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Finding Fletcher—Or Losing Her Audience? From Sapphic Icon to the Queerbaiting/Biphobia Divide

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For longtime subscribers to Real Koreans, hello! It's Emily—it's been a while. As you may know, I started this blog to write about things I was passionate about, which was mainly feminism, youth rights, and LGBT community updates in South Korea. I've stopped writing for a while, because I was unsure what I had to say about Korea, having moved away in 2014.

In my 11th year abroad, I finally know what I have to say, which is the same as back then: writing about things I care about, which will include Korea, but also many other topics, like analysing my favourite arts & culture scenes (like today), how to deal with anti-Asian racism in Europe, and my experiences working in global nonprofits.
Cover photo for FLETCHER's upcoming album, Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?. FLETCHER is wearing a sheer dress in a field of wildflowers, and looking into the direction of the camera.
Cover photo for FLETCHER’s upcoming album, Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?

The sapphic Internet has been up in flames the past three days over a new release from FLETCHER, in which the lesbian icon confesses to being in love with a man. While she last alluded to seeing someone in an interview June last year, there was no build-up to this major pivot in the singer-songwriter’s decade-long dedication to wlw (women loving women) music.

While debates are ongoing, and PR professional Lauren Beeching has already excellently summarized how Fletcher’s campaign has failed spectacularly (tl;dr: don’t make major announcements which may alienate your fanbase without a dedicated care campaign beforehand), I have two questions and an observation that haven’t yet been shared by others.

What I noticed as a fan (and fellow queer woman)

On June 5, FLETCHER released Boy, a single from her upcoming album. I was excited to see this pop up on my Spotify, since it’s almost been a year since I saw her live at Paradiso Amsterdam on April 9. I listened to the song twice, and it resonated deeply with me, as a queer woman who has had to come out multiple times over the past decade.

I’ve been sitting on a secret […]
Laying my cards on the table
I’ll admit I don’t know how to label it 
[…] And only time will tell
If I will or won’t do this again
Maybe I’ve changed or maybe it’s just him

FLETCHER addresses the uncertainty of her relationship and development in her sexuality. She has mentioned having dated men in her music (Girl of My Dreams, 2021) and consistently corrected people calling her ‘lesbian’ (preferring the term ‘queer’), most recently in a June 2024 interview with The Cut. But what most fans love her for is her music of the past decade, exclusively dedicated to relationships, breakups, and aftermaths of loving women, a rarity in mainstream pop.

Most fans seem to agree that it is the delivery and timing of the release and abrupt campaign, not the announcement per se, that is the problem: We stand by your identity, but why are you choosing to release this, a seemingly heterosexuality-celebrating, lesbian-past-denying song, during Pride Month, when American queer rights are under attack more than ever? Your song is going to be weaponised against us lesbian women to say: see, you just have to find the right man, like this young lady right here.

Not to mention the disappointment and hurt in yet another messaging which seems to declare: “I was a mess. I was chaotic and sleeping around, but I found a man. Now I’m in my mentally stable, happy era”. This made me think of Miley Cyrus’s song, Malibu, which in itself I find to be beautiful (and a a karaoke favourite), but both songs seem to press on the same imagery of a woman being rescued from her inner torment (and late night sins) by a man, symbolised by them swapping mesh tops and hot pants against a busy nightlife scene with beige clothes on a field of grass:

A photo from FLETCHER's Boy campaign. Fletcher is looking into the camera, wearing a beige sheer dress , in a field of yellow wildflowers.
A photo from FLETCHER’s Boy campaign. Posted June 3, 2025 on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
A photo of Miley Cyrus looking into the camera, wearing a beige knitted sweater on a grassy field.
Cover image for Miley Cyrus’s Malibu single. Released 2017.

What I noticed, as a communications professional

There are no A-list (queer) celebrities to be seen on FLETCHER’s social media accounts, which seems to back up Beeching’s analysis of the situation as a “fallout”. At an occasion such as Pride Month, artists coming out as bi/pan/queer would be top celebratory material for celebrities and their PR teams to repost and post comments on (to ‘drive up engagement’ and to of course, genuinely express solidarity and joy). No comment from fellow queer/sapphic icons in the pop genre, not even from Hayley Kiyoko, with whom FLETCHER co-released the flirtatious single Cherry in 2021. Here, as often is the case, the silence speaks volumes, and that’s what you need to read into as a communications professional, among all the noise and polarised keyboard debates.

What seems to be the problem

What I question as a communications professional are the following:

  1. How was Capitol Records, one of the largest record labels in the world, unable to foresee what Beeching has dubbed a “A masterclass in how not to handle audience connection”?
  2. Is it possible that FLETCHER does not have the experienced professionals one might expect for an artist of this calibre in the queer music sphere? Do queer artists receive the support and context-based community support their fans need (and increasingly, demand)?
  3. (Somewhat a tangent): Is there a labour union that artists like FLETCHER can rely on, or their PR/Comms team can be part of, to receive a “do’s and don’t” on running campaigns around sensitive subjects like sexual identity? Is there a committee for queer representation in the music industry?

With my first two questions, I started by doing what any communications professional does: looking up FLETCHER’s online presence. I noticed a few things that seem to indicate that her accounts aren’t as crafted or updated as I’d expected.

Interestingly, her official website is very US-centric, her website being hosted by Incapsula Inc., an California-based company, and her shop directly through Universal Music Group. Only US based fans are able to purchase merch, whereas most global artists would choose a third-party handling and shipping service like Shopify, that would serve internationally. In a very quick and randomised search, I only found one other queer/sapphic artist whose website is hosted by the same US company: Chapelle Roan. It would be interesting to investigate what this company offers.

The Capitol Records landing page also does not contain a placeholder or banner announcing a pre-sale for the new album’s vinyl records, which shows a lack of coordination, as the products are available through FLETCHER’s own website.

A screencap of Fletcher's landing page on Capitol Records, sorted from Newest to Oldest. Vinyls do feature The Antidote, Doing Better, and Eras of Us, but not Boy, or mention a pre-sale for Would You Still Love Me [...].
A screencap of Fletcher’s landing page on Capitol Records, sorted from Newest to Oldest. Vinyls do feature The Antidote, Doing Better, and Eras of Us, but not Boy, or mention a pre-sale for Would You Still Love Me […].

Scanning Instagram, Facebook, and X, I noticed that the new “campaign” was timed around June 3, and June 5 (the day Boy was launched), with no engagement from her accounts to fans’ reactions or comments. It seems like a reactive, laissez-faire campaign, more damage control before a compromising paparazzi photo or third-party statement is released. And once they’ve leapt over that hurdle, the team has momentarily dissolved, relegating to moderating the comment section only because at the very least, they said it first.

