Korean men usually posit, if a man goes to cinema, that's because he has a girlfriend. Books, traveling, movies, food industry - at every avenue of consumption in Korea women are trailing the trend. Ok, then what are men doing?
He was pensive for a while and said, “<Sil-mi-do> was it.” In response to my friend’s question asking what was his last choice of movie to go to cinema hall he answered like that, she told. His reason was, since he had gone to cinema to watch <Sil-mi-do>, he was alone and that made him feel no need to go to cinema. My friend cast a question so expected to be wasted, “Why? Don’t you go to cinema by yourself?” That guy shook his head adamantly like a patriot who confronted a treacherous conspiracy to subvert the national security, and told her he was going to take his own life rather than to go to theater by himself, or in case of going there with other guy, it were better to come out to declare his, unseemingly, disoriented sexual tendency.
Of course, the movie he had lastly seen at a cinema hall was not that attractive theme for us sitting a table at a coffee house. “OK. That’s it. So what for the next?”, asked I. But actually this guy's <Shil-mi-do> confession was not an ordinary that’s-it-so-what stuff. His last movie was 'the' <Shil-mi-do>, which was popular even among elderly people like my father and mother. And she told me he was not with any experience abroad, even better he didn’t have just a drop of intention to go outside where Kim-chi-cchi-gae is not casually served, and his preference of food like Kim-chi-cchi-gae urged him to be away from trendy brunch restaurants, getting popular more recently, or fabulous French restaurants. Experiences of plays or performances were rare in his life; I don't mean acting, of course. When it comes to reading, he chose a book, <Leaders attracting people has a different way to talk 사람이 모이는 리더는 말하는 법이 다르다>, lately. Eventually, following that guy’s lead, they had a talk about the chemical structure of Shampoo in deeper level, and said good bye, and finally departed to each of thier own course of life. In the old days, her age was proper for a married woman with 3 kids, she wailed. And she asked, “Why so rare are the guys whom I can have a good talk with? What the hell are all the guys doing?”
“Perhaps it was really easy to live in the past because they came to bed when the light went out.”, I told her, but I got on the verge of querying a thing, something really curious. We were at a brunch restaurant located at Ban-po-dong, getting in style nowadays, but it was horrendous when I looked around and found all the patrons were females. There were only two people of opposite gender, a waiter and a older guy looking like the master of that restaurant. Where are the guys spending with what they earned? What are they doing with so much of leisure they have found recently? They don’t buy wears, or are not interested with performances, good restaurants, or cafes, but then what are they doing with money in their hands? In favor of Alain de Botton, shopping in Hong-Kong, and dressing up to hang out to eat brunch with friends, girls are ignominious of the subtlety of off-side rules or need to take plenty of effort to get whether the right spelling of Indonesian president’s name is Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or Susilo Bangbam Yudhoyono. If you like to blame it, Ok, you got your own right to do it. Surely, there are lots of guys who will say, “I’m not what you are talking about.” But sadly it is a generally accepted fact that females are trailing the consumption of culture in the Korean society.
But… Why? Why are they so marginalized from the cultural consumption? Probably, not every man is craving for drinking, Starcraft or billiard. Uhm, it’s time to change the question. Is it really the matter of fact that women are dominating the cultural consumption of the Korean society? So I went to people working in the cultural industry.
At every interview I had with the people of motion picture industry, “As the research of the Korean Film council says, most of the consumers in the movie market are females in 20~30s…”, they said again and again like a repeat of the lyric in a song. I called the Korean Film council to check it was the fact confirm!!!ed matter-of-factly. But the policy research team of this organization replied, “In fact, there is no statistical data in avail at the moment. In 2005, 85.5% of male and 84.4% of female responders said ‘yes’ to a question about the experience to go to cinema hall in that year. But, generally, women are known as die-hard movie-goers rather than men. Perhaps, the experiences of people in show business have more favorable odds to be right than any other statistical data if they say like that.” Ms. Kwon, Ji-yeon, deputy manager of Showbox, a motion picture company, was sure that the main customers of cinema houses were women. “The advance purchase rate of movie, stories from cinema halls and my personal judgment from watching over situations when I went out to movie theaters; all of them are pointing at the same direction; collecting all the experiences leads to the conclusion that women are the main body of movie-goers.”
But why all the Korean movies are about detectives or gangsters that appeal only to men? She put it in this way, “That’s why they went badly. In this year, <Being a beauty is troublesome. 미녀는 괴로워> was the only movie which hit a homerun. Movies that target women are expected to do average. But movies for men need some wrapping up and marketing to promote it to women like emphasizing the image of man actors in previews or posters.” They exaggerate human love or tear code in stories for men to gather more women up. Occasional hit by comedies like <The glory of family 가문의 영광> can be analyzed like that the age range could be widened in holyday seasons or vacation according to Ms. Kwon. Not like women, men usually come to movie theaters to date, because the right to choose what to do is on women’s side in that kind of case. Ms. Kwon said, “To see two guys going to movies is almost the same as to see two guys seating at a table of a restaurant or a coffee shop. Women see art movies more than men and seem to be better situated in terms of cultural level.”
