatory slur.
It is in this context that comments about the nation’s exceptional safety for women can
be understood.
저 여자들은 진짜 한국이라 살았다 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ [Actually, those
women are alive because this is Korea hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha]

저페미년들 미국서 저랬음 총맞아 죽었을듯! [Those femi-bitches would be shot dead if
they did this in America!]

메갈들이 좋아하는 미국서 저런쌍욕 씨부려대봐라 어케돼는지 양남자들이 친절하게

알려줄까 [Megal, who love America so much, should try this there and see what happens.
Would Western men kindly inform them]

Countering the view of Korea as a hostile, misogynistic nation, the commenters imagine
that the consequences of their speech in the US, which is ambivalently understood as
both a violent place and a progressive bastion, would lead to violent, sexist consequences.
Thus, the comments construct Korea as relatively more progressive, thus vilifying feminists
for criticizing Korean patriarchy as uniquely problematic. Implicit in these comments is
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 13

that Korea is more tolerant of and less violent toward women’s verbal abuse, and, as such,
Korean men are relatively superior to Western men (with US men as exemplars of the
West), perhaps as a direct challenge to some feminists’ use of the term 갓양남 (God-
Western-man) to insult Korean men as inferior (Ha, 2017). They argue that feminists’
lack of gratitude and demands for change are destroying society. “나라가 망한다면
패미년들 때문일겁니다.. [If the country is failing, it’s because of feminist-bitches].”
Comments such as this presume that a good society is maintained through patriarchal lea-
dership and women’s fidelity to it. Thus, the androcentric space constructs positive ego by
arguing that Korean men are enlightened and tolerant and that without Korean men’s lea-
dership and discipline, feminists would ruin society. The function of the grievance is not to
demand social change but, rather, to validate their resentment and to construct positive self.

Conclusion
The findings in the essay are consonant with the existing literature on manospheres
(Ging, 2017, p. 2), but there are two points of differentiation in this case. The first is
theoretical. The focus of much of the literature on toxic technocultures is on abusive mis-
ogyny, but this cyberspace demonstrates that much of the point is to construct an andro-
centric community in which users unite over their shared grievances. E-bile is used to
stroke men’s egos wounded by their distorted perception of feminism and the harms
they imagine. It is the glue that binds men of varied socioeconomic backgrounds, and
cyberspace is the medium through which the social adhesive is applied. Its stickiness
draws men into affective community of anti-feminist grievance, particularly in a
culture that has the militarized soldier as one part of its masculinity dialectic. As such,
forming social units that are imagined to protect society from the ills of feminism res-
onates with their understanding of their societal duty.
The second contribution of the article is to demonstrate that toxic technocultures mani-
fest in ways that are meaningful in the local culture and for the specific conflict. Drawing on
the other part of the dialectic – the seonbi, the users’ e-bile was less violent and exaggerated
than the hegemonic masculine forms seen in much of the Anglophone literature. Instead,
the users elevated men as especially tolerant. Drawing on Jhally and Lewis’s (1992) theory
of “enlightened racism,” I argue that the commenters exhibited “enlightened sexism.” As
enlightened racism claims that White people confirm their belief in their moral goodness
through their liberal acceptance of Black people while also believing in the inferiority of
most Black people, the video and the comments put forward an argument of “enlightened
sexism” in which users argue that they support gender equality while disavowing feminism
and supposed double standards of reverse sexism. This differs from the usual adoption of
postfeminist discourses to counter the need for feminism in Korea (Chung, 2016), and,
instead, presents a progressive endorsement of feminism in the abstract that rejects
actual feminists. This would signal a different kind of co-optation of feminism in which
men define who and what is acceptable.