FLETCHER’s social media presence doesn’t seem very curated: her Facebook photos aren’t even organised by albums. Her X/Twitter feed often reposts her fan pages, and sometimes posts “i’m alive xx” updates with sporadic outfit shots. The Instagram account no longer shows any posts prior to June 3, when her new campaign was launched (this isn’t unusual: many artists hide older posts temporarily to drive focus onto the new content). Her TikTok videos seem to be very sporadic as well.

All in all, I wonder if FLETCHER has a dedicated social media team. It seems like it may be either a single person trying to manage all platforms at once (this would explain the sporadic posting), that her management hires contractors only during peak moments like tours or releases, or that she’s one of many artists the Comms team collectively manages.

Do queer artists have access to the professional market analysis and PR that they need?

I assume that a record label works just like any other company. In that case, it’s impossible for a decision such as a new single/album/campaign launch to just come from the artist, unless they’re signed to an indie or self-owned label. It’s simply too high risk. We may safely assume that most, if not all, we see, read, and hear on the Internet does not come from FLETCHER herself, but through a crafted script and a (somewhat) dedicated team in A&R, HR, Legal, Communications, etc, etc. Songs may be written by someone, but edited, approved, recorded, edited, and polished.

Someone making an announcement that would pivot them from an image they’ve crafted over a decade deserves a dedicated campaign. It’s not simply about ethics and celebrating their development as a person and artist but also about strategy and marketing. Reactive campaigns can be beautifully authentic and celebratory and vulnerable, and FLETCHER’s Boy campaign did not deliver that. For example, when Nikkie de Jager [NikkieTutorials] came out in January 2020 after someone threatened to expose her trans identity, her fans stood by her and rejoiced, effectively neutering the blackmailer. Queer coming-outs can be opportunities. When Billie Eilish, after years of speculation, came out, first with a Variety interview in 2023, and then with the song LUNCH in 2024, it highlighted the authenticity of her brand, that of a young, honest, and socially engaged artist.

So when language in songs like Boy are approved—Where a lesbian icon seems to say, in her well-established confessional style, that being in a heterosexual relationship is something she’s had to hide (she does not mention both men and women, as she did in her previous songs alluding to her bisexuality), that it deserves a big reveal, and hints that she’s ashamed of her past as a woman loving women, and this is launched during the one month that’s meant to celebrate queerness, it says something about the system surrounding her:

I’ve been hiding out in Northern California
Where nobody knows who I was before
I’m scared to think of what you’ll think of me

The single even goes on to anticipate backlash from her lesbian/sapphic/wlw fans (in a manner similar to how one may anticipate hate for coming out as queer), in what seems like a taunt and a shrug mixed into one:

And it wasn’t on your bingo card this year
[…] You can think that I’m a hypocrite, that’s cool
I’m just following my heart, is what it is

As if in 2025, we needed a reminder that same-sex relationships do not enjoy the social or legal status as heterosexual relationships on most of the world, and continue to be criminalised in 62 countries, including a dozen in which it is punishable by death. Heterosexuality isn’t punishable by law anywhere (duh).

Finding Fletcher: What’s Next?

I listened to FLETCHER on repeat when I came out of my first queer heartbreak. Songs like Girl of My Dreams (2021) especially resonated with me:

Number one was a boy, and he had the greenest eyes
Like a forest, but I knew that I was lost
Round two in the city, she was crazy, but she made it so pretty
Left me emptier than lonely in New York
And three, she was an angel, yeah she could’ve been the one
But forever only made a couple trips around the sun

Personally, I can identify with the core message in Boy: anticipating biphobia. I remember coming out as lesbian at 19, and later, at age 21, when I realised I also felt attracted to men. I lost contact with many gay and lesbian friends, who believed that I had not been honest with them. In reality, like many young queer people, I simply did not have the life experiences to be certain about oneself (I only started dating at 24).

Many bisexual women friends of mine need to constantly defend their identity because they are now in a committed relationship with a man. As recent as last week, a friend of mine hesitantly called herself a hasbian at a queer reading group, because women who used to date women but currently do not often need a disclaimer to justify their queerness. Several female friends of mine are bisexual but have only been in one committed relationship in their life (with a man), and while they are certain about their identity, but the world is not: they are often pressured to stop calling themselves queer.

Real bisexual visibility comes from being authentic, like FLETCHER has been in the past, with her raw, emotional honesty:

“As if I’m not what you’re waiting for
Like I’m not in your ending
Yeah, for now, we’ll both keep on pretending
—Pretending, In Search of the Antidote, 2024)

“I don’t know you and it hurts
I told every one of my friends, you won’t get a lyric again
But Goddamn, here I fuckin’ am”
—Eras of Us, Girl of My Dreams, 2022)

“But somethings you can’t undo
And one of them’s you”
—Undrunk, you ruined new york city for me, 2019

The only way forward for FLETCHER’s team is for them to step up and issue a formal apology for the tone deafness of this campaign, be honest about why it was so rushed, and depending on the content of the album set for release—delay its release and promise to dedicate time and resources to properly reconnect with her community. Let’s hope they can dig her out of the pit they’ve seem to thrown her into.

For my longtime followers who were expecting updates on the South Korean snap elections, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Korea has become so mainstream that there are many thinkers who've analysed it succintly, especially on LinkedIn.

I was writing a longer piece on what I've been up to in the past decade as this blog has travelled with me from Seoul, to Lyon, to all around Europe, Arizona, and beyond, but sometimes the unexpected happens, like FLETCHER's new single.

I've got so much I haven't shared with you in the past years. Like the rise of feminist filmmakers in Korea, how North Korean human rights activism is flawed by design, and how you should protect yourself as an international nonprofit worker. It's coming soon, I promise!

Martial Law. One Word. Three Syllables.

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Image source: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images (via New York Times)

As most of the 50 million South Koreans are about to begin their Wednesday (it being nearly 7am in Seoul), the world has watched its President essentially throw the largest tantrum of the past four decades. With a chilling reminder that historical trauma runs within our veins (something we as a nation reckoned when Han Kang won the Nobel Lit), ready to go into an adrenaline overdrive in a split second (or to be precise, 2.5 hours). 

