"Flowers of Fire" was a really interesting read. It was quite interesting to learn more about the feminist movement in South Korea and what difficulties women still face there.

Really beautiful and important read. I knew how much struggle there is for equality still, but hearing these inspiring stories from firsthand experience really made me emotional and empowered.
Writing was super accessible and flowed really nicely, I was never bored or overwhelmed with information.
Great read I would definitely recommend to everyone.

“The title, Flowers of Fire, was inspired by the Korean word bul-kkot, which literally translates to “fire flower” and refers to flame. In South Korean society (and elsewhere), women are often treated like flowers: pretty objects of desire to be seen and not heard. But these women have found ways to flare against the everyday sexism they experience, so I chose Flowers of Fire as a metaphor of their ongoing struggles—and their indestructible hope.”

In this fascinating and inspiring portrayal of the modern feminist movement in South Korea triggered by the phenomenon of #metoo, author Hawon Jung explores the legal, social and cultural changes in its wake, and the women who fought for them.

Jung credits the courage of lawyer Seo Ji-Hyun with starting the national conversation about #metoo when in 2018 she went public about her experience of sexual assault. A highly commended and well respected solicitor, Seo had lodged a complaint about been groped by a senior prosecutor in 2010. The investigation went nowhere and Seo reluctantly let the matter go until several years later that same man was promoted into the justice ministry and deliberately set out to ruin her career in revenge. In January 2018 a devastated Seo went public and her statement sparked a revolution.

Whereas South Korean women rarely made formal complaints about sexual harassment and/or assault, knowing that they would routinely be labeled a “flower snake”, and face both private and public shaming, in the weeks after Seo’s interview, nearly a hundred accusations of sexual misconduct were made against prominent men, exposing a similar pattern of misogyny, objectification, and abuse in nearly all corners of society, and women from all walks of life began to share their #metoo stories. A public event was organised in March 2018 in Gwanghwamun Plaza to allow ‘everyday women whose voices don’t make it to TV news’ to speak up and to listen, and ran for 2,018 minutes.

Hawon Jung explains how the ensuing movement stimulated some changes in government, law, workplaces, schools, and every day life. Seo, who feared the end of her legal career, was assigned to handle gender equality–related policies at the justice ministry and helped usher in several major reforms, including raising the age of sexual consent from thirteen to sixteen. The man who assaulted her was convicted of ‘abuse of power’, and was sentenced to two years jail but he was later acquitted in the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, progress is continually challenged by men who prefer the status quo of the patriarchy. Jung examines the practice of revenge ‘counter accusations’, the ubiquity of ‘molka’ and other digital sex crimes, and the rise in conservative men decrying ‘kimchi girls’—a widely used slur defining a woman as selfish and unreasonable. Conservative politicians rant about the country’s falling population rate, ignoring the fact that gender inequality is the most consistently cited reason for women shunning marriage and childbirth.

The book also touches on a number of related issues such as the fight for compensation for the ‘comfort women’ forced into the system of camps during World War II to supply sexual services to soldiers, the high rate of cosmetic surgery among South Korean women, as well as the open discrimination against homosexual and transgender individuals. South Korea, which still lacks an act formally banning discrimination in the public sphere despite several attempts, still has a way to go in the pursuit of gender equality, as do most countries.

Insightful, thoughtful and engaging, I found it really interesting to learn how South Korea’s feminist movement and issues echoes and diverges from those in west, and recommend Flowers of Fire.

As someone who has become increasingly interested in Korean entertainment and culture, the description of this book caught my attention. I found it to be a very informative look on a topic that I was previously not very familiar with in regards to South Korea's society. The information is broken up into four sections focusing on different topics, such as the global impact of the #MeToo movement. The book is well-researched, as the author includes numerous references to support her findings. The book leaves the reader with a better understanding of past and present issues in Korean culture and how these issues can be overcome to create a better future for women. I would suggest this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about global feminist movements, women's history, or Korean culture.

“Flowers of Fire” from journalist Hawon Jung delves into the South Korean feminist movement of the past 10 years or so. I requested the book from NetGalley after reading one of her articles in the New York Times. It did not disappoint.

The book reads like a long newspaper article, so it is compelling and easily readable. It covers a variety of issues faced by women in South Korea, from expectations to accept sexual harassment to expectations to resign from positions once they become pregnant. It reviews the necessity of women in the workforce and the discrimination they face.

This is not a low-anxiety read by any means. There were numerous times I nearly stopped reading (see content warning below). However, this is an important story about women’s lives in the modern era. This book also explains two things I noticed when I visited South Korea several years ago. First, there were the ubiquitous ads for plastic surgery (they were EVERYWHERE in Seoul). I also noticed the number of young women who wore face masks (this was way before the pandemic years) during the heat of summer. Both of these are addressed in the discussion of impossible standards of beauty.

“Flowers of Fire” is both depression and anger-inducing, BUT it is also a story of hope. The reader witnesses women risking everything, banding together, and fighting for legal and socially-accepted protections. Though women in South Korea are still not on equal footing with men, they have made tremendous strides toward equality.

This book is great for those interested in feminist movements outside of the United States or Western Europe or modern South Korean culture.

CW: descriptions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and misogyny.

Thank you to NetGalley and BenBella Books for a free Advance Reader’s Copy in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Flowers of Fire is a valuable and captivating resource. The western world has no shortage of recent feminist literature, but there are very few works focusing on feminism and equality in other regions and cultures. I absolutely recommend this to readers looking to learn about the wider feminist movement.

