Progress in Gender Equality in Employment

by Sonagi on February 22, 2009

An impressive 51% (58 out of 112) of newly hired prosecuting attorneys are women. These 58 new female prosecutors will join 316 women who comprise 18% of the 1716 prosecutors employed nationwide. The increasing number of women is expected to challenge the old boys’ network and change the way domestic violence cases are handled.

{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }

1 JW February 22, 2009 at 6:30 am: If all that yelling and slapping in Korean drama is any indication, women in Korea will achieve US like equality a la Miracle on the Han — in no time flat.
2 JW February 22, 2009 at 7:00 am: I am all in favor of the progress of course, how could you not be?

But damn, those girls in the picture ain’t looking too hot. Which is kind of strange? I remember reading somewhere that being smart goes hand in hand with being good looking.
3 JW February 22, 2009 at 7:05 am: The below comment on this article got the most votes in favor. Which goes to show you, so long as military remains mandatory, people should push for women’s progress in Korea even at the cost of overshooting.

“성차별을 없애야 한다. 여검사도 특수부나 변사체도 만져야 되고 여자도 軍복무 의무를 수행해야한다. 김대중이때부터 여성표를 의식해서 남성과 너무나 차별화한 결과이다. 남자는 황금시기에 군에 가서 옛날엔 3년간이나 X뺑이를 치고 나와야 하는데 여자들은 너무나 자신들의 이기적인 주장만 해 왔다.성차별을 없애라! 여자에게 너무 특혜가 많다! [2009.02.21 20:44:52]“
4 Darth Babaganoosh February 22, 2009 at 9:07 am: I’m afraid there won’t be a change in the way domestic violence cases are handled until women start getting put on the bench. Being a female prosecuting attorney won’t really mean much when the judges are still the same men handing down the same fucked up judgements.
5 DLBarch February 22, 2009 at 9:32 am: This is really good news for both Korea generally and the Prosecutor’s Office specifically. When I was a lecturer at the 사법연수원 in 2007, what struck me was how genuinely meritocratic the institution was. At the time, women made up over 51 percent of the entering class, but they certainly did not make up 51 percent of those graduates who went on to become judges and prosecutors — the creme de la creme of each graduating class as reflected in their final student rankings.

This latest achievement is truly good news – not just for the issue of domestic violence but also for the cause of improving what is still a dismally uniform and not very diverse Prosecutor’s Office.

DLB
6 Jewook February 22, 2009 at 10:10 am: Then why is Einstein unattractive? By that theory he should the handsomest guy to have existed.
7 Jewook February 22, 2009 at 10:22 am: Really good news. Hope this will help get more sex offenders in prison. It is just so infuriating how light their punishment is.
8 Linkd February 22, 2009 at 10:30 am: What JW read somewhere was a test in which subjects were shown pictures of people and asked to make judgements on their intelligence (and other qualities) based solely on their appearance. It was found that the better-looking people were assumed to also be more intelligent.

And he’s right – those girls look like idiots.
9 Scipio February 22, 2009 at 11:05 am: Impressive for a north east Asian nation. Maybe there is hope for Korea yet.

It puts japan in the shade and I’m sure when it gets backs to Japan, it’ll put pressure on the Japanese to see their more talented womenfolk as more than photocopying, tea making objects dressed in skimpy uniforms to be lust over by their salary drone male collegues.

‘Gaiatsu’ is a great stimulus for change in Japan, especially when Japan looks less advanced than its near neighbours.

Well done Korea.
10 JW February 22, 2009 at 11:39 am: Sorry, I’m definitely not trying to make fun of them. Just an observation I had is all it is– but the latent jealousy may be because I find it ridiculously unfair that people who are born smart get to be good looking too. I would much much rather be in their shoes than mine.
11 seouldout February 22, 2009 at 11:46 am: Pretty girls may very well be smart; I reckon many learned early on that that they’d reap rewards regardless of their intellectual talents.
12 R. Elgin February 22, 2009 at 1:12 pm: Do your reading “jewook”: Einstein was a veritable p***y-monster.
I will not play Leperello to him now in listing his conquests, but my hat is off to him.
13 R. Elgin February 22, 2009 at 1:22 pm: Basically, I would trust educated women here more so because I perceive them as being less tolerant to cultural biases, in general.
14 whitey February 22, 2009 at 11:47 pm: Good point. I’ve often thought that; you put it into words well.
15 leefr February 23, 2009 at 1:17 am: It’s already been years since the number of women appointed as new judges outnumbered the men. The prosecutor’s office is only starting to go in the same direction. The senior ranks of both the court and the prosecutor’s office are still male-dominated, of course, but a fundamental shift is inevitable within the next couple of decades.
16 Darth Babaganoosh February 23, 2009 at 8:22 am: If women outnumber men in new judge appointments, it’s (welcome) news to me. However much they outnumber the men, it’s still not enough. The fucked up old-boy judgments we’ve had recently are an embarrassment to law and justice.
17 wjk, 검은 머리 외국인 February 23, 2009 at 8:33 am: i think more murderers will not get the death penalty.