“Martial Law” (계엄령). A single word. Three syllables. Enough to set on paralysis and a primary fear I didn’t know I had in me. Flashbacks of how students being tortured by National Security. Images of military tanks and smokescreens. All things my generation – born in the 90s – had assumed were part of our history but just out of reach to be really real. “Stuff from textbooks”. 

People like me – the diaspora – fretted and cried and yelled, watching three to four different livestreams from public and private broadcasters. Calling our family and realising they’d gone to sleep. Texting our friends, who were still awake – or were on our timezone.

A strange blend of primal fear and a nonchalant “This can’t be real” was setting in.

A part of me was saying and typing the words “This cannot escalate any further. This is illegal. This has no constitutional ground. We are a democracy, one of only three full democracies in Asia”.

Another part of me was still replaying the images of civilians being shot by martial law soldiers, reckless young students and journalists being beaten with batons, and a curfew patrol, which my parents would run from (and sometimes get caught by). Because there is no reasoning with the military – You only know this if your recent history has shown you how true this holds.

A third part of me was angry, watching political aides barricade the National Assembly to stop the military (as we call them, 계엄군 (martial law military) from entering the building in such an everyday fashion. Doing like they’d done it before, so the 190 Assembly members still inside the Halls could begin a session and overrule the martial law declared by President Yoon Seok-yeol.

One friend in Seoul managed to call her parents as they were about to go to sleep. Her father sounded worried, she said, her family being from Gwangju, where the last Martial Law was declared in 1980 – and we all know what happened then.

But my friends and younger family – in their early to mid-twenties – had other priorities.

Trading ETFs over Fear

The friend whose father was worried told me “I’m going to sleep. I have my accounting certificate exam tomorrow. They’re not gonna postpone that”. 

“That [the martial law] isn’t really the problem, noona! I’m busy monitoring my crypto!” said my cousin, who just bought his first car (I’m guessing, with said crypto money). 

Another friend wrote: “I managed to move my assets to my USD account just on time as the won hit 1,400, and look, it’s at 1,410 now”. Yet another updated us: “at 1,422 now!” (It soon jumped to 1,434)

One friend of mine said “I’m going to stop writing [on Kakao] because we could be getting censored”.

Another friend said “If they take me in for my fucking messages, I’ll fucking kill myself there, who the fuck do they think they are, censoring us when 2025 is in front of our fucking nose?!”. (Yes, my former journalist friend really said the f- word 4 times in a single sentence). 

I remember a similar crisis in 2013, when North Korea shot missiles at us in the South. I was working with a journo at the NRK, who interviewed my friend on whether she was worried. (There’s a photo of said friend exiting a G-Dragon concert). She, as any other Korean, said it was business as usual, “using Sunday to go to a concert, thinking little of North Korea’s threat of war.”

Life happens. People still need to make money, wake up, go to work. 

But we will make sure that history does not repeat itself. In just two hours, an emergency National Assembly session will be held, where due diligence and the Constitution will follow procedure. 

  • P.S. If as a non-Korean, you want to understand what this term “martial law” means to us, I’d recommend you pick up a copy of Han Kang’s Human Acts, which talks about the 1980 Gwangju Massacre, when the last Martial Law was declared. 

The Racism in Government-Funded Korean Language Course Material

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Looking to Learn Korean for Free? Well, Be Prepared for Some Racism

I was going through Sejong Institute’s YouTube playlist to find useful material for my Korean tutoring classes. Then I found this. Let me take you down Racist Hill. Commentary at the bottom.

First, the man meets two white US soldiers. They’re friendly towards each other and use informal language (banmal).

It ends with the Korean man saying “Keep our neighborhood safe”. Context: Due to continued public displays of drunkenness and fighting, the US soldiers patrol the area to keep their own soldiers out of trouble.

Then the Korean man jogs past “Abdul”, the owner of a Turkish restaurant (it’s a real restaurant, and he is usually dressed this way). This takes a turn down Racist Hill.

While “Abdul” addresses the Korean man in honorific/formal language (존댓말), the Korean man keeps addressing “Abdul” in informal language (반말). This is what you do if you have a big age or power difference, such as an adult talking to a child. The highlight of his condescending and patronising attitude is when he tells “Abdul” his Korean “needs work”, when the man has been clearly speaking in Korean. He even says “좀 더 해야겠네”, which is specifically an informal tone reserved to a superior addressing an inferior person (as in a boss addressing their employee). This is condescension at its finest. “Abdul” responds by saying “Yes, sir (네)”.

Right after he’s done patronising “Abdul”, the Korean man runs past two black men. What comes next? More condescension.

The man stops himself, sighs loudly, as if to say “I can’t but not help those poor fellas”. And walks back to the two men.

The Korean man says “Hey, my brothers”. The two men turn around.

AND HERE IS THE OLDEST RUNNING RACIST TROPE IN SOUTH KOREAN TELEVISION. The two men are each wearing a BLACK SHIRT with the words “YOUNGER BROTHER” and “OLDER BROTHER” on them. Which is an embodiment of the racist Korean trope on “Black Older Brother”. (“흑형”). It has been common practice for black men to be called “Black Older Brother” in South Korean television and popular culture. It is defended as making “black people seem friendlier”. But why, the, fuck, do, people, need, black, people, to, feel, less, threatening? (Oh yeah, racism.)

The racist intent of this skit is made even clearer when the Korean man approaches the two men and says “동네 분위기 이렇게 어둡게 할거야”, literally translated as “Why are you making the atmosphere of our neighbourhood so DARK”. (In the video, translated as “look bad”). First, finding humour in “black people making things look dark” is racist. Because there isn’t a running trope on how white people make things shiny. Second, by choosing to translate the captions as “Will you make our neighbourhood look bad”, Sejong & KBS are saying “black people make a neighbourhood look bad”.

And then he says… “Smile a little”. Because black people have to smile all the time, otherwise they’re “making the neighbourhood look dark”.

And like “Abdul”. they thank him by saying “Yes, Sir Big Brother (형님)”, using the highly honorific form of 님. (although it’s translated as “Yes, Jeongnam”)

The trope of Jeongnam, the Korean master of condescension, ends with him looking at the two black men’s shirts and pointing out “So, you’re the older brother? You look like it”. Here, the narrative is that the black men chose to play the Black Big Brother Trope.

Although Jeongnam treats the three group of foreigners in the same condescending way, it is striking how explicitly racist the script is. Let’s look at the three groups of foreigners he interacts with.

First, he meets the white American soldiers. With whom he has a brief exchange. This is done in informal/non-honorific language (반말).