Flowers of Fire is a powerful book that recounts the many fights of Korean women since the outcry of Seo Ji-Hyun on national television in 2018, but also of those who preceded her in the 20th century. I'm literally gobsmacked by this book, and I honestly find it difficult to review it because there is so much important information that I just want to buy my copy and read it all over again to make some annotations.

For a young woman like me, who has been a lover of South Korean culture for ten years now, I found this book eye-opening on many levels. If some of the cases reported in the third and fourth chapters, with Goo Ha-Ra, Sulli, or the Burning Sun case involving famous singers Seungri (BIGBANG) and Jung Joon-Young (FT-ISLAND), were already known to me and many of my fellow K-culture lovers out there in the world, other cases remained unknown. I believe that such a novel like Flowers of Fire can offer many insights into the dark side of Korean society and its industries, of which K-pop and Kdramas are part, and help young people who find an interest in them to be aware of the consequences they have--on bodies, on gender equality, among many other things that Jung Hawon develops remarkably well in her long essay.

I was really moved by Seo Ji-Hyun's fight and inspired by her courage to speak openly about her experience with sexual harassment. Her plea was the beginning of a long war against patriarchy, a war fought by young women who were also victims of sexual violence done by colleagues, friends, fathers, uncles, brothers, and even strangers. Jung Hawon lays out quite effectively the many forms sexual violence can take in Korea: from groping to spycams or even sextortion, public spaces have proven to be very threatening for women in the past few years. Even in their own houses/flats, they saw their privacy taken away from them and posted on pornographic websites. The perpetrators were rarely charged and let out of the police stations with little to compensate for the victims' trauma (admitting that money can repay the mental health issues women were left with).

What I found even more important in this book is the last chapter (My Body), which targeted the case of many transgender and transexual Koreans out there. In the West, young generations who discover feminism often think that it is an ending point that will eventually solve every issue related to gender equality, rarely knowing that feminism ignites other reflections concerning LGBTQIA+ people. I thought it extremely helpful to include these discussions in the book, only to make people aware that what is considered the core of today's conversations when it comes to gender equality is still a lot behind in other developed countries like Korea or even Japan and China.

There would be so many more things to talk about in this book (abortion laws, for instance!!!), yet I know this review will not be enough to cover them all. So I'm going to stop there and let another person find the opportunity to discover Jung Hawon's lines. On my part, I will recommend it to every person that is interested in Korean or even East-Asian feminism, as well as those women still fighting out there, marching in the streets or trying to find the power to do so.

An IMMENSE thank you to BenBella Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy and review it.

Delighted to highlighted this new release in “She Said: 1 Books for International Women’s Day” for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

Flowers of Fire tells the fascinating history of feminism in South Korea (mostly) around the #MeToo movement. Jung does a great job at filling in gaps for people not familiar with South Korean history/prominent people without the book getting its pacing bogged down. I do want to thank the author for not shying away from including trans women (like a lot of authors tend to do when writing about feminism) as well as taking a stance against “gender critical”/TERF beliefs. Thank you to BenBella Books and Netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is an impressively written and engaging book on the history of feminism in South Korea. There are 50 pages of references. Many of the challenges faced by women in South Korea seem to boil down to a conflict between worldviews: a human rights view which says women are the equal of men and a Confucian worldview which sees women as the skivvies of men. Funnily enough, the men at the top were quite happy with this Confucian system…

Some of the miseries for South Korean women that this book details:
- rampant sexual harassment and assault with minimal punishments. Until recently non-consensual sex wasn’t even considered rape.
- always having to check for spy cams including in your own home or any public toilet in case some man’s getting a kick watching you on the loo or changing clothes
- men being able to upskirt women anywhere with complete immunity and post all over the internet as the (usually male) judge agrees that they’re “sorry and won’t do it again” (yeah right) and that a conviction might “ruin their lives” (except what about the many lives they’ve already ruined…)
- being expected to spend at least 1 hour each morning just on a beauty regime. Men don’t need to do a thing.
- being expected to look a certain way with a body shape caused by anorexia style eating disorders being deemed the prettiest.
- being expected to do 100% of the housework/childcare even when they’re the breadwinner. Visiting in-laws being the absolute low point as even their mother-in-law views it as a chance to relax whilst daughter-in-laws are made chief skivvies
- workplace practices that expect women to resign once they’re pregnant and never rehire meaning mothers never get a chance to use their many talents/gifts/energy in the workplace
- a government that, over the past 50 years, has not respected women or children so has mandated contraception and abortion at will. Women are to have or not to have children as the state dictates rather than getting any ability to choose.
- a societal system which refuses to teach about sex or contraception, then expects the women to take responsibility for any children whilst never forcing the man to take any responsibility, then bemoans the abortion rate and the rapidly shrinking population as women choose not to have children.

Understandably, this list of grievances (and there are many more in the book) have caused much fury in South Korea. Many women in their 20s-30s are joining “no dating, no sex, no marriage, no child rearing” groups because their quality of life would decrease drastically if they were married with kids.

Whilst these grievances have led to a growth of feminism, the unity is starting to fragment as groups differ on the best way forward. One example is the fallout from one platform over whether they should continue to mirror pejorative terms back to men to mock them or was it starting to go too far. As such the book ends on an uncertain note - will new laws be passed/enforced which promote equality and support women or will recent elections on an anti-feminism platform undo some of the recent reforms?

The book lets itself down at the very end by taking a hard line stance against anyone holding a gender critical view. There are feminists on both sides of this debate. In the UK, for example, gender critical views have been deemed worthy of respect in a democratic society in several recent court cases. If the presentation were more balanced on this topic, I’d give the book 4 stars.

Despite this, a rousing and well written call to action. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.