A Feminist Critique of Cultural Eugenics in South Korean Society

Bibliographic Data

ID7147699
AuthorsMeeyoung Kang (0000-0003-3272-2019, Sookmyung Women's University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume41
Issue4
Pages171
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Women (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1225-925X • E-ISSN: 2586-5714
PublisherXMLink (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.64446/aw.2025.12.41.4.171
OpenAlexW7117747211
LanguageEN
References cited15

Eugenics, though historically discredited as a pseudoscience, continues to shape contemporary society through subtle institutional and cultural mechanisms.In South Korea, eugenic ideas were reconfigured through colonialism, industrialization, and nationbuilding, positioning women as moral and reproductive agents of the nation.Despite legal advances, reproductive autonomy remains constrained by eugenic ideals linking value to health, productivity, and conformity, and technologies such as prenatal screening often reflect social pressures to produce "normal" children.This study argues that eugenics today operates through cultural biopolitics that encourages women to internalize responsibility for life itself, as media, education, and medical discourse moralize individual choices and obscure structural inequalities.By examining how power works through care, embodiment, and emotion, the paper reveals how gendered and class-based control persists under neoliberalism and calls for a feminist reimagining of bioethics that centers relational responsibility and the political significance of care

Cultural issues · Eugenics · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Cultural Studies · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Social and Cultural Studies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access