Second, he meets the Turkish man, “Abdul”. Although Abdul has a considerably more complex script compared to the other three groups, Jeongnam condescends him by (a) Telling him to fix his pronunciation (I’ve been to that same Turkish restaurant several times since it opened, and the owner spoke fluent Korean each time); and further denigrates him by (b) continuing to talk to him in informal/non-honorific language (반말), while Abdul continues to address him in full formal/honorific language. The exchange with the American soldiers was conducted in a power balance (both used non-honorific language) – here, he continued to act as the “superior” man by talking down to Abdul. This is the kind of behaviour displayed by a shitty boss, or an adult talking to a very young child (and even many choose to address children in honorific forms these days). In many Seoul universities, it has become customary to hold “hierarchy sensibility” sessions at the beginning of the term when new students join the cohort: All students must address each other in honorific form regardless of age, unless otherwise suggested and agreed upon voluntarily by the younger student.

Third, he meets the two black men. Which spirals into outright racism when (1) he tells them they’re “turning the neighbourhood dark” (which the show even chose to translate as making the neighbourhood look bad), and when the show’s writers chose to run The Oldest Anti-Black Trope,  the “Big Black Brotha” joke by literally making them wear black shirts with the insignia big brother and little brother. He takes it further by telling the men to “smile more” – adding insult to, well, insult. Who usually hears the “You should smile more” comment? Three guesses. The men are humiliated further when they obediently say “Yes, sir” – displaying the same linguistic power imbalance between the two groups.

The protagonists of Please Find Her. The main character, “Jan” (top left), comes to South Korea to look for a long lost love. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s portrayed by a Korean actor. (Image Source: Yonhap)

This program, Please Find Her, is a web drama funded by Sejong Institute and KBS. Here is a rare display of whiteface, with the protagonist, set to be a Dutchchman called Jan, being played by a Korean actor. It took me three close looks to go “Wait…this actor looks familiar. He looks like a Korean actor “. And I wondered, “Maybe they meant to portray Jan as a Korean adoptee?”. Nope. “Maybe Jan is an ethnic Korean who is Dutch?”. Nope.

Here is a Korean actor with no ties to the Netherlands whatsoever who is playing a Dutchman. There are enough actors who are either Dutch or of Dutch ancestry or with ties to the Netherlands in the world.

I am deeply disappointed at this poor narrative on foreigners in South Korea, funded by Korean taxpayers. Talking down to other people of colour while saluting white people, casting a Korean actor to play a Dutchman. This is not a web drama suitable for a global audience looking for a taste of Hallyu in their endeavours to learn the Korean language.

Edited for clarity on 18 May. 

그녀를 찾아줘 1화 / Please Find Her Ep.1 (ENG)
17 Oct 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssviTiq2vRM

My first racist ‘attack’ in Europe and what I learned from it

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Image source: Daum Blog
Caption: Choose the wrong option. (the artist is mocking the idea of racism by using a multiple-choice question format popular in Korean education)

Last Friday, I was leaving a supermarket when a group of young, white, mostly male, Dutch people ran up to me, took a photo of me, then ran away laughing. I froze, ran into MediaMarkt, the electronics store next door, which I was headed to originally, and stayed there for a good fifteen minutes before I went outside, looked around and made sure they were gone, got on my bike and pedaled back home.

I asked myself if what had happened had really just happened. Yes. I saw the flash. I heard them laugh. I was sure.

Back home, I sat down and wrote an angry and descriptive post along the lines of: “To the white, male, Dutch youth who just took a picture of me in front of the supermarket on this street, go fuck yourselves, go get cancer, go crash into a train. Same to the people who have yelled “ching chong” at me and even tried to pet my head as I was walking by them. Also, if this happens again, do I tell the store about it or the police?”. Then I had the Internet thread moment of my life.

First, people immediately jumped on my use of the word “cancer”. [For people unfamiliar with the Netherlands, “go get cancer” is one of the worst profanities you can use on someone here because, well, you’re telling them to go get a horrible, often incurable, disease]

I do think these guys are assholes, but with a statement like that you dissipate sympathy. (Schul***)

After this comment I explained that I chose the word “cancer” because it was a serious swearword in the Netherlands, that I fully understood the usage of the word, and that this was exactly how I felt when those people violated me. I also told them that it was my first time using this word on anyone.

I was with you up until the cancer statement.. (Siebe***)

I explained again my choice of words.

You lost my sympathy when talking like that, thinking well bitch then just open up your mouth if you are so disturbed and hurt by it. (Man)

Fuck you for wishing cancer on anyone bitch! Do you even know what its like to lose someone to cancer. Stupid twat. (Kleinenb***)

As a cancer survivor, seeing you wish it upon people for such a tiny little slight, you have shown me you are deserving of it.
You are trash. (Humphr***)

 

People who never experienced racism said they understood it:

I have never been confronted with racism myself yet I can understand the anger it evokes when one would be (Xav***)

Again, I have never been confronted with extreme racism myself yet I can understand the anger it evokes when one would be. However, it needs to made clear that things like wishing People cancer is NEVER the way to go and may not be permitted in a society that exists largely of educated people.(Lecla***)

Ive never encountered this in all he years ive been here. I have no clue what the others are talking about, perhaps the wrong neighbourhood, wrong attitude or whatsoever. (van Boga***)

Which was met with:  “Wrong attitude” -van Boga*** Like what, there’s a wrong attitude to have when being racially targeted? Or is there a wrong attitude to have to make you deserve racial targeting? (Abh***)

To which: with encountered i meant, non of my indian, pakistani, chinese, russian, morrocan and blabla friends ever came with a story like this (van Boga***)

 

Then, people claimed it wasn’t a racist attack Or that it wasn’t an attack at all.

Btw they are not really racist….they are just drunk and childish. Everyone makes “racial” jokes and Clichè comments et cetera. Humans are born the way, it happens everywhere by every so called race (Arnol***)

To me its sounds very rational to say that ‘ching chong’ is a stupid hateless joke, and ‘get cancer’ is a hatefull statement. (van Boga***)

Lol.
Someone got #triggered.
My opinion is not inflated, and please stop trying to pull the “race” card and “gender” card. It’s retarded. (Humphr***)

Drunk students who say ching chong. Do you really think its hate racism? Theyre fcking drunk! Maybe you’ll sleep better if u recognize the difference between hate-racism and ethnical-related jokes/laughs. (van Bogae***)

 

There was some victim-blaming:

Even now, the way she’s replying. It doesn’t sound like an innocent, helpless person. The whole discussion is pointless because it’s very wrong to bully people and it’s again very wrong to wish someone to die in horrible pain. Sorry, [my name] but your reactions are mean, and aggressive. you work in [my field of work], you should know better! (Popi***)

Which was met with: Tell me, what does a ”victim’ look like? Should she cower in fear and just sit back and accept this with tears in her eyes? Why don’t you give the same ‘lecture’ to Bram van Galen, who has clearly expressed an intent of violence to to her? Or is HIS reaction okay because cancer […] offended him and his feelings should be put above hers? (T***)

 

And one user threatened to physically attack me. A van Galen who has his own investment firm under his own name and whose information is all available through the most basic Google search. He clearly did not think this through.