i think more husbands who are going thru a divorce will lose their child custody cases.

i think more foreign men accused of sexual crimes will indeed get rougher punishment.

i think more men will be shafted because of some pseudo quota in school, work, etc.

i think more communists or clear sympathizers will get weaker sentences. They might get rid of boahnbup, if they haven’t already.

it will be good news to some, bad news to others.
18 wjk, 검은 머리 외국인 February 23, 2009 at 8:42 am: compare your experiences working under a female or a male.

female DA, female judge.

the joy will be temporary.
19 Sonagi February 23, 2009 at 9:42 am: Eeeeww! Posts from It are flashing in my inbox like a migraine aura. Make… It… go… away! Must not push that delete button or Uncle Marmot might get angry.
20 Maximus2008 February 23, 2009 at 11:01 am: You guys are unbelievable, turning this to a beauty discussion.

Now, “smart” doesn’t mean “intelligent” or “educated”. Pretty girls can be smart enough to fool you, but not interlligent enough to have a discussion…or become a prosecuting attorney.

Same is valid for boys: usually, the good looking get all the honours. But to have the job done…it’s another story…
21 DLBarch February 24, 2009 at 3:10 am: Hear, hear, Maximus. Good call. These women very much represent the best and the brightest of their generation, but there’s always some sexist neanderthal who has to comment on their appearance.

Good for you for pointing this out.

DLB
22 hardyandtiny February 24, 2009 at 8:01 am: So maybe you’ll get a few plants and window treatments down at the Banpo storage warehouse.
23 dokdoforever February 24, 2009 at 12:20 pm: On the issue of Korean women lawyers – check out this farewell e-mail written by a fired Korean American lawyer to her firm. They fired her just after she had a miscarriage.
http://abovethelaw.com/2008/05/paul_hastings_farewell_email_a.php

She may have been right, but she’s not working in law anymore – I guess noone wants to hire someone who speaks ill of their previous employer.
24 DLBarch February 25, 2009 at 5:57 am: The not-very-subtle comment no. 22 offered by “hardyandtiny” (I can’t believe I just typed that — god, I hate these cowardly nicknames) can only be interpreted as homophobic and bigoted, and I have no compunction at all for calling you out.

“Dokdoforever”: Great link. The more negative attention that ostensibly respectable big law firms like Paul Hastings gets for this kind of outrageousness the better.
25 Linkd February 25, 2009 at 9:20 am: hardyandtiny is a trickster, a jokester and a jester. Since ancient times these valuable members of society have worn makeup to hide their identities, since anonymity allows them to say what everyone else is thinking.
26 DLBarch February 25, 2009 at 10:15 am: Linkd,

Wow. Words fail. Well, almost. “Valuable member of society”? Really? Look back over the chain…the guy responds to a comment about sexism with a fag joke. No one on MH, much less a father, should excuse this kind of remark. If he responded to a comment about racism with a joke about fried chicken and watermelons, we’d all be outraged.

Or maybe not. Let’s at least hope that he does not in fact say what everyone else on MH is thinking.

DLB
27 Brendon Carr (Korea Law Blog) February 25, 2009 at 11:22 am: Come on now, Barch — you cannot shame the shameless.
28 Linkd February 25, 2009 at 11:38 am: Words will never fail you.

Let me tell you some more stories about the Marmot’s Hole before lunch. The very first troll I ever met was also the best. His name was cinemagauche, and his MO was to introduce inflammatory links about the 9/11 attacks, and then, when a commenter took exception, he would attack the commenter by calling them childish. Good work, childish, it seems to get a better response than cowardly. By the end of his run, cinemagauche was jousting for days, dispatching one commenter after another under a flood of insults and increasingly bizarre links – he was a brilliant researcher.

Then there’s iwshim. He’s the most persistent, and still breaks in now and then. He arrives with extreme sincerity and political correctness, then occasionally swings Jekll&Hyde-like into a personal attack on some commenter. When insulted in return, he returns to his PC persona and wins sympathy with his victimized pleas for harmony and understanding. He’s never patient enough to make a good troll run at the Hole, though.

NES was the most fun. He just barraged us with witty, friendly comments, dozens and dozens per day on every thread. But he conscientiously kept changing topics and not allowing a conversation to develop – presumably feeding his ego by monopolizing the blog and creating chaos everywhere. He would have loved the nested comment experiment.

Recently this other guy showed up. His MO seems to be pompous civility, his call to battle a challenge to any and all to drop their cowardice and reveal their true name, and so create a better blogging society for all. I don’t know yet what he intends to do with that information, but it hardly matters, since he doesn’t seem to have the skill to sufficiently enrage a commenter into revealing their identity. Good luck, though.