Notes
1. Cheongwadae (청와대), the presidential residence, is sometimes translated as the Blue
House because of the blue tile that adorns its roof. Petitions that are submitted to Cheong-
wadae and that have more than 200,000 signatories within a 30-day period triggers an
14 D. C. OH

investigation and a formal response. In this case, a petition was created shortly after the
image of the woman’s bloodied, bandaged head was posted to a social media site.
2. Doxxing refers to the public release of a person’s personal information, including her
address, phone number, online identities, credit card numbers, employer name, etc.
3. The comment abbreviated the profanity 시발 to its initials in order to avoid writing the
profanity. It is in this spirit that I translate the profanity with asterisks, a common conven-
tion in English to use a slur without writing it fully. I have done this in all cases in which
profanities are abbreviated. I have taken liberties with the translation of profanities to
capture intention rather than the literal meaning of the words. This is because the trans-
lation is unavailable in some cases such as 지랄, or the literal translation loses affective
impact, e.g., 개새끼 literally translated is simply dog offspring, i.e., puppies.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and the Kyujanggak Symposium
for providing conference accommodations to present an early draft of this research.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

References
Artz, L., & Murphy, B. O. (2000). Cultural hegemony in the United States. Sage.
Barthes, R. (1964|1999). Rhetoric of the image. In J. Evans, & S. Hall (Eds.), Visual culture: The
reader (pp. 33–40). Sage.
Benton-Greig, P., Gamage, D., & Gavey, N. (2017). Doing and denying sexism: Online responses to
a New Zealand feminist campaign against sexist advertising. Feminist Media Studies, 18(3), 349–
365. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1367703
Chen, J. H. (2016). Gangnamyeok sarinsageonbuteo megalia nonjaengggaji [From the Gangnam
Station murder to the Megalia controversy]. Yeoksabipyeong [Critical Review of History], 8,
353–381. http://www.yukbi.com/modules/doc/index.php?doc=intro.
Cho, J.-y. (2018). YouTube ranks 1st in S. Korea for number of users. Business Korea. http://www.
businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=20222#:~:text=YouTube%20Ranks%201st%
20in%20S,for%20Number%20of%20Users%20%2D%20Businesskorea&text=YouTube%20mo
nopolizes%20nearly%2040%20percent,ad%20market%20with%2040%20percent.
Chung, I.-K. (2016). Poseuteupeminijeum sidae inteonet yeoseonghyeomo [Internet misogyny in a
postfeminist era]. Peminijeum Yeongu [Issues in Feminism], 16(1), 185–219. https://doi.org/10.
21287/iif.2016.04.16.1.185.
Coe, K., Kenski, K., & Rains, S. A. (2014). Online and uncivil? Patterns and determinants of inci-
vility in newspaper website comments. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 658–679. https://doi.
org/10.1111/jcom.12104
Döring, N., & Mohseni, R. (2019). Fail videos and related video comments on YouTube: A case of
sexualization of women and gendered hate speech? Communication Research Reports, 36(3),
254–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2019.1634533
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis and the critical study of language (2nd ed.).
Longman.
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 15