Fack off. (van Galen)

Can I order soms bami [‘Can I order some bami’, a fried noodle dish typically served at Chinese restaurants here] – he quickly deleted this comment so I let readers know what it said. To which he replied:

Number 45 please

Please tell me your adres

Then he claimed I had deleted all his posts. To which I told him they were right above his last comment. Then he said this:

After the word cancer you lost all your credits. You can try to downplay it. But I truely believe you are such a cunt. Crying that someone took a picture of you. […] When I walk into you in Maastricht i will show you cancer. Fcking cunt

When other users chipped in and told him they were drafting a police complaint and we knew the name of his company he quickly attempted to justify himself and even apologize. (Unfortunately I don’t have records of this because he deleted them)

After I and other users told him we had screencaps of his comments, his Facebook profile (in which he listed his workplace and position, including the address), and that we were taking the matter to the police, he deleted all his comments and disappeared.

 

A couple of male users left comments which, I think, should have gotten as much attention:

See the bad thing about this place is you don’t get to carry a gun everywhere you go #murica (Gold)

Dude, we totally owned Egypt man.
I feel bad for any people that have ever been enslaved.
The blacks were enslaved for a few centuries, but even our thousands of years of slavery ain’t close.
Cuz we “white” mate (Humphr***)
– If I remember correctly, this person also described himself as of Jewish heritage.

I’m done on this thread, the arrogance and sexism towards white males is just unbelievable (Humphr***)

 

People told me to “rise above”.

I can understand that you are upset after being confronted with racism on multiple occasions but if there’s one group of People I respect less than racist People, it’s People who wish other People to get cancer. (Lecla***)

Give me a break, I’ve been discriminated against a lot, and still you don’t see me post this kinda things. (Meš**)

I think I read all the comments to this post and I want to point out that not anger resolves things. No matter the skin colour, high, gender, there are always going to be bullies and unfair people. But you can’t ask the world to change for the better, you are a part of it and you’re not willing to change only a small bit and admit you were wrong to wish those guys cancer. Than, how do you ask others to be better for you? I get the frustration, but you’re no better than them if you react like this. Look closely and you’ll see that you’ll eventually be fine but them, they are always going to be arrogant clowns. (Popi***)

 

The forum’s moderator had some opinions. He later disabled the “comment” function without asking me.

Complains about racism, continues calling other people ‘white boys’. Go somewhere else, please you are making a fool out of yourself. (E. Scheeren)

PIty for all the yellows blacks and brownies, right? (E. Scheeren)

I guess its time to close this discussion, if you want to spread your experiences like this again, please don’t respond to hatred by hate (E. Scheeren)

 

Some people had…interesting opinions:

Isn’t calling them “white men” similar to racism? So responding to racism with racism would not solve your problem […] (Caru**)

Which was met with: How is calling someone ‘white’ the same thing as someone yelling an obviously racist slur at you? […] Should she have said Caucasian men? (Yus***)

And: Yeah don’t you hate it when you go to the shops and random strangers in the street come up to you to take pictures and make fun of you and white stereotypes just because you’re white (Will***)

I’m done on this thread, the arrogance and sexism towards white males is just unbelievable (Humphr***)

The X-marker is a legal way to spray harmless paint in someones face, making them a noticable target for at least 3 days (very hard to wash of) If the “terrible racist” is blue all over, then calling police will probably help. (van Boga***)

 

Then came the ad hominem attacks on other users:

It’s sad that you don’t have a life and you print screen convo’s. I deleted it because I felt tired of people like you.
So…why are you even commenting? It’s not even your post… (Meš**)

If you do, why da fuck do you have time at 2:34 am to make all these comments? (Meš**)

To which the person she was attacking replied: I’m sorry, are you not doing the same thing? Lol (Len***)

 

A couple of readers thought it was funny to call their friends out and see if they were the ones who attacked me:

[Rik***, why man? (Ase***)

I bet that was you! (Rik***)

Yeah, came to maasi for one night just to take some pictures of internationals. It’s my number 2 young-white-male hobby, number 1 being building a fence in Hungary. Peace, billa*** out ✌️ (Bil***)

 

But many people were encouraging. Here’s the legal advice I got:

you should report it to the police. They may not be able to do much for you but if you just let shit like this slide nobody will ever even know that there is a problem (van G***)

Always report instances of racism to the police (Will***)

 

Some shared their insight on what was going on the thread itself:

Let’s simply say: People in this FB group who saw this post and are Europeans, are most likely not supporting what you said here. But to be honest no one can really feel how you have felt when you encountered that situation. (Zh***)

If you fail to see the irony in exclaiming that first hand experience is paramount whilst talking about racism as a white male I do actually believe you need to revise 1+1=2 level of logic. (Will***)

 

Some people fought for me:

Congratulations to the people who have never experienced bigotry to the point of feeling unsafe, but policing the language of someone who has recently been in a stressful situation is EVEN LESS helpful than wishing disease upon others. (Len***)
By telling people to keep calm, you’re revoking their right to anger and hurt. They should be angry. Change demands strong feelings be felt, expressed, and addressed. Not silenced. (Len***)

Ignore racism and go on with your life? Do you even understand what it’s like to experience racism? Clearly not, because if you did, you wouldn’t write that. It is difficult to ignore being completely dehumanised and made feel guilty for just existing. Please don’t say ignore something that you are clueless about. (La***)

if I had a 5 cents for every time someone told me to just “simply ignore it”, “be the better person”, and all those empty sentiments, I’d be so rich I could pay back my student loans 8 times over and pay for the student loans of the whole group here (T***)

Are you seriously going to preach about her wishing cancer on someone. Seriously? And then continue on and say it’s not permitted in a ‘society of educated people’ when she is facing racism in this so called ‘educated society’ of individuals who treat her badly.Walk in her shoes before you start preaching the etiquette of how she should have vented her anger. (Go***)

