Horse Year Panic
By Cho Se-hyon
Korea Herald
January 1, 2002Dawn has broken today on another year of the horse. The gist of what follows is a rehash of what I wrote in the previous year of the horse 12 years ago. I decided to recycle the old article because nothing much has changed and what I said then still holds true.
I heard a news report on television the other day that a large number of pregnant women in this country were seeking abortions for fear they might give birth to a girl in the year of the horse. A woman born in the year of the horse by the lunar calendar is said to have "a fiery" character and strong will. Therefore, they will live a hard and unlucky life. I fail to understand the logic, but I guess it makes sense to many superstitious people, especially diehard male chauvinists.
What's more, the report said this isn't just an ordinary horse year (1990) but the year of the white horse, no less, thus making girls born this year doubly unlucky, according to "specialists in the science of divination." This belief, it adds, originated from a Japanese empress born in a year of the white horse who suffered great misfortune.
Sure, there are superstitious people in every country. Here in Korea, I heard that superstition is still rampant with nearly 78,000 fortune-tellers doing a roaring business. But the horse year panic that is spreading through society right now does not even belong to superstition. It is sheer nonsense.
However, there seems to be a lot of people who believe in this kind of nonsense and who are willing to break the nation's law by having abortions, lest they have daughters with strong characters.
If so many Koreans are really trying to avoid having female babies on such nonsensical grounds, it is, indeed, a sad commentary on our country that aspires to become a first-rate nation, backed by growing economic power and with a national literary rate approaching 100 percent.
It also poses a serious social problem because it is happening in a country where an overwhelming majority of parents have traditionally preferred sons over daughters. If this trend continues, we could have a serious gender gap in a few years. In any event, all this shows that our society is still unable to shake off the deep-rooted prejudice against women at a time when equal rights for women are accepted as a matter of course in most of the industrialized nations.
What's most distressing, however, is the fact that it is the women themselves who are seeking abortions. They are apparently resigned to playing second fiddle in our society. Don't they realize that the world around them is changing?
Since our country has made giant strides in both political and economic spheres in recent years, more and more women are asserting their independence. The time when women should or could depend totally on men is about over.
Instead of trying to abort female babies, therefore, Korean mothers should give birth to more girls, preferably with strong characters, so that they can grow up and fight for equal rights and take an active part in society.
It is time, I believe, that Korea also had Thatchers, Bhuttos and Gandhis not only in politics but also in corporate boardrooms and top positions in other social organizations. Women's groups scored a small victory in 1989 when the National Assembly passed an amendment bill, revising the nation's antiquated Family Law. But I think it was too little too late.
As I said, I wrote the above article a dozen years ago. But just because there was a revision of the Family Law doesn't mean that our male-oriented society that stretches back over thousands of years changed much. And nothing much will change, it seems, unless we - and especially women themselves who try to avoid giving birth to girls in the year of the horse - reform our way of thinking. Let's hope that by the time another year of the horse comes around again in 12 years, Korean mothers will no longer hesitate to have female babies.
For most of his career, the writer was a reporter working in Tokyo, New York and elsewhere for an American news agency. He returned to his native Korea in the early 1990s. His e-mail address is choseh@yahoo.com. - Ed.