INTRODUCTION
The social and legal structure of contemporary South Korea (external link) remains deeply bound to the legacy of Confucianism, an ethical and philosophical system that, since the Joseon Dynasty, has shaped the collective psyche and the organization of the state. This traditional framework establishes a rigid hierarchy that systematically prioritizes the male figure and relegates women to a role of perpetual subordination, crystallized in the principle of the "Three Obediences" (Samjong-jido) (Carvalho et al., 2024).
This cultural heritage is not limited to the private sphere, but manifests itself in systemic and institutionalized violence. The alarming rates of gender-based crimes—ranging from domestic and sexual violence to rising digital criminality and femicide—reveal the failure of the state apparatus to provide an effective protection network. In the specific case of migrant women, this vulnerability is exacerbated by immigration control mechanisms that turn the national spouse into a guarantor of the foreign wife's stay in the territory, institutionalizing a power imbalance that keeps them in a legal and social limbo.
Although South Korea ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1984, there is a deep gulf between the international commitment undertaken and domestic legal practice. Institutional resistance to implementing a comprehensive anti-discrimination law and the persistence of ingrained biases within the justice system result in negligible state responses to human rights violations. Given this scenario, the present research seeks to answer: in what way do patriarchal structures of Confucian roots undermine the effective implementation of CEDAW guidelines in South Korea, perpetuating an environment of institutionalized insecurity for women?
The general objective of this research is to analyze the structural failure of the South Korean state to ensure security and equity for the female population, contrasting international obligations with factual reality. To this end, the article will address the sociocultural roots of Korean patriarchy and the role of Confucianism in the institutional dehumanization of women; the manifestation of systemic violence, focusing on the precarization of immigrant women's lives and the failures of the protection system; and, finally, a critical analysis of the (in)effectiveness of CEDAW's implementation in the face of domestic conservatism.
This investigation is qualitative in nature and adopts the hypothetical-deductive method. It begins with the problematization of the state's structural failure to guarantee security and equity in order to, based on this premise, analyze the implications of patriarchal roots for the implementation of human rights standards. In terms of techniques, the study is grounded in a literature review supported by scientific articles discussing the impact of Confucianism and gender-based violence in East Asia. Complementarily, documentary research is conducted based on periodic reports from the CEDAW Committee, allowing for an analytical comparison between international discourse and the reality of South Korean institutional responses.
1: THE CONFUCIAN LEGACY IN THE SHAPING OF FEMALE SUBORDINATION
The Asian patriarchal culture, the object of analysis in this article, is rooted in the theories of Confucianism, a philosophical and ethical system that expanded between the 6th and 5th centuries BCE and established itself as the primary guide for conduct, especially for Chinese and Korean peoples. Despite transformations that have occurred across the eras, its essence remains intrinsic to Asian traditions, shaping values, social behaviors, and the very structure of education and the family. This doctrine teaches that social dynamics are rigidly hierarchical, promoting a systemic prioritization of men over women, to whom domestic care and subordination roles are relegated (Carvalho et al., 2024, pp. 63-65).
South Korea adopted Confucianism as early as the Goryeo Dynasty, but it was during the Joseon Dynasty that this philosophy rose to the status of state ideology. From that point onward, the doctrine came to permeate the whole of society, from the government apparatus to the private sphere. One of the pillars of this structure is the principle of the Three Obediences (Samjong-jido), which establishes a cycle of perpetual dependence for women: in youth, they owe obedience to their father; in adulthood, submission to their husband; and in widowhood, dependence on their sons (Carvalho et al., 2024, pp. 63-65). This institutional framework prevents women from possessing full autonomy and keeps them under male guardianship at all stages of life.
These teachings inscribed in the Korean psyche and social structure the idea that women should remain restricted to the domestic sphere and subordinate to men. Over time, such a gender configuration consolidated a structurally male model of the state, which tends to prioritize the preservation of hierarchy and economic growth over effective protection against gender inequality and violence (Carvalho et al., 2024).
In these terms, the legacy of Confucianism plays a central role in the perpetuation of gender-based violence in Korean society. According to Habibah (2026, pp. 502-503), the growth of these forms of violence subjects South Korean women to a persistent sense of insecurity and a daily fear of becoming victims of gender-based crimes.