Mr. Yi, Dong-soo, who has been working as an observer to watch over the process of finding total number of audiences at movie theaters for last 8 years, shared his experiences, “I have been doing this job for years, but it is seldom that men come here by themselves. The gender ratio between women and men among audiences in a cinema hall goes with 6:4. Poll data collected by movie distributing company regularly shows the most used credit cards are the cards of L company, which most of the benefits they offer are designed for women. It insinuates virtually almost all the consumptions are done by women, let alone to go to movies. The main class in terms of the degree of enjoying culture is evidently women of 20~30s, who have economic power to spend more. Men prefer video shops to movie houses. So they go to video shops rather than movie houses if they got something on their mind.”
Last year’s issue in the book market was ‘chick-lit’. This new genre targeting young women was a hope for publishers to open female consumers’ purses to compensate the loss incurred by last year’s stagnant business. Ms. Yim, Soo-jeong, deputy manager of Yes24, an internet book distributing company, said, “The percentage of female readers bested male readers 30% more and, especially, among all age groups, the biggest gap between women and men was found in 20s. Female readers purchased 50% more than male readers in 20s.” The situation is not that different in off-line book stores. Mr. Nam, Seong-ho, team manager of Kyobomoongo, said, “Book purchase rate between women and men is like 5.5:4.5 or 6:4. Recently, with strengthening social activity of women, it is a kind of a trend for women to leave men behind in terms of purchasing books.” Ms. Shin, Gil-rye, bookmaster of Kwang-hwa-moon branch of Kyobomoongo, also gave me a similar comment, “Publishers release books for women and consequently the number of female purchasers increases.” In book stores, she told me, they arranged book corners for female readers and that came up with more books sold to women.
Last year, when the frenzy of ‘chick-lit’ hit the book market, it struck my brain, ‘What are men doing? Why is cultural market prevailed by women?’ Just at the time, Cho-sun-il-bo published an timely article, ‘Kim Hoon’s novel grapping men’, with the release of <Nam-han-san-seong> to report the return of male readers.
An editor from a book publisher, who wanted to be remained in anonymity, said, “Except economics, marketing, and books for practical use, female readers have large portion in every area. Especially fiction is where women leave men far behind. Recent trend to make book covers with pinky and pretty looking materials reflects this kind of tendency among readers.” He analyzed the trend as, “Seemingly books with men-oriented covers are bought by both genders but women-oriented covers limit book companies' selling to dwell only in the boundary of women.” Best selling fictions like <My wife got married 아내가 결혼했다.> of Park, Hyeon-wook, or fictions of Paulo Coehlo or Paul Austere could be understood to make great hits because they moved men beside women. Mr. Hwang, Jin, deputy manager of Chang-Bi company, said, “Generally female readers look like faster responders to the release of new books. But in case books make complete boom such as Coehlos and Davinch code, they seem to be easily exposed to people regardless of age groups or genders. If books firstly appeal to young female readers like university students or young salary women and make best selling stuffs, it is prerequisite for them to get attention from female readers and they are naturally diffused to male readers in most cases.”
Women are generally accepted as the main consumers of Traveling and food industries. Current trends like short trip abroad, or eating brunch are led by women. Most of credit cards targeting young women offer discounting benefits focused on traveling, restaurants, coffee shops, and movie houses, etc. and it makes sense. One of my female seniors of university, who has been married for a year, said a little bit discontentedly, “My husband went to theater to watch movies or musical performances to date when we were not married but nowadays it’s a scarce event like once a year.” She added that it was a general habbit of Korean men living current days and it was because they seemed to be exposed to reality earlier than women.
Women seemed like that they needed to be consoled emotionally with cultural activities, but men were skewed to guess time and money for cultural life was squandered or cultural experience was dispensable. Their way to kick away stress from work is, of course, limited in trivial and sensuous things like drinking, sports or doing trendy video games, etc. The most biggest consumption in expenditure list was not a fashionable bag, clothes or spa trip to South Asia, but money for ‘eating out’ to eat meat, drink or date, responded my men friends generally. They sang in unison, “Cultural activity is ruled out by drinking or gaming from priority list.” These are the standard for average Korean man: Favorite movie - <Friend 친구>, car of choice – Hyundai, book of life - <Romance of three kingdoms 삼국지>; and one of my male friend, who could be taken as an living incarnation of average Korean man's life, cut shortly, “Men are far away from cultural affairs because they don’t have a ‘girl’ to come with.” Definitely whether having girl friend or not makes big difference in a Korean man’s life in terms of frequency at least. “Naturally you, guys, have your own tastes. Perhaps you are afraid of showing your taste or in a way you were not educated to show what you like.”, I asked to him. He replied with somewhat bitter tone, “Maybe it’s because of military service. Taking Japanese guys who are not required to serve in the army, for an example, they are more positive in consumption, but Korean men, particularly who went through military experience, are not good at showing what they prefer. They know it is best to acclimate themselves, at any rate, to their seniors at work and they intuitively understand their opinion will not be accepted by seniors. You know women are blunt to higher rankers rather than timorous like men at work place.
