Suzy Kim On a visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereafter, North Korea) in 1977, two overseas visitors were told that sex before marriage ‘does not exist in our country’ (Halliday 1985: 50). This was in a meeting with representatives of the Korean Democratic Women’s Union — the official women’s organisation in North […]

The discursive value placed on normative heterosexuality and marriage in Vietnam is over­whelming. For Vietnamese, marriage is an integral, essential, definitive part of a model life. Regarded as a stepping stone to adulthood, marriage is seen as a virtual social rule and one of the most important achievements in life (Williams and Guest 2005: 172—73). […]

Discourses of heterosexuality in Vietnam have centred on reproduction within marriage. Alternative discourses centring on an awareness and knowledge of sex are associated with modern, urban and middle-class subjectivities influenced by Euro-American and globalised preferences. For educated urban middle-class Vietnamese, heterosexuality is an expression of modern identity and sexual satisfaction is valued for itself (Bui […]

The loving and harmonious family in Vietnam is central to identity, belonging and a sense of stability (Marr 2000: 795). An influential discursive layer in the Vietnamese cultural landscape involves the remnants of neo-Confucian patriarchy. As William Duiker (1995: 165) explains, for nearly ten centuries Vietnamese society was profoundly influenced by Chinese cultural models, particularly […]

Catherine Earl On auspicious days — determined by a reading of the lunar calendar (am lick) — the steps of colonial-era buildings in downtown Ho Chi Minh City are crowded with bridal couples and their camera crews. Trailed by a flurry of tulle, a camera crew and her groom, a bride stops traffic as she […]

The supposedly temporary division of Korea into the US-occupied South and the USSR- occupied North that began in 1945 when Korea gained its independence from Japan continues almost seventy years later. In this section, I discuss how major political, economic and cultural upheavals during this period have contributed to the new construction of sexuality in […]

Korea’s integration into the modern global system in the late nineteenth century brought about transformations in women’s lives and their roles in the family and society even more dramatically than during the dynastic shift from Koryo to Chosfin. There were several major forces that unsettled and refashioned the Confucian norms and practices of the Chosfin […]

During the Koryh dynasty (918—1392) women enjoyed a great deal of freedom and had extensive rights. They shared inheritance equally with their brothers, moved about freely, and could divorce or remarry without stigma (Kwdn 1995: 50). These conventions changed dramatically when the new Choscin dynasty (1392—1910) adopted and implemented neo-Confucian tenets as the ruling ideology. […]

Hyaeweol Choi Introduction It has long been taboo in Korea to speak openly about sex, sexuality and divorce, especially for women (Shim 2001: 133). This prohibition is due, in part, to the lasting impact of Confucian — prescribed ideals of chastity, purity and womanly propriety that were systematically constructed during the Chosbn dynasty (1392—1910). Contemporary […]

Sweeping changes have taken place in China across the past four decades in the social, economic and political spheres. The one child policy, various amendments to the marriage law, the introduction of a market economy and free job market, and the increasing mobility of people within the country, to name just a few factors that […]