I think you fail to see that trying to impose your ideas of what racism is onto someone who is actually a minority and experiences actual racism is inappropriate, as you are someone who is not a minority and do not experience this racism (de H***)

to be told by a white male that I should abide by HIS standards of what constitutes “tiny little” discriminatory actions because you somehow have inflated your own ego to presume you have a valid opinion in a space that you do not occupy, namely racism. (T***)

 

 
Some saw the victim-blaming:

In this thread: people who have never felt the injustice of blatant, random, racial discrimination- and therefore feel they can pass judgement on the character of the victims of these crimes. Assholes. (Abh***)

of course it’s not nice to swear with things like that, how can this make you people completely disregard the original message of the post ? i think that’s a slightly more relevant issue here.. (*)

A couple of readers were sympathetic towards my feelings:

To your question – if this ever happens again, walk away with your head up, you don’t have time to deal with petty bullshit of every random man-child crossing your way (Dom***)

I’m white so of course I cannot understand fully how terrible this must be. (de Gr***)

And many shared their own stories of experience with racism:

Sadly this is not the first I’ve heard of people in Maastricht being racist towards Asians. Which I find really weird since I never encountered any of this while with Asian friends, but they had and told me about it. One even decided to change his regular cycling route because of harassment like this. (van G***)

I am white European and have received racism in Maastricht /Netherlands . They are a bit backwards SOME people here (El***)

This doesn’t just happen in Maastricht unfortunately, experienced it myself. Tried to ignore it, but that won’t work. (Tomo***)

I’ve also experienced racism in Maastricht, on multiple occasions. It comes mostly from local people with lower education, rather than university students. Once me and a non-white friend were even refused entrance to a bar, as a person on the door said it was only for Dutch people, while just letting every white person inside. We were really upset by this and went to an anti-discrimination agency who managed to squeeze a lame apology from this bar. Also, I often hear some teenagers groups shouting something like “nihao” at me and even throwing stuff at me when I pass by (**)

I’m sorry you had to go through this, I had to watch a friend from Somalia being attacked by 6 Dutch duchebags for no reason last year in Maas and the police can’t do much without evidence usually. So I’m sorry and I think it’s great that you shared it, I think it’s important to speak out for any change to ever happen (Had***)

 

Some humour:

White privilege be like (KM)

as someone who’s had cancer, i think that wishing them to get hit by a train might be more effective… and also probably slightly more painful (though marginally less nauseating… i dont know ive never been hit by a train). im sorry you had to go through that! your reaction is 100% justified. (Kenn***)

Someone call the waaaaaaaambulance! (T***)

 

There was a very, very long discussion on the Dutch swearword ‘cancer’:

Why is everyone getting so butthurt over something that Dutch people swear with all the time? (van G***)

whatever these people tell you, it is actually very common to swear with diseases in the Netherlands and I’m sure many people that have commented on this threat would have probably also used the cancer word had they been in your terrible situation… [link] (Will***)

I explained, more than once: “The reason I used the word “cancer” is precisely because my Dutch friends sat me down one day and told me to NEVER, EVER use that word unless somebody had really harmed me. So I did that and used it once. Today. In my head. Well, actually I typed it out after saying it in my head.”

Even though it is true that it is more common to swear with diseases in Dutch than in most other languages, I want to stress that cancer is totally unacceptable nowadays. Unfortunately, it is sometimes used by not very educated people in order to exaggerate a description (e.g. kankerlekker: unbelievably good/tasteful). Maybe they’re the same lads who thought racism would be funny. Utterly disgraceful. (van Sche***)

So if a Dutch person swears upon another something related to getting cancer people laugh and say it’s Dutch culture… but if a person who is harassed does so nobody appreciates how well integrated she is after only two weeks. ;) (Pe***)

Secondly for the people who start crying with the fact that she used the word cancer, good luck surviving here in the Netherlands because it’s the same then using the word, fuck.  The problem is you ignorant prick, there is a girl walking on the street. Who is get bullied and she maybe doesn’t even want to go on the streets anymore… Because that’s okay but first let’s solve the problem that somebody used that one word… (Schn***)

One user cited a helpful resource on Tone Policing:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/tone-policing-and-privilege/

It sure entertained some people:

boah dude, check out some of these replies.. (Chi***)

Lol so many butthurt people (C***)

dis better than Netflix (Bil***)

 

14 people wrote me private messages to tell me that they were sorry I had experienced in their city, their country, that they and the city were behind my back. That racism was not okay. That they hoped something like this never happened again.

10 people told me they would meet me and talk if I needed it.

1 person was concerned I might be suicidal after all those comments.

Another left their phone number to call if I need an ear.

A non-Dutch student confessed he didn’t know what to say when he heard racial slurs because he couldn’t find any words that would hurt them as deeply as they did him.

I went to sleep feeling pretty good. There were a bunch of people who didn’t have a slight idea to what racism was (even if they claimed to), but there were so many good people who understood what I had felt, who spent their Saturday evening defending me, and reporting violent behaviour.

Then I woke up to this, when a friend messaged me saying “some shit is going down, again”:

p20160911_012109000_bec0b29c-5894-4a22-8921-6876f0ffb93e

That first comment got about 50 “likes” before the comments were deleted one by one by the OP, who then deleted his post entirely within a day.

p20160911_012120000_ee3149d0-2f62-440a-987e-890335f17780-1

p20160911_012221000_8133876d-c3db-4ed4-aa35-f7e0cf69ad7d-1p20160911_012316000_19bd44a2-42ec-4b24-a02b-fac8f86738d1-1

I talked about this online incident, and about the attack itself to a few people I personally know or regularly have contact with. Surprisingly, the kindest, sweetest people had the same reaction:

  1.  Are you sure they took a photo of you? Are you sure it happened?
  2. They weren’t racists, they were just youth being stupid.

I couldn’t help but notice that all these people were white – they just did not understand. Why was this racism? They targeted me because I was there, not because I was Asian (to which I replied: “Yes, there were other Dutch people walking around the carpark and I was the only one they took a picture of”). Somehow it did not naturally cross their mind that when “stupid people” bully others, they may choose to do so to individuals who belong to specific groups, and that just because this choice is often made implicitly does not make it less racist. If I had been a white female, and told my white friends that Chinese people kept taking photos of me just because of my blonde hair, what would they say?

And somehow, I had to explain, step by step, why this was racist. This surprised me. A few times, they simply failed to “see it”. Even after I told them why this was hurtful and why this was, indeed, selective targeting. It was just a bad guy on a bad day and you happened to be there.

