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www.groovekorea.com / May 2014 64 Edited by Elaine Ramirez (elaine@groovekorea.com) INSIGHT ment. In the public sector, slightly more than 42 percent are female employees,” Minister Cho said at the conference at Asan Institute. With issues like this, feminism and fighting for gender equality may seem like far-off revo- lutionary causes detached from women’s daily hurdles. “Women in Korea can be very passive, like other women in Asia,” says up-and-coming photographer Jung “Julia” Ji-hyun. “Of course, nowadays women are very powerful and vocal, but those powerful women are facing negative sentiment among people in general.” Jung lived briefly in Australia and recogniz- es the depth of Korea’s strict social expecta- tions of women. “People in Australia look at me more as I am, I guess. Koreans seem to be very judgmental,” she says. “The status of women in Korea now isn’t actually bad. But they expect or want women to be womanly and feminine, to be more complacent.” Jung believes that she lives in a country where being a woman means conforming to social expectations. She says that most women’s ambition is to get married. With the endless array of cosmetic and plastic surgery advertisements, everything they do seems like it is to achieve the goal of marriage, she says. With such ideas ingrained in women’s minds from a young age, Jung is uncertain about what could ign ite a feminist revolution. She believes women need a major change of mindset to empower them to fight for gender equality. “I hope women in Korea do not give a shit about what other people think about them, and I want them to think that marriage is not the goal of their lives. Be more idealistic.” Jung does believe that change will eventual- ly happen. “Slowly, though, after my parents’ generation passes away. Korea is a very fam- ily-oriented society and family pressure is a really big thing.”