Filipovic, J. (2007). Blogging while female: How internet misogyny parallels “real-world” harass-
ment. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 19(1), 295–303. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/
yjlf.
Ging, D. (2017). Alphas, betas, and incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere. Men
and Masculinities. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17706401
Ging, D., & Siapera, E. (2018). Special issue on online misogyny. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4),
515–524. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447345
Go, E. (2019). Websaiteu womadeuui ‘hyungja’ damron bunseok: Guljeoldwaen jagihyeomora-
neun songgongeui dongryeok [Discourse analysis on honorary-men (“Hyung-ja”) discourse
of website ]. Midia, Jendeo & Munhwa [Media, Gender, & Culture], 34(4), 53–97. http://
www.womencom.or.kr/store/academic_journal/journal_introduction.php. https://doi.org/10.
38196/mgc.2019.12.34.4.53
Ha, S. J. (2017). Megallia nonjaenge gwanhan dansangdeul [Positions on the Megalia controversy].
Lepeuteudaegu [Left Daegu], 12, 70–82. http://www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/publicationDetail?
publicationId=PLCT00002096#none.
Hall, S. (1997). Work of representation. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representation: Cultural representations
and signifying practices (pp. 15–30). Sage Publications, Inc.
Han, Y. (2013). Wae hanguk namseongeun hangukyeoseongdeulege bunnohaseunga [Why are
Korean men angry toward Korean women]. Munhwagwahak [Culture Science], 76, 185–201.
http://moonkwa.jinbo.net/.
Harris, S. (2003). Politeness and power: Making and responding to ‘requests’ in institutional set-
tings. Text, 23(1), 27–52. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.2003.003
Hartz-Karp, J. (2014). The unfulfilled promise of online deliberation. Journal of Public
Deliberation, 10(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.191
Horsti, K. (2009). Antiracist and multicultural discourses in European public service broadcasting:
Celebrating consumable differeces in the Prix Europa Iris media prize. Communication, Culture,
& Critique, 2(3), 339–360. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01041.x
Hur, J. (2019). Hanguksahwaeui yeoseonghyeomo pyohyeone gwanhan gyeongheomjeok yeongu
[An empirical study on the gender conflict and hate speech in South Korea]. Munhwawa
Jeongchi [Culture & Politics], 6(2), 207–231. https://cnp.jams.or.kr/co/main/jmMain.kci.
Jane, E. A. (2014a). ‘Back to the kitchen, cunt’: Speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny.
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 28(4), 558–570. https://doi.org/10.1080/
10304312.2014.924479
Jane, E. A. (2014b). Your a ugly, whorish, slut. Feminist Media Studies, 14(4), 531–546. https://doi.
org/10.1080/14680777.2012.741073
Jang, E., Park, S., Lee, J. W., & Hong, S.-K. (2019). Beautiful and masculine: Male make-up
YouTubers and heteronormativity in South Korea. The Journal of Popular Culture, 52(3),
678–702. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12803
Jeong, E., & Lee, J. (2018). We take the red pill, we confront the DickTrix: Online feminist activism
and the augmentation of gendered realities in South Korea. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 705–
717. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447354
Jhally, S., & Lewis, J. (1992). Enlightened racism: The Cosby Show, audiences, and the myth of the
American Dream. Westview Press.
Johnson, A. (2007). The subtleties of blatant sexism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies,
4(2), 166–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420701296521
Jun, J.-h. (2019). YouTube set to overtake Naver as search engine. The Korea Times. http://www.
koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2019/03/133_265442.html.
Jung, S. (2006). Bae Yong-Joon, hybrid masculinity & the counter-coeval desire of Japanese female
stars. Particip@tions, 3. https://www.participations.org/index.htm.
Kim, B. (2018). Late modern misogyny and feminist politics: The case of ilbe, megalia, and womad.
Hangukyeoseonghak, 34(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.30719/JKWS.2018.03.34.1.1
Kim, J. (2017). #Iamafeminist as the “mother tag”: Feminist identification and activism against
misogyny on Twitter in South Korea. Feminist Media Studies, 17, 804–820. https://doi.org/10.
1080/14680777.2017.1283343
16 D. C. OH

