This is pretty unbelievable. Choi Jin-sil, a South Korean actress and model who died by apparent suicide in 2008, is being sued posthumously for failing to maintain a decent image while working as a spokesmodel for the Shinhan Engineering and Construction Co, LTD.
What's worse is that the South Korean Court ruled in their favor. The heirs of Jin-sil are being forced by the courts to repay the damages requested, totaling the equivalent of almost $400,000.
So what is it that Jin-sil did to fail in maintaining a decent image? She was a survivor of her husband's abuse. Pictures were released after Jin-sil ended up in the hospital as a result of this abuse.
From The Chosun Ilbo:
The company paid Choi W250 million in March 2004 for modeling for apartment buildings. The contract included a clause that if Choi disgraced the image of the company by damaging her social and moral image through her own fault, she would repay the firm twice the modeling fee. Five months later, pictures of her beaten and of the inside of her house in a chaotic state were released.
As the clause states above, the fact that the Courts ruled in the company's favor means they actually believe that this abuse was "through her own fault." It's disgusting victim-blaming at it's worst, and shows that some people still blame women for domestic violence.
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Ummm....what?!
Wow. Korea SUCKS
don't you think that's an ignorant, xenophobic comment? No, Korea doesn't suck. THOSE people suck.
if you want to change my opinion of Korea- change it so shit like this doesn't happen.
Korea sucks- for evidence- read the post above.
way to go for alienating Asian feminists... just saying.
Hey keep it on target here. This decision sucks, it's really unfortunate that they would go this route, but dissing an entire country is not useful or valid.
Hey, I'm KOREAN. Although I've lived in the U.S. for practically all my life, Korea is still the place of my birth. So yeah, pretty offended. That said, the actions of the company are disgusting.
dolsat bibimbap
reason one of many why
Korea don't suck
Horrible. The poor woman can't even be left alone in peace after her death.
I can't believe the company would be this coldblooded to even go at her survivors like this. Hopefully there is a helluva backlash nationally and internationally.
Well, yes, this is awful, and completely coldhearted...to people in low-context cultures.
In a high-context culture like Korea, where face-saving is valued, it's not.
I'm not saying their actions are permissable, but in a high-context culture, that isn't so shocking.
Yes, it's vile and disgusting to me, so don't hound on me for that, please.
Maybe we should talk about the difference of feminism is high- and low-context cultures in a post.
I don't think there's a correlation between "high context culture" and the belief that a woman is at fault if she was domestically abused, which is the real issue here. It doesn't make sense - even anthropological sense - to say "Oh, Asian people really care about honor and reputation so it's not unheard of for them to blame a woman for being domestically abused." If this were really about face-saving - the company seeking damages from someone who hurt their image - they'd go after her husband. Which would be totally understandable, the dude assaulted their model, after all. But they didn't - they went after the deceased victim. That doesn't say "traditional face-saving culture" to me, that says "misogynistic company that would act like less of a fucking asshole if it really gave a shit about image".
Incidentally, I also don't find the binary of high context / low context, or individualist / collectivist, or any other dualistic East/West conceptualization (including East/West itself) to be useful. I think it's a tendency that Western ethnographers and anthropologists particularly have, I think it's problematic characterization and gross generalization.
Good point about going after the husband.
But let's agree to disagree on the rest.
I'm in total agreement.
"...That doesn't say 'traditional face-saving culture' to me, that says 'misogynistic company that would act like less of a fucking asshole if it really gave a shit about image'..."
I agree, and don't forget 'misogynistic commenter that gives more of a shit about customs than about human beings'...
Does anyone know about the Korean modeling industry enough to know if that kind of contract is typical? Has anyone heard of any other instance where a freelancer hired to represent a company must pay DOUBLE the worth of their contract if they violate one of its stipulations, whether that stipulation has to do with violating the moral character of the company or not? I don't know much about contracts and I am curious.
Okay, I did not mean to post that comment as a reply to yours ghostorchild, I meant to just post it at the bottom of the page. Oops :)
"The contract included a clause that if Choi disgraced the image of the company by damaging her social and moral image through her own fault, she would repay the firm twice the modeling fee."