Korean men are clumsy at individualizing their tastes and familiar with acting in bands. They take showing their taste as not manly and are ashamed to stand off from the band to enjoy his favorite thing, which could be found as a abominably opposite to the collective interest. One of my male senior from university made a good case for this. One day, he got an urge to go to a concert of classical music out of the blue and he bought a ticket. But later he gave that ticket to me because, ‘he didn’t like to be misconstrued as a queer.’ One of my girl friend interestingly interpreted the genaral situation of Korean men like this, “Of course men are doing something to relieve their nerve and spend money on things that are far from making profits. Maybe they are not attracted to spending money or consumption but concentrating on one thing to internalize what they like.” And she said, as a joke which had some truth unwittingly, “Look. Most of Strange guys who went on air with <What a surprise on earth 세상에 이런 일이> are men.”
A male friend made a fuss at a branch of TGI Friday in his undergraduate days. He went there first because of a blind date and ordered a chicken salad which was accidentally same with the order of the girl who met him on that blind date. He changed his order only because his order was the same of the girl’s order! Anyway he said, “I don’t know why I lived so hard like that. Maybe I wanted everything neatly done. Sometimes it happens to lose the top place or to idle not earning even a dime. What about you, girls? Maybe, aren’t you not like this?” His question was sad but the answer was 'Yes.' Women are not like that, at least, not to the extent as men do.
Conceivably, the unbearable responsibility as ‘the head of a family’ drives the men of Korea to be stressed out to drink heavily and deprive them of just a little bit of leisure to read a book for a year. They are roaming for practical stuffs. Hence, they look like inertial to the attracting inclination of consumption. When I was a university student, a senior, of course a guy, came to me and found I was reading Albert Camus. He said, “What is reading a novel good for? You are not going to be a genius writer if you are alive till 25, they say. It’s better to give it up.” Of course, he was kidding, not that funny, though. But he related even reading a novel to some objective like finding jobs. In other word, he supposed it should be done with an objective.
Men will be able to be the main body of consumption when they disclose their secretive desire for what they like. It is a pity to look at men grudging on the deluge of pinkishly covered books, mentioning the draught of books worth reading, or eating brunch unwillingly led by the hands of their girl friends. You know what? There will not be any trouble even if men show their own taste in pursuit of happiness. When they are frank, cultural industry will conjure up some means to meet their needs to open their wallet. For each person, life is not a responsibility to survive or endure but a right to enjoy. Nobody would stop you buying a white shirt because you have one already. Food? It is also a enjoyable culture rather than necessity to survive. Your choice of book doesn’t turn you back to the past or put you in a less fortunate situation even if it is not a practical book which might show an immediate effect like ‘Being a good team leader’ or ‘Writing a good resume’ You can go to coffee shop even when you are not with a girlfriend. You know women are inclined to welcome good talks about favorite music or movie rather than looking at your stooped shoulder from the last night’s endeavor in a virtual world of your own fantasies or bloodied eyes from spending all night with drinking.
Summary
The reporter suddenly realized the men of this society fall back behind of women in every field of consumption while she was talking with her female friend about her blind date. The guy was a foolish bum who didn’t have any intention to go to overseas where only greasy and oily foods were served, and hadn’t hobby like watching movies or performances, let alone art appreciation. Eventually they found there were no man except a waiter and the owner in a brunch restaurant located somewhere in Bang-bae dong, and she got the question, ‘What are men doing?’, with all the money in their gripping hand (by the way are they really gripping?).
She did some basic investigation in the fields like motion picture, food, traveling industries, book market, etc. In every single field, women were predominant and men were far behind women. With this basic research, she wrote some kind of conclusion (which is a little bit abstract) about men in Korea, talking with her friends (male and female) from university. Anyway I’d like to have a good conversation with this article.
Questions for discussion
- What is your hobby? What do you usually do to kill time?
- Thinking of yourself, do you suppose you are an art lover or know how to enjoy cultural life?
- Do you watch movies? (maybe definitely ‘yes’, you will say.) Do you go to movie alone or with other people? What about other performances? Anyway what was your recent one, no matter whether it was a movie or an art performance?
- Do you think Korean men are as impotent in terms of cultural life as the reporter says? What about your own men such as your father, brother, or even your male friends?(if you are female) Are they doing things like what she says?(if you are male)
- Then why men are doing like that? Maybe there are some reasons or causes for that. What would be those causes hidden under the surface?
- Do you think there could be some ways to make differences for men’s tendency? What would be the best way if we liked to see some differences in good way?