AsI did this a few times, I understood racism. All those times in Seoul when my Kenyan, Indian, Moroccan, Pakistani, Irish, German, Finnish people told me Korea was racist, I said “I understood it”. But to feel it on your own skin is an entirely different matter. When a black friend told me a Korean woman came up to her in the subway and started rubbing her skin to see “if it came off”, I thought it was offensive and morally incorrect, but I oversaw the humiliation and ignorance.

When I recounted both stories to people of colour, the consensus was clear:

  1. That really happened? That is some racist bullshit.
  2. I’m sorry this happened to you.

Overall, this whole story made me debate internally, and with several friends, whether it was impossible to understand and be compassionate about a cause that did not affect oneself. It reminded me of a conversation I had in London this May, where a group of British (and continental European) feminists were discussing whether men could be feminists. A man who identified himself as feminist said: “I don’t know, am I allowed to be feminist, I mean, is it possible for me to be a feminist?” and a hot debate rose. Yes, if he fought for our cause. No, not really. He doesn’t get it. He can’t.

One person of colour told me:

They ain’t white. They ain’t gettin’ it honey. They don’t know what racism is and they never will, unless they go and live in India for a year where nobody looks like them.

However, this wasn’t the end – this story happened nearly two months ago. Last Friday was many Fridays ago. And it hasn’t stopped. On the following Monday, I was stopping at a red light on my bicycle when a truck driver (again, white male) yelled “Ching chong! Ching chong!”. And I thought: Seriously? Did I just hear that? When I told this story to a friend, she advised I wear headphones. Because that shit just ruins your day.

This week, I was again at a crossroads (this time with headphones) when a (this is becoming repetitive, but again) white, male twenty-something stated yelling at me. So I turned my head to him, because maybe he was asking me whether I had pressed the crossings button (you have to press a button to get the green light here). Then he started pulling faces. Thankfully, I was listening to Nicki Minaj in full throttle. Fucking arsehole. Again. Then I drove off. The guy drove faster to overtake me, then spent the next three minutes-worth driving time constantly turning back towards me, pulling faces and yelling very the now-becoming-familiar “Ching chong! Ching chong!”. Thank you Nicki, thank you headphones.

When I got home and told my German flatmate (again, white male) what had happened, he said:

What is it with you and those people? (He and my other roommate had already heard all the other accounts of racism)

In which I unfortunately heard a tinge of “What are you doing wrong that these people are targeting you?“. And which made me think for a moment: Should I move out?

I also had to remind people when recounting the negative feedback I got online – the ones which said my problem was “so slight and I was blowing it out of proportion since I technically didn’t get ‘attacked'” – and the listener said “Yeah, but it is true that you didn’t really get attacked. They just took a photo of you”. I had to tell them “Yes, and murder and rape here in Europe are not big problems since there’s war in Syria every day, right?”. Then they got it.

But I did get a lot of support for people in my degree programme, the student community, and from my professor. The professor encouraged  me strongly to report this to the university, since such instances “simply had to be known”. He also remarked that “the Netherlands is unfortunately, very racist, and it’s been swept under the rug”. Most people in my degree were outraged at what happened at the supermarket. One Belgian/French student remembered being bullied in his own country because he was French-speaking but studied in the Flemish-speaking part of the country. One student told me he had been spat on because he came out – as a white male living in Germany. The only other Asian student in my cohort told me she now “goes to take out the trash with headphones because I don’t want to bump into fuckheads who will ruin my day regardless of how wrong they are because that shit gets you down no matter what”.

Overall, I am surprised by how divided we humans are, and how we seem to fail to understand problems that do not directly impact us – which further alienate causes behind which specific groups rally. Indeed, the personal is political.

 

 

 

Korean Feminism Reins In the Collective Power of the Internet

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Korean feminism takes advantage of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure and satiric humour to combat misogyny

An emerging Feminist movement finds power in the collective power of the Internet

Founded on August 6th, 2015, the independent website Megalian.com brands a new type of feminism – one that uses the country’s world-class ICT infrastructure to promote gender equality and to humorously bash misogyny on the Korean web.

The name, currently filed for trademark registration by one of its users, is a neologism combining ‘MERS gallery’, the web forum where the movement was born, and ‘Egalia’, of Gerd Brantenberg‘s satiric novel ‘Egalia’s Daughters‘. Megalian.com operates strictly on an anonymous basis, with all members posting under the same nickname, except for notices regarding server maintenance by the site’s administrators, who nevertheless remain anonymous (As of December 2015, the few interviews conducted with its members or admins have not revealed any personal information).

The collective movement began in June 2015, when women began to ‘mirror’ the misogynic comments made by male members on DCInside.com, a popular web forum. What was conceived as a minor page dedicated to sharing information on MERS-CoV, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, turned to a battleground between the sexes. Male users began launching hate speech on two Korean women affected by MERS who, due to miscommunication, did not comply to the South Korean government’s call for quarantine. Women fought back, parroting back male users’ comments by simply replacing the words ‘women’ with ‘men’, a tactic they actively promote as ‘mirroring‘.

Megalia’s members, who call themselves ‘Megalians’, have since created a stir in the Korean media. Opponents call them men-haters and accuse them of fighting hate back with hate – that these women have gone too far. This is precisely the point, Megalians say. To see the misogyny that is today taken as acceptable social behaviour and spat at Korean women every day: to turn it around so men and women alike can witness it in its honest, raw form – discrimination.

At the moment of its conception in August, the site had 170,000 unique visitors (data by similarweb.com). This number has continued to grow, adding another 100K almost every month. The November stats stand at 370,000. About 83% percent of its visitors log in from tech-savvy Korea, while 10% hail from the US, and smaller numbers from Canada, Japan and New Zealand (a portion of users are also based in European nations).

About a quarter of its traffic stems from referrals – most notably from Ilbe.com, a website whose members have been Megalia’s target of criticism and vice versa since the movement began at DCInside.com . Ilbe, a site dedicated to sharing humour whose political stance leans towards the extreme right, has continuously faced accusations from the general Korean population for its largely unmoderated content – much like 4chan in the rest of the world. Its notoriety stems from members’ ad hominem attacks targeting specific groups, such as women and Koreans originating from Jeolla province. Users have been sentenced for using the terms ‘fish cake’ and ‘barbecue meat’ to mock the hundreds of civilians deceased in the 2014 Sewol ferry incident and the 2003 Daegu subway fire.