Kim, N. Y. (2006). “Seoul—America” on America’s “soul”: South Koreans and Korean immigrants
navigate global white racial ideology. Critical Sociology, 32(2-3), 381–402. https://doi.org/10.
1163/156916306777835231
Kim, S. A. (2015). Onlainsangui yeoseong hyeomo pyohyeon [Misogynistic cyber hate speech in
Korea]. Peminijeum Yeongu [Issues in Feminism], 15(2), 279–317. https://doi.org/10.21287/iif.
2015.10.15.2.279
Kim, S. A., & Lee, Y.-S. (2017). Onlain keomyunitiwa namseong-yakja seosa guchuk [The discursive
construction of men-the weak identity via online community]. Hanguk Yeoseonghak [Journal of
Korean Women’s Studies], 33(3), 67–107. https://doi.org/10.30719/JKWS.2017.09.33.3.67
Kim, Y. (2015). Globalization of the privatized self-image: The reaction video and its attention
economy on YouTube. In L. Hjorth, & O. Khoo (Eds.), Routledge handbook of new media in
Asia (pp. 333–342). Routledge.
Koo, J. (2019). South Korean cyberfeminism and trolling: The limitation of online feminist com-
munity Womad as counterpublic. Feminist Media Studies, 20(6), 831–846. https://doi.org/10.
1080/14680777.2019.1622585
Korea’s war between genders gets hotter: Issues pitting women against men account for 70% of
conflicts. (2019, August 18). Korea JoongAng Daily. http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/
news/article/article.aspx?aid=3063091.
Kwon, I. (2001). A feminist exploration of military conscription: The gendering of the connections
between nationalism, militarism, and citizenship in South Korea. International Feminist Journal
of Politics, 3(1), 26–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616740010019839
Kwon, J. (2019). South Korea’s young men are fighting against feminism. CNN. https://www.cnn.
com/2019/09/21/asia/korea-angry-young-men-intl-hnk/index.html.
Lee, A., & Otsuji, E. (2009). Critical discourse analysis and the problem of theory. In T. Le, Q. Le, &
M. Short (Eds.), Critical discourse analysis: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 65–77). Nova
Science Publishing, Inc.
Lee, A. J.-S. (2019). Manly colors: Masculinity and mobility among globalizing Korean men.
Kalfou, 6(2), 199–230. https://doi.org/10.15367/kf.v6i1.194
Lee, C. (2018). ‘Isu station’ assault case triggers online gender war in South Korea. The Korea
Herald. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20181118000177.
Lee, C. S., & Park, J. H. (2012). ‘We need a committee for men’s rights’: Reactions of male and
female viewers to reverse gender discrimination in Korean comedy. Asian Journal of
Communication, 22(4), 353–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2012.681664
Lee, J., Shirmohammadi, M., Baumgartner, L. M., Oh, J., & Han, S. J. (2019). Warriors in suits: A
Bourdieusian perspective on the construction and practice of military masculinity of Korean
men. Gender, Work, & Organization, 26(10), 1467–1488. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12358
Lee, S.-y. (2018). Isu Station assault sparks gender-charged debate online. The Korea Times.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/11/251_258756.html.
Massanari, A., & Chess, S. (2018). Attack of the 50-foot social justice warrior: The discursive con-
struction of SJW memes as the monstrous feminine. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 525–542.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447333
Moon, K. H. S. (1997). Sex among allies: Military prostitution in U.S.-Korea relations. Columbia
University Press.
Na, Y. (2018). Jigeum Hangukaeseo, TERF1wa bosu gaeshingyogyaeui hyeomoseondongeun eod-
deotgae jouhagoitna [In Korea, how are TERF1 and the conservative Protestantism’s hatred].
Munhwagwahak [Culture Science], 93, 50–72. http://moonkwa.jinbo.net/.
Park, Y.-M. (2016). The crucible of sexual violence: Militarized masculinities and the abjection of
life in post-crisis neoliberal South Korea. Feminist Studies, 42(1), 17–40. https://doi.org/10.
15767/feministstudies.42.1.17
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies: An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials.
Sage Publications.
Shaw, A. (2014). The Internet is full of jerks, because the world is full of jerks: What feminist theory
teaches us about the Internet. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(3), 273–277.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.926245
 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 17

Shim, K.-S. (2018). Bar brawl over gender turns into online melee. Korea JoongAng Daily. http://
koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3055680.
Steger, I. (2016). An epic battle between feminism and deep-seated misogyny is under way in
South Korea. Quartz. https://qz.com/801067/an-epic-battle-between-feminism-and-deep-
seated-misogyny-is-under-way-in-south-korea/.
Tikhonov, V. (2007). Masculinizing the nation: Gender ideologies in traditional Korea and in the
1890s-1900s Korean enlightenment discourse. The Journal of Asian Studies, 66(4), 1029–1065.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911807001283
Tolson, A. (2010). A new authenticity? Communicative practices on YouTube. Critical Discourse
Studies, 7(4), 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2010.511834
Tucker-McLaughlin, M. (2013). Youtube’s most-viewed videos: Where the girls aren’t. Women &
Language, 36(1), 43–49. http://osclg.org/women-language.
van Dijk, T. A. (2002). Multidisciplinary CDA: A plea for diversity. In R. Wodak, & M. Meyer
(Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 95–120). Sage Publications.
Wodak, R. (2002). What CDA is about - a summary of its history, important concepts and its
developments. In R. Wodak, & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 1–
13). Sage.
Yoon, M. (2018). Seongdaegyeol nollan ‘isuyeok pokhaengsageon’ ssangbangpokhaengeuro gyeol-
lon [Controversy over the gender confrontation ‘Isu Station violent incident’ is concluded to be
mutual violence]. Chosun Ilbo. https://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/12/26/
2018122601325.html.
Young, A. M., Battaglia, A., & Cloud, D. L. (2010). (UN)Disciplining the scholar activist: Policing
the boundaries of political engagement. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 96(4), 427–435. https://doi.
org/10.1080/00335630.2010.521179
Yun, B. (2013). Ilbewa yeoseong hyeomo [Ilbe and misogyny]. Jinbopyeonglon [The Radical
Review], 57, 33–56. http://jbreview.jinbo.net/.