‘I got death and rape threats from men who thought I put feminist symbol in video game’

It was late at night, and Darim’s video theater had just finished designing a new look for a figure in one of South Korea’s most favorite video game, MapleStory.

Darim was glad of her job. Therefore, sitting alone on the surface of her little studio apartment, she posted the video on social press. Almost immediately, she was flooded with hundreds of aggressive information, including death and rape challenges.

Young men players had criticized a single window in the video, in which the female figure could be seen holding her thumb and forefinger close up.

They believed it resembled a hand gesture made famous by a dramatic online feminist movement almost ten years ago to make fun of Vietnamese men’s penises ‘ size.

” There were accusations I’d always heard before, they were disgusting and inhumane”, said Darim, which is not her real name. One read:” You’ve only sabotaged your work”.

The sport developer and Darim’s studio received messages demanding that she be fired, as well as claiming that she was a lesbian. Within days, the business pulled the commercial video.

Darim was just the latest victim in a string of heinous website monster hunts, where men in South Korea strike women they believe to be of a certain gender. They try to sack them and overuse them.

This is a result of a growing backlash against sexism, where women have been labeled as man-haters who deserve to be punished. People are being frightened to say they are liberals because of the monster hunts, which are having a chilling effect.

This is forcing the movement underground, in a country where gender discrimination is still deeply entrenched. South Korea has the largest gender pay gap in the OECD, a group of the world’s rich countries.

The chases are usually spearheaded by younger adult video gamers, and specific ladies who work in the industry, like Darim, though lately they have spread to different professions.

They look for anything that resembles the” finger-pinching sign” and use it as proof that men-hating people are secretly mocking them.

When they spot a supposed signal, the chase begins. ” They decide that a dark, evil feminism is hiding in the business, and her career should be ruined”, explained Minsung Kim, a 22-year-old man player who, concerned by these monster hunts, set up an company to help the victims.

The female employees at the company in question are tracked down by the witch hunting, who look through their social media accounts for any signs of sexism. Way up on Darim’s timeframe, they found an’ offending’ article.

Darim in reality had nothing to do with the conflicted scene in the movie, but her theater was roiled by the abuse, particularly after Nexon, a gaming company, abruptly removed all of the studio’s artwork from their roster and apologized to customers.

” My company and CEO were in a panic”, said Darim. ” I believed I would get fired, and I would never be able to work in video once more,” he said.

Then Minsung’s company stepped in. Darim’s attorneys were offered to pay Darim’s lawful costs so she could report the abuse, and they urged her studio to reject the players. We told people,” You need nip this in the flower now,” he said, “because these needs will always end.” The workshop listened, and Darim kept her career.

But similar witch hunts have worked, in the gaming industry and beyond, and they are becoming more frequent. In one case, a young illustrator lost her job after a handful of disgruntled gamers stormed the company’s office demanding she be removed.

And it is not just Asian companies that have capitulated. One of the female employees at Renault International last year was accused of making the finger-pinching movement while moving her hands in a special display.

” These anti-feminists are getting more organised, their handbook is getting more specific”, said Minsung. They can actually manufacturer anyone an evil feminist by turning a hand gesture that everyone makes into a scarlet letter, he said.

Because the firms are folding to these false accusations, the purveyors of these expeditions have become emboldened, he said. ” They are convinced now that when you accuse someone of feminist, you can damage their job”.

Because he was one of these guys a while ago, Minsung is aware of this. He used to pertain to the anti-feminist communities. He said,” We are exposed to the uncensored internet unimaginably young,” having joined the forums at the age of nine.

It was only when Minsung traded video game for playing real-life activities, including Dungeons and Dragons, that he met people, and his opinions shifted. He became, in his thoughts, an “ardent female”.

At work and at home, women are frequently subject to discrimination and sexism in South Korea. Many younger people now believe they are the victims of discrimination as they continue to fight for their rights.

The backlash began in the mid-2010s, following a surge of feminist activism. During this time, women took to the streets in protest at sexual violence and the widespread use of hidden cameras that secretly film women using toilets and changing rooms – around 5,000 to 6,000 cases are reported annually.

According to Myungji Yang, a professor of sociology at the University ofHawai’i Manoa who has interviewed dozens of young Asian men, “young men saw people becoming vociferous and were threatened by their fall.” ” They learn about sexism from online communities, which carry the most extreme portrayal of liberals”, she said. They have a distorted perception of what feminist is because of this.

One of their problems is the 18-month military assistance that people had finish. When they leave the military they generally “feel entitled” to a great job, said Hyun Mee Kim, a teacher of cultural anthropology at Yonsei University in Seoul, who studies sexism.

Some people believe their options are being unfairly taken away as more women enter the workforce and work have become harder to find.

These sentiments have been validated by South Korea’s then disgraced and suspended President, Yoon Suk Yeol, who came to power in 2022 on an anti-feminist system, claiming sex discrimination no longer existed, and has since tried to destroy the government’s gender equality government.

More surprising than these views themselves, is that the men who hold them have such power over major companies.

I met a woman who has spent 20 years working in the gaming sector in Pangyo, South Korea’s Silicon Valley. After Darim’s case, her company started to edit all its games, removing the fingers from characters ‘ hands, turning them into fists, to avoid complaints.

