A slew of articles have come out recently castigating South Korean male gamers for rampant misogyny — and it all started with a tweet of a t-shirt. When looking at the facts presented in those articles, there is really only one conclusion to be made: Korean gamers are misogynistic babies.
But there’s actually much more to the story.
The controversy began when a Korean voice actress, Jayeon Kim, working for the PC game company Nexon, tweeted out a shirt she had purchased with the phrase, “Girls don’t need a prince.”
Nexon’s customers were outraged over the tweet, and their calls of complaint led Nexon to let the Kim go. (Note: she was already paid for her work, Nexon just decided to use another voice actress for the game and terminated her contract. Another game company Kim worked for also let her go following the backlash.)
But it wasn’t the shirt itself that sparked the controversy. The problem was the group that sold the shirt, Megalia4.
Megalia4 is a feminist Facebook page devoted to fighting misogyny in Korea. The t-shirt was being sold to raise money to fund the attorney fees involved in fighting Facebook Korea’s alleged practice of banning feminist pages but not banning what Korean feminists see as misogynist pages. Megalia4 is the fourth iteration of the page after Facebook shut down the first two (the third remains as well).
Megalia4, the Facebook page, is not too controversial. But Megalian.com, on the other hand is despised by many men in Korea. The site is described as the feminist 4chan, filled with edgelords making jokes about male genital mutilation and celebrating the Korean War (because men died).
Megalia4 denies any relation with Megalian.com, despite the fact they share the same name. (Megalia is a feminist symbol in Korea, with complicated origins involving a satiric novel and the MERS virus… really.)
The main issue with the shirt, according to critics, is that some believe that a portion of the money would help pay the legal fees of a woman who allegedly falsely accused a web-comic artist of sexual assault and other women being sued associated with Megalian.com. There is no apparent evidence to connect these women with Megalia4’s fundraising campaign.
Some of the controversial nature of Megalia4 and Megalian.com can be attributed to a “mirroring” strategy, said a Korean feminist activist who spoke to Heat Street but wishes to remain anonymous. These sites will take misogynist statements made by men and flip the genders.
“For example, men have been joking for decades in South Korea that women should be beaten once every three days,” she said. “New feminists who are in the same movement as Megalia4 and Megalian.com have started to joke that men should be beaten every time he breathes.”
Like the Western Gamergate, the Korean one is a confusing mix of fact and conspiracy theory that constantly butts heads with journalists. Official sources and evidence are difficult to come by, and it appears the Korean media firmly stands against the gamers’ narrative.
While no firm conclusions can be drawn based on the existing facts, it is interesting that the Gamergate phenomenon was not just an isolated incident.
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