South Korean lawmakers condemn misogynistic attacks against gold medalist

Seoul, Jul 30 (EFE).- South Korean lawmakers condemned Friday misogynistic attacks on Tokyo 2020 double-gold medalist archer An San.

An has received many attacks on her Instagram account, as well as comments on other social networks, that accuse her of misandry because of her short haircut and slang expressions on her online profiles associated with feminism and criticism of the patriarchy in South Korea.

“Unilaterally defining (another person’s) thoughts based on (his or her) appearance or origin, and targeting certain thoughts for indiscriminate criticism constitute an extreme case of senselessness and is tantamount to a hate crime,” Democratic Party lawmaker Woo Won-shik wrote on Facebook.

Woo recalled that the athlete Park Hee-moon, who has also competed in Tokyo 2020 in the shooting, is also receiving this type of criticism and that, as the father of a daughter, it breaks his heart to see this behavior.

In An’s case, some of these critics have even called the Korea Archery Association (KAA) to demand that she return her medals.

These attacks have in turn led to thousands of messages being posted on the KAA website asking for the archer to be protected.

Justice Party MP Sim Sang-jeung also defended An on Twitter and asked the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee to take the situation seriously.

Misogyny and anti-feminism are widespread in South Korea, which ranks 102 out of 156 in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap Report.

Surveys from recent years indicate that these trends are even more common in young men – 50-75 percent of South Korean men in their 20s-40s consider themselves anti-feminist.

In a poll two weeks ago, 61 percent of men consulted (and 35 percent of women) approved closing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, an idea recently proposed by the leader of the conservative opposition People Power Party, Lee Jun-seok. EFE

asb/tw