Data presented by Park (2024) indicate that reports of intimate partner violence rose from approximately 49,000 in 2020 to 77,000 in 2023; in the 2024 cross-section examined by the author, 19,000 cases had already been recorded. From a different source, the Korean Women’s Hotline (2024) reports that, among 5,981 initial consultations recording violence conducted in 2023, 57.9% involved domestic violence, 45.5% sexual violence, 10.5% stalking, and 10.1% dating violence. As a single consultation could receive more than one classification, the percentages do not constitute mutually exclusive categories.
In addition to reports registered by the national police, South Korean women are frequently victims of digital sex crimes, through the non-consensual posting of videos of sexual intercourse, hidden-camera filming in changing rooms or restrooms, and deepfakes disseminated on social media. These crimes violate the victims' image and intimacy and can cause extraordinary and lasting harm (Barr, 2024).
On this subject, Barr (2024) states:
Online gender-based violence is a growing problem globally, but it is especially rampant in South Korea. Judges, prosecutors, police, and lawmakers in South Korea, the vast majority of them men, do not take these crimes seriously enough. Women who seek police help are often dismissed, retraumatized, and even mocked. There is far too little sex education in South Korean schools to help young people understand just how wrong this conduct is.
Although crimes against women continue to occur, the police response remains passive (Choi, 2024). These data indicate that South Korean women face a context of insecurity that could worsen without the adoption of urgent and effective protective measures. This perception of everyday risk is intensified by the spread of male victimhood ideology (Ojardias, 2020).
South Korea's cultural hierarchy is relevant in this context, as it favors discourses that minimize male responsibility for the insecurity and violence experienced by women.
In this context, men's rights movements and discourses of male victimhood emerge. Their members claim that feminist advances have caused social dysfunction by expanding the possibilities for non-patriarchal family arrangements, and they associate patriarchal control over heteronormative models with social harmony and order (Jung, 2023).
These movements seek to directly influence legislative and administrative mechanisms, particularly in the realm of family justice. They criticize gender-sensitive policies, claim that domestic violence measures and child support obligations harm men because they are based on a "feminist ideology," and propose replacing criminal intervention with mediation, treating aggression in the domestic environment as a "simple" shared marital conflict (Jung, 2023).
The discourse of male victimization is also linked to severe human rights violations against immigrant women, particularly in marriages and relationships between foreign women and South Korean men. Yi (2025, p. 273, our translation) observes:
Violence against marriage migrants became a critical social issue in South Korea in the late 2000s, and the government instituted various measures in response, partially accommodating the demands of civil society organizations to protect migrant women. Shortly thereafter, however, men's rights advocacy groups also mobilized on behalf of South Korean husbands under the banner of "male victims of international marriages."
Thus, the proliferation of discourses grounded in alleged 'male victimization' serves as a strategy to neutralize women's fundamental rights. By shifting the debate toward narrative and ideological disputes, the state and conservative sectors foster an abstraction of factual reality, obscuring the deepening of structural vulnerabilities and the perpetuation of misogynistic tendencies rooted in the South Korean collective psyche (Moon, 2022).
Consequently, women have grown distrustful of social and legal institutions and, through public demonstrations and debates on social media, demand that this situation be reviewed and addressed (Kim, J., 2017).
The demand for the transformation of cultural and institutional frameworks therefore constitutes the central axis for CEDAW implementation to move beyond the symbolic realm and achieve real effectiveness. However, the state's structural failure becomes even more evident when this patriarchal architecture intersects with other axes of oppression.
2: WOMEN AS TARGETS OF STATE PUNISHMENT
Having understood the historical codification of female subordination under Confucian ethics, it is necessary to examine how this heritage translates into contemporary policies of control and violence. Although legislation exists to protect women's rights, profound tensions persist in gender dynamics, expressed through the alarming incidence of relationship violence in South Korea (Habibah, 2026).
Violence against women in South Korea is not an isolated event, but a systemic phenomenon. Despite economic success, the state fails to provide a safety net that decouples female dignity from traditional male authority, resulting in the suppression of autonomy in the contemporary context (Kim, 2023).