Aside from the company reprehensibly placing the blame for her abuse on her, the contract itself is unconscionable -- it gives too much power to the company to place restrictions on the model's life and actions ("damaging the social and moral image"? Please. You could spin anything to fit that criteria.)
In addition to the backlash/boycotting against this specific company, some economic change is needed so that models would not be forced into these unethical contracts.
South Korea and North Korea are now highlighting the actions, the conduct, the behavior of misogyny on both the male-led political right and the left, whether we want to play the word games about high-context and low-context culture or not.
To see the interplay of male-dominant warring behavior whether right-wing or left, two brilliant women journalists, Lee and Ling (normally LA residents in the USA) were captured while near the China-North Korean border reporting on Korean women being trafficked (abducted and held prisoner as sex slaves) by men. The cameraman and the local guide escaped.
Only the women, who had been reporting on trafficked women, were in effect trafficked themselves by the prevailing politics.
The women journalists as prisoners have now been sentenced by North Korea’s top-male government to 12 years of punishing hard labor. When you see cropped photos about South Korean men protesting for the release of these two women, the bigger picture is one group of men (South Korean) vying for power with another group of men (North Korean, headed by Kim Jung II).
Photos and social commentary at http://thelongestwar.wordpress.com/
So....they've got their panties in a twist over the pictures and not her suicide? WTF?
This seems to me more about the pictures than the violence itself. Who released the pictures?
(I'm not saying this company is off the hook; I'm just saying the pictures ain't the model's fault).
"So....they've got their panties in a twist over the pictures and not her suicide? WTF?"
Lemme guess it's one of those "no snitches!!!" traditions seen in various cultures all over the world and throughout history, from "don't tell anyone your father hits you, that's a private family matter" to "don't tell anyone your neighbor shot you, cops are pigs" to, well, this.
Well, I just curious if the pictures were public, someone in the police department illegally leaked them or if the model herself was trying to speak out about domestic violence.
there's been a HUGE rash of suicides among high profile public figures in South Korea lately, with actors and politicians killing themselves.
sad.
If Choi Jin-sil's story is any example, the rock and the hard place their lives become makes suicide understandable. She understandably felt she could not possibly win regardless of what she did. No escape from the misery that was her life.
This is disgusting, and just sends out a message that abuse is somehow the victim's fault. (for not "maintaining" the marriage, whatever the hell that entails.)
The ruling against Choi Jin-sil's estate is so heartbreakingly woman hating it makes me speechless. And people wonder why judges need to be both women and men.
This story made me cry
Capitalism is sick
They MADE MONEY off of this woman's abuse and death.
The problem isn't really capitalism. A) generation of revenue isn't an evil action. B) It's not onle capitalist systems that value the generation of wealth. It's not as though communist countries pay the bills by thinking happy thoughts.
The problem is a legal system that is still willing to blame a victim. We can blame the company all we want (as we should - what a dick move), but at the end of the day, it's the country's highest court that made the insane ruling. That tells me there's something dirty far beyond one unscrupulous company with a profit motive.
yeah, besides women (and other minority groups) have suffered under all kinds of governments...capitalism, communism, Islamic theocracy, fascism, totalitarian, and military rule.
Shinhan Engineering and Construction Co, LTD., the company that sued her estate, apparently bids on various construction jobs within the United States, and around the world. Anyone involved in making decisions along those lines [Government contract managers, private construction firms who might sometimes look to foreign companies as subcontractors, engineers responsible for making recommendations, administrators who run the reference checks] just might want to make a note of this company's name, and save it for future reference. I know I will! A little diligence and publicity could cost them far more than $400,000 in business, and just might provoke a bit of consciousness raising.
Let's not forget what also makes this company so disgraceful is her heirs were children aged six and eight.
All I can say is WTF.
Yes, this is disgusting, but do you really believe South Korea is the ONLY country whose legal system is guilty of victim-blaming? Just about every country on this planet sucks using that logic.
This is really hard to stomach.