Megalia’s logo reflects its satiric nature, heavily influenced by the Feminist novel ‘Egalia’s Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes‘ by Norwegian author Gerd Brantenberg. In the influential feminist oeuvre, Brantenberg narrates a world where gender roles are entirely reversed – linguistically (women are called ‘wim’ and men ‘menwim’, making the man the suffix), socially (women are by default given the upper hand at the home and in society due to their power to give birth), and sexually (men are at constant risk of sexual assault; the blame is entirely theirs and not of their assailant). The logo symbolises Korean society’s – notably of men – highly judgemental attitude towards women’s physical appearance and mirrors the obsession with women’s sexuality by mocking the size of South Korean men’s penises – ‘they are just not good enough‘.

The satire and humour culminated in the creation of a Megalian dictionary as well as the parody of a popular Korean comic targeted at young children learning basic classical Chinese characters (all the characters are reinterpretations of the letter 男, which means ‘man’).

Popular Megalian vocabulary and expressions include references to social problems caused by Korean men as well as mirrors of derogatory terms used by men on sites such as Ilbe:

  • Chanel lipstick: mocks the kimchi girl  concept, a derogatory term used by men to refer to women who buy brand goods
  • Papa: refers to Korean men who’ve had extramarital affairs in South Asian countries and abandoned their spouses once a child was born
  • Blue & Green Ilbe: reference to Facebook and Naver, who have demonstrated intolerant attitudes towards Feminist comments while supporting misogynic ones
  • Schroedinger’s Korean Man: refers to a study which reported that approximately 58% of of Korean men have purchased sexual services
  • Dead Older Sister: refers to the selective abortion of female foetuses commonly practiced up until the 1990s

Although men are the main target of Megalian mirroring techniques and retorts, women receive criticism as well. These women – dubbed ‘corseted’ (after the restraining fashion device) or ‘Penis Emeritus’ are, however seen as a product of the male-dominated society, who must break free from the social injustice by individual will (by joining Megalian, of course). It should be noted that almost all Korean women are understood as having undergone a ‘corseted’ phase at some time in their life, as it is a social norm implemented on even the most Feminist children.

The movement doesn’t stop at simply mocking misogyny. It has backed several Feminist campaigns – including the crowdfunding of adverts in Seoul’s public transport system denouncing pornographic ‘hidden cam’ videos; endorsing support for and encouraging individual donations be made to New Political Alliance Democracy politician Jin Sunmee, who is leading a campaign to shut down Soranet, a South Korean porn hub associated with brokering underage prostitution and sharing videos of illegal nature (Jin’s office received a total of 10 million KRW / 9,000€ / 10,000$ in the 24 hours following the upload of a post calling Megalians to donate).

megal.cam

Ad campaign against ‘hidden cams’ crowdfunded by Megalia. The slogan reads “Don’t shoot hidden cam videos” (Image source: Megalian.com)

The site is currently working extensively on exposing Soranet, Korea’s biggest pornographic website (over a million users are currently registered) and whose claim to fame lies on its ability to keep avoiding legal consequences by constantly changing domains names and servers, effectively placing it outside the jurisdiction of South Korean law. (You can read more about Soranet and Korean women’s battle against their illegal activities in an upcoming post)

Megalia also played a detrimental role in the 2015 Maxim Korea scandal. In its September 2015 issue, MAXIM Korea’s cover depicts the images of a naked woman’s feet dangling out of a car boot, with the slogan “This is what a real bad man is like. How do you like me now?”.  The photoshoot goes on to show the images, most likely of the assumed female victim in the boot, looking up at the assailant, then being dragged in a plastic body bag. The magazine took a defensive stance at the accusations, and only issued an apology after international media and a spokesperson for MAXIM US condemned their actions.

maxim.jpg

Cover of MAXIM Korea’s September 2015 issue

Other activities Megalian is collectively responsible for include:

  • September: Successfully shutting down the sale of ‘hidden cam’ type devices on Ticketmonster (Tmon), a Korean e-commerce platform (unrelated to the ticket sales site ticketmonster.com). Following dozens of calls of complaint from Megalians, Tmon stopped sales and issued an official apology. Wemakeprice.com, which sold similar products also retracted sales but have not published an apology.
  • September: Donated over 6 million KRW (4,700€/5,100$) to Aeranwon, an NGO which helps single mothers
  • September: Contacted Hanshin University’s student council regarding a series of banners containing misogynic slogans. The council subsequently issued an official apology and removed all banners
  • October: Stopped sale of high-concentrate hydrochloric acid on 11st.co.kr by filing complaint to the Ministry of Environment. Hydrochloric and sulphuric acid have been used as weapons in hate crimes committed by men on women

As of December 25th, the site is running several funding and media campaigns. A YouTube channel dedicated to providing information on hate crimes in Korea uploads videos with English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish subtitles.

However, the site is not without trouble. In early December, a debate regarding whether or not the site should support gay men’s rights (the site is supportive of female members of the queer community). Members argued that should not be exempt from criticism, as they are also part of the Korean male community which they target for mirroring. The administrators ruled that members should not use derogatory satiric terms to refer to gay men, which resulted in a massive exodus. Womad, an alternative to Megalian.com was proposed, but as of December 25th, no site has been launched and its Daum forum has been made private [Update July 22nd, 2016: Still no website; Daum forum running].

Since the December exodus, several sites pretending to be an alternative to Megalian.com have popped up, taking advantage of the confusion and luring Megalians to join or to visit them. However, few Megalians have actually joined them, as they were warned beforehand on the forums.

Men, mostly from rival site Ilbe, have also been vandalising and lurking on Megalia, a site dominated by female users (including transgender and transsexual women). As Megalia operates on a strict anonymity basis and insists on an easy-to-join-and-leave policy, there is no way to block users based on any information.  Korean web portals such as Naver and Daum require users to provide their national identity number (replaced with Web ID in 2014), which allows admins and moderators of forums to restrict membership based on age and/or gender – but take away any chance at anonymity.

This anonymity is both Megalia’s advantage and drawback, since it guarantees full freedom of speech to members while diminishing the ease of blocking users. A few members have been blocked through IP tracking, however, in general, the admins do not moderate the posts and only issue warnings if several reports have been filed against it.

Since December 2015, administrators and financial backers of the website have continuously received criticism on their lack of transparency, but no official statement has been released.

Megalia (Korean only) http://megalian.com/

Timeline of Megalian’s main activities (Korean only)  http://timetree.zum.com/123516

Update: As of May 2016, most users have migrated to either the radical WOMADIC (Daum cafe) or to the softer LADISM (Daum cafe). No official statement has been issued by the team behind Megalian.com.