This scenario reveals an acute gap between international treaties and social reality. In 2023, the state response was minimal: only 2.2% (310 individuals) of dating violence suspects were detained (Habibah, 2026). Legislative inadequacy is reflected in lethal data: during the same period, 108 women were killed by partners and 300 survived femicide attempts. Such statistics indicate that a woman faces the risk of lethal assault every 19 hours, evidencing a lack of legal protection that institutionalizes insecurity (Habibah, 2026).
Furthermore, violence transcends the physical realm and consolidates in the virtual environment. Recently, society was shaken by the spread of non-consensual pornographic deepfakes on Telegram, victimizing students and professionals. Estimates that such groups had 220,000 members reveal the magnitude of digital voyeurism and the profound dehumanization of the female body in the country (Jung and Moon, 2024).
Thus, faced with the state's structural failure to guarantee basic integrity, women's reality manifests in an absolute loss of trust in institutions. Such skepticism has catalyzed the emergence of radical resistance movements, notably the 4B Movement, which must be analyzed not merely as a passing cultural phenomenon, but as a political strategy of self-preservation and a direct response to structural insecurity. Emerging in the mid-2010s, the movement is founded on four pillars of renunciation: Bihon (no marriage); Bichulsan (no childbirth); Biyonae (no dating); and Bisekseu (no sexual relations with men) (Kim, 2021).
Consequently, the 4B Movement emerges as a form of protest against Korean patriarchy, transcending the struggle for rights to establish an exclusion zone. From this perspective, if a woman wishes to live in safety and dignity in a society that systematically fails to protect her, a radical withdrawal from emotional and sexual relations with the male gender presents itself as the final frontier of defense against the discriminatory and violent role imposed on her over centuries of Confucian tradition.
South Korean women's growing adherence to the 4B Movement, coupled with the demand for autonomy, has led to a sharp decline in the country's birth rate. It is also evident that a considerable portion of South Korean men has turned to marriage with foreign women as an alternative for family formation.
The South Korean immigration system privileges citizens by establishing the husband as the guarantor of the foreign wife's visa, establishing an institutionalized power imbalance. The woman's continued stay is contingent upon the spouse's ongoing endorsement, holding her hostage to an asymmetric relationship where domestic disputes can lead to the revocation of residency rights (Kim, Park, and Shukhertei, 2017). The state thus allows a legal limbo in which husbands can revoke immigration sponsorship for arbitrary reasons. If the woman flees abuse, the spouse can report "desertion of the household," instantly turning her into an undocumented immigrant (Kim, Park, and Shukhertei, 2017).
This vulnerability is substantiated by emblematic real-world cases. The example of Wenti, a Vietnamese migrant who married in 2008, illustrates the precariousness of this condition: after refusing to undergo an abortion demanded by her husband, she shouldered the costs of raising her child alone. When attempting to return to South Korea after a visit to Vietnam in 2013, she was barred from re-entering the country because her spouse refused to serve as her financial guarantor. Similarly, the case of Hong reveals even graver contours of civil fraud; after being reported as a runaway for leaving home due to family conflicts, Hong discovered years later, when attempting to divorce in Vietnam, that she was recorded as deceased in South Korean records. By all accounts, her husband had declared her dead in order to remarry, leaving the woman unable to regularize her civil status without the consent of the person who defrauded her (Habibah, 2026, pp. 502-503).
In the dissolution of marriage, the state does not act as an impartial mediator. Courts tend to accord greater evidentiary weight to nationals and allow proceedings without interpreters for foreign women, undermining the adversarial process. Furthermore, the ideology of patrilineage means that children of international marriages are viewed as belonging primarily to the Korean father, impeding foreign women's exercise of maternal rights (Kim, Park, and Shukhertei, 2017).
Although Article 25-2 of the Immigration Act (2011) seeks to mitigate risks by allowing visa extensions in cases of proven abuse or child custody, its effectiveness is limited. The burden of proof falls on the migrant, and the provisions are frequently interpreted as guidelines subject to the discretionary judgment of immigration officers, perpetuating unpredictability and legal insecurity for these women (Kim, Park, and Shukhertei, 2017).
