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People leaves messages at exit 10 of Gangnam Subway Station in Seoul to a woman who was murdered in a bathroom nearby

The recent murder of a young woman in a bathroom at Gangnam Subway Station in Seoul is being referred to on portal sites as the “random Gangnam slaying.” The use of the word “random” for the incident, which has been the subject of major debate in South Korea lately, suggests that the assailant had no reason for choosing that particular victim. But is there really such a thing as a truly motiveless killing?

In fact, the suspect in the Gangnam Station murder said he committed the crime because women had been “insulting” him. That suggests this was no random slaying. If this were truly random, the killer would have attacked anyone who had come into that particular bathroom. If it is true that he stayed hidden in the bathroom for an hour and a half and let a man go before singling out a woman, then this was no random deed -- it was a deliberate attack, motivated by misogyny.

Many men have flown into a rage to see women describing the murder in their memorial messages as a “crime against women.” Their argument is that the framing of an act by a mentally disturbed man as a misogynist crime turns all men into “potential murderers.” They feign ignorance of the vulnerable situation that women experience in a patriarchal society like South Korea’s with widespread misogynist sentiments, where women have to live under a constant threat of violence. Supposing the suspect’s words are just an excuse he made up, supposing he really was just a mentally disturbed time bomb just waiting to explode - none of that erases the sense of identification that South Korean women feel. They know that if it had been any of them who had entered that particular place at that particular moment, she could have been killed - simply for being a woman.

Nearly every one of the female students in their twenties and thirties that I’ve met in the classroom, no matter their frame, has experienced violence at some point for being a woman. It ranges from abusive behavior on buses and subways to attempted rapes in alleyways, from drunken fisticuffs to vengeance from spurned boyfriends. If they survived the day unscathed, it was simply because luck was on their side. When we hear on the news about upskirt filming on escalators, ex-boyfriends abducting the women who broke up with them, or men conspiring online to sexually abuse an unconscious women, can we really say it has nothing to do with what happened at Gangnam Station? Isn’t all of it just a variation of the same incident, differing only by degree?

The history of misogyny has been the history of humankind. And it has always been the vulnerable subjected to hate. There has been hate against Jews, hate against gay people, hate against residents of Jeolla Province (a traditional progressive stronghold), or hate against disabled persons - yet never the reverse. That wouldn’t be hate; it would be a reaction to hate. Males hold power, and their misogyny brings about actions ranging from sexual assault to murder, from employment discrimination to the “glass ceiling.” Yet the response from women goes no farther than words, nor does it have any practical consequences. The word “misandry” makes no sense in a male-dominated society.

So misogyny is really just a variant of hatred of the vulnerable in general. The more we find ourselves living in a society where just making a living becomes a battle to survive, the fiercer the discrimination and hatred and violence between the strong and weak become - just like on a real battlefield. On today’s battlefields, the boundary between strong and weak is fluid. The suspect in the Gangnam attack was vulnerable, a man with no fixed residence who survived on part-time work. There is but one sense in which he was powerful: he was a man. This is a sexist society where biological difference leads all too readily to everyday discrimination, violence, and even murder. It’s from that understanding that the anger South Korean women feel today originates.

By Moon Kang Hyung-joon, cultural critic

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