Facebook Korea turns a blind eye on misogynic Pages while constantly shutting down satire-based feminist movement Megalia

The SNS giant’s actions are puzzling as complaints filed regarding both groups fall under the same Community Guidelines

Korean feminist group Megalia has continuously spoken out against Facebook Korea ‘s actions as the social networking website’s Korean regional office continues to ignore user’s complaints regarding the maintenance of Kimchi Girl Facebook, a Page dedicated to promoting posts on ‘Meninism’ and on bashing women, in particular well-known female Korean figures and the Ministry of Gender Equality. Meanwhile, Megalia’s pages have been temporarily shut down several times and its images have been removed without consent of the Page’s administrators.

Complaints filed against both groups fall under the Community Guidelines – under which the website should block hate speech and call to violent actions. Kimchi Girl and its affiliate pages qualify for both, but despite continuous reports by users, it continued to operate until it was hacked and taken over by an unknown user in December 2015, who has since kept the page from uploading new material.

The admins are particularly fond of circulating screencaps of women on television shows being ‘kimchi girls’ – a ‘Kimchi Girl’ being defined here as women who ‘only see men as ATMs’ – although many of these screencaps have been taken out of context. The site, which has 165,000 followers, has since been hacked and its users have created multiple replicas of the misogynic Page. DCInside, Naver and many Korean websites currently allow the use of ‘Kimchi Girl’ on their comments while blocking ‘kimchi boy’, among a list of swearwords and derogatory terms.

On the other hand, Facebook has not only once, but over and over again, taken immediate action to ban Megalia’s pages. The current page, Megalia4, has so far not been blocked, but the biased actions of the global SNS has earned it the moniker ‘Penisbook’ by Megalians.

Link to change.org petition

Korean women have finally resorted t8o creating an online petition against Kimchi Girl and other communities and pages on Facebook which encourage hate speech and even violent action against women.