Therefore, the perpetuation of a system that subjects a woman's stay to the discretion of her spouse reveals that legal insecurity is a defining feature of the South Korean state apparatus. This failure of domestic law to break with the logic of patrilineage to offer effective protection to victims of structural violence signals a severe institutional contradiction.
3: CEDAW: THE CHASM BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL DISCOURSE AND REALITY
Although South Korea ratified CEDAW in 1984 and formally adapted its legal framework, the reality of gender-based crimes reveals a chasm between international commitment and institutional practice. The limited effectiveness of legislative reforms demonstrates that state protection fails to dismantle pervasive patriarchal norms, perpetuating the gap between the normative framework and the concrete security of the female population (Trifoso, 2022).
According to the synthesis presented by Habibah (2026), South Korea has undergone eight periodic reviews by the CEDAW Committee, which highlight the country's inconsistent progress. The author notes that, in the seventh periodic report, the Committee expressed concern over gender disparities in decision-making positions and inadequate protection for victims of violence. The core issues, however, remain unchanged: the absence of comprehensive and clear legal protection continues to be an unresolved problem for the South Korean government.
Also according to Habibah's (2026) synthesis, the eighth review, published in 2018, reiterated the urgency of a comprehensive anti-discrimination law, the absence of which fosters high rates of violence. Despite repeated criticisms, perpetrators rarely receive deterrent sentences, while victims are discouraged from reporting by a culture that blames them.
As Ada Tchoukou (2023) explains, the perception of reporting as futile is fueled by the fact that most cases of domestic, digital, or sexual violence are summarily ignored by the justice system. The judicial bias that minimizes gender crimes translates into impunity for civil fraud and domestic abuse, such as those observed in the cases of immigrant wives analyzed in this study.
From a critical perspective, it is evident that the very discourse of human rights advocacy imposes a high cost on those it seeks to protect. By framing the defense of immigrant women strictly within the rhetoric of “trafficking victims,” activists paradoxically end up reinforcing moral hierarchies that strip these women of their agency. To access rights provisions, they are compelled to accept the status of “damaged goods” or passive victims, hollowing out their subjective autonomy in exchange for state protection (Yi, 2025).
This reality reaches alarming levels when the government begins to legitimize institutional regressions. The state has endorsed campaigns by men's rights groups that proclaim themselves “victims of international marriage fraud.” In this scenario, South Korean public authorities transfigure the native husband into an “aggrieved consumer” and overlook explicit confessions of human rights violations, such as marital rape and severe mobility restrictions reported by the husbands themselves against their foreign wives (Yi, 2025).
Consequently, it is demonstrated that the state's prioritization of the patriarchal family model occurs at the expense of women's integrity and fundamental rights. The maintenance of this structure reveals that, in the clash between the cosmopolitan modernization of international treaties and domestic conservatism, the country still opts for the preservation of male hegemony, turning human rights protection into a conditional and often insufficient concession.
CONCLUSION
In light of the above, this study demonstrates that the disconnect between the international normative framework and domestic legal practice in South Korea is not an accidental phenomenon, but the result of a state architecture deeply tied to the Confucian legacy.
It is concluded that the ratification of CEDAW by the South Korean state operates, to a large extent, symbolically, since the insecurity faced by women, especially those in migratory contexts, reveals the structural failure of the state apparatus to provide effective human security.
Furthermore, discretion in the enforcement of laws and the maintenance of insurmountable evidentiary hurdles for victims of gender-based violence demonstrate that the law, rather than acting as an instrument of emancipation, ends up revalidating traditional hierarchies that relegate women to a position of diminished citizenship.
Moreover, the discourse of male victimhood, by shifting the focus away from structural inequalities, contributes to obscuring the reality of the violence and vulnerabilities faced by women in South Korea, especially those in migratory contexts and embedded in unequal marital relationships. Such a narrative not only weakens the legitimacy of women's demands, but also compromises the effectiveness of public policies aimed at promoting gender equality.
Thus, it follows that overcoming these issues requires not only normative improvements, but, above all, a profound transformation of the social, cultural, and institutional structures that sustain gender inequality. It is essential that the South Korean state move beyond formal responses, adopting effective measures that guarantee the concrete implementation of established rights, in line with the principles of human dignity and substantive equality, under penalty of perpetuating a system that, while modern in appearance, remains exclusionary in essence.