” It’s exhausting and frustrating” to work like this, she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. It is absurd to think that a hand gesture can be seen as an attack on men, and businesses should ignore this notion.

She responded to my question about why they weren’t when she explained that many developers held the anti-feminist views of gamers. There are those on the inside who also believe things are bad, according to the yelling outsiders.

Then there is the financial cost. The men threaten to boycott the games unless the businesses take action.

” The gaming companies think the anti-feminists are the largest source of their revenue”, said Minsung. After Darim’s company, Studio Ppuri, was targeted, it said it lost nearly two thirds of its contracts with gaming companies.

Studio Ppuri, did not respond to our questions, but both Nexon, the game developer, and Renault Korea told us they stood against all forms of discrimination and prejudice.

The authorities are reportedly clinging to the demands of the anti-feminists, as evidenced by the evidence. The police refused to take Darim’s case when she reported her abuse to them.

They said because the finger-pinching gesture was taboo, it was “logical” that she, as a feminist, had been attacked. ” I was astonished”, she said. Why wouldn’t the authorities go to my defense?

Following outrage from feminist organisations, the police backtracked and are now investigating. In a statement, Seocho district police told the BBC their initial decision to close the case had been “insufficient” and they were “making all efforts to identify the suspects”.

The case left Darim’s lawyer, Yu-kyung Beom, dumbfounded. ” If you want to say that you’re a feminist in South Korea, you have to be very brave or insane”, she said.

The violence started in November 2023 and spread both offline and in real life. A man walked in and started attacking a young woman at a convenience store when she was working alone at night. We are calling her Jigu.

” He said’ hey, you’re a feminist, right? With your short hair, you look like a feminist, Jigu said as she unsurely described the night. The man kicked her as she fell to the ground. ” I kept going in and out of consciousness. I thought I could die”.

Jigu did not consider herself a feminist. She simply liked having short hair and thought it was appropriate for her. She has been left with permanent injuries as a result of the attack. Her left ear is damaged, and she wears a hearing aid.

” I feel like I’ve become a completely different person”, she said. ” I don’t smile as much. The memory of that day is still so vivid, and some days it is agony just to stay alive.

For the first time ever, a South Korean court determined that Jigu had been attacked for looking like a feminist. She was sent to prison for three years.

During the attack, the man said he belonged to an extreme anti-feminist group, New Men’s Solidarity. Its leader, In-kyu Bae, has called on men to confront feminists. So, one evening, as he held a live-streaming event in Gangnam, a flashy neighbourhood in Seoul, I went to try to talk to him.

He yelled” I’m here to tell you these feminists are staining the country with hatred” from the roof of a black van with loudspeakers.

” That psychopath]who attacked Jigu ] was not a member of our group. We don’t have members, we are a YouTube channel”, he told me as he simultaneously broadcast to thousands of subscribers. A small group of young men who had come to see in person were yelling along.

” We’ve never encouraged anyone to use violence. In fact, the violent ones are the feminist groups. They’re shaming men’s genitals”, he added.

After harassing a feminist activist for more than two years, Mr. Bae and several of his supporters were found guilty last year of defaming and insulting her.

Anti-feminist beliefs have spread to the point where Yuri Kim, the head of the Korea Women’s Trade Union, recently established a committee to track instances of what she refers to as “feminism censorship.” She discovered that some women have been asked about their feminism in job interviews, and that at work women frequently face remarks like” all feminists need to die.”

According to Prof. Kim, a professor of feminism, men are using these days’ feminist threats in the workplace to harass and control their female coworkers; it’s their way of saying,” We are watching you, you should behave yourself.”

Such harassment is proving effective. Last year, a pair of scholars coined the phrase “quiet feminism”, to describe the impact of what they say is a “pervasive everyday backlash”.

Gowoon Jung and Minyoung Moon discovered that women who held feminist beliefs felt uncomfortable making those beliefs public. Some women I spoke to claimed they were even afraid to cut their hair short, while others claimed that feminism had become so synonymous with hating men that they did not recognize the cause.

A 2024 IPSOS poll of 31 countries found only 24% of women in South Korea defined themselves as feminist, compared to an average of 45%, and down from 33% in 2019.

Prof. Kim is concerned about the long-term effects. She claims that women are being made to conceal their feminist values, which in turn stifle the advancement of gender inequality, which affects work, politics, and public life.

Feminists are currently at work conceiving ways to stop the witch hunts. One clear answer is legal change. There is no universal anti-discrimination law in South Korea to protect women and stop them from being fired for their opinions.

It has been repeatedly blocked by politicians, largely because it would support gay and transgender people, with anti-feminists, and even some trans-exclusionary feminists, now lobbying against it.

Minsung believes that the only way to depose the witch hunters is through the businesses and the authorities. They only have loud voices and an oddly oversized influence, he claims, making up a small fraction of the male population in South Korea.

Since her attack, Jigu now proudly calls herself a feminist. If even one woman has the strength to grab my hand, I want to help, and I want to reach out to other victims like me.

Hosu Lee, Leehyun Choi, and Jake Kwon provide additional reporting.