Is Digital Feminism as Public Feminism in South Korea?”

In this paper, I explore how the current feminist movement (Hyewha shiwi) on the issue of “upskirt” (spy cam) in South Korea has become a young feminist discourse, which can be called digital feminism. The paper is focused on how technology of self that invites girls and women to raise the feminist issue against the “spycam” problem and organise a feminist movement through on/offline. The discussion demonstrates the extensiveness of debates across digitalised/public feminism, old/ young feminism, and feminism/ antifeminism is to examine continuities between the current new wave of digital feminist movements and the postfeminist sensibility in South Korea. The analysis focuses on how new forms of media enabled young generation of girls and women to form new feminism (or antifeminism): popular discussions about gender, gazing culture, playing culture and consumer body culture. Examining the incitements to digitalize feminism in the neoliberal context, the paper examines how an emergent technology of confidence re-signifies feminist accounts by situating feminist visibility and misogynist responses to feminism systematically. The paper diagnoses the current speculation of digital feminism in relation to wider debates about feminism, public feminism as digitalised culture and how this opens up new possibilities and associated new challenges.