From Silence to Structure: The Long Road of the Korean Arts and Culture, #MeToo Movement
- Soohye JANG
- Apr 4
- 6 min read
A Review of an Article by Sungmi Lee, "From Solitude to Connection (고립에서 연결로)" From A Book, Women Who Lift Up Women (여자를 일으키는 여자들)
I’m writing this post at a historic moment: at 11:22am on April 4th, 2025, South Korea’s President Yoon was impeached. It marks the end of a long, determined fight by the people of Korea—for justice, for accountability, and for the restoration of democratic values.
While still processing the magnitude of this event, I pause to return to a different, yet equally important, movement: the efforts within Korea’s arts and culture field to address sexual violence and institutional silence.
In this post, I review “From Solitude to Connection” by Sungmi Lee, a poet and cultural activist whose work is featured in Women Who Lift Up Women, the first volume in the Art Grounding Series published by independent press HerSight, with support from the Korea Arts Council’s public arts program.
This volume documents the work of Sang-yeoja’s Grounding Tactics (SGT), a survivor-led project team formed in 2020. Over a period of three years, artists from various disciplines collaborated to develop and implement an integrated arts program focused on the recovery and empowerment of survivors, with projects carried out in Busan, Jeonju, and Seoul. The goal was to explore what art can do to support survivors in restoring their everyday lives—recognizing and amplifying the healing power that already exists within them. The program emphasized creating safe, respectful, and supportive spaces and aimed to transform those experiences into artistic expressions. The project has now completed the development of this survivor-centered arts-based program and will continue to research and design new models for sexual violence prevention using artistic media.
Among them, a poet Sungmi Lee, also the author of three poetry collections: When I Stayed Too Long, After Seven Days, Today, and Another Time, Another Arrangement wrote about her experience with MeToo Movement. Sungmi has been actively involved in shaping anti-sexual violence policies and systems within the Korean arts scene through the Women Cultural Artists Coalition (WACA), which was established in 2017 in response to the hashtag movement #OO계_내_성폭력 (“Sexual Violence in the XX Scene”). She also participated in legislative advocacy as a member of the Artist Rights Protection Act Promotion Task Force.
🎤When No One Was Listening
Before the MeToo movement reshaped the conversation around gendered violence in Korea's arts and culture scene, there was silence—an institutional one.
Poet Lee Sung-mi writes that until 2017, she had never once received formal sexual harassment prevention training, even after years of working in the field. She hadn’t even known it was a legal obligation for workplaces elsewhere.
That changed during an orientation session for an artist dispatch program. But the shift didn’t come from policy. It came from pressure—from women artists who had spoken up through hashtags like #OO계_내_성폭력 (Sexual Violence in the XX Scene), demanding that the institutions meant to support artists also protect them. Even then, it took until 2019–2020 for this training to become a mandatory part of national arts support programs.
🕳️ The Arts as a Policy Void
Until recently, gender-based violence prevention policies in Korea simply did not include artists. There was no “artist” checkbox in government surveys on sexual harassment. The Ministry of Culture focused on content creation. The Ministry of Gender focused on institutional structures. Artists existed in the gap between them.
What Lee’s writing makes clear is this: the law and policy weren’t just slow—they were absent. And yet, so much had already happened.
🧷 Freelancer Doesn’t Mean Expendable
Lee’s analysis centers on the freelance condition, which still defines the majority of working artists in Korea. Without an employer, artists were excluded from the systems built to address harassment—systems that assign responsibility to organizations, HR departments, or public institutions.
If an artist was harassed or assaulted by another freelancer, there was no legal category to process that relationship. The law recognized neither a workplace nor a workplace dynamic.
It’s an uncomfortable truth: the freedom of freelance work was often a freedom to be unprotected.
📜 The Law Artists Had to Write
In her account, Lee recalls repeatedly answering the same question when advocating for the Artist Rights Protection Act (예술인권리보장법):
“Why do artists need their own law?”
Because, as she and others pointed out again and again, existing protections didn’t apply to them. It was artists themselves—many of them survivors—who drafted the legislation. The result?
A legal definition of harassment within artistic labor
A new obligation on the Ministry of Culture to receive, investigate, and act on complaints
The ability to issue disciplinary and financial consequences, even when no institutional employer exists
🩰 Repair Begins in the Body
Lee doesn’t stop at law and policy. She reflects on the deeper rupture that violence causes—the collapse of trust, not only in others but in one’s own creative identity.
She highlights a project called “Sang-yeoja’s Grounding Tactics(SGT)”, an integrated arts program built by survivors and artist-allies.
These programs didn’t just offer healing—they created new forms of care.They asked:
How can we re-enter our own bodies? How do we feel safe in spaces that once harmed us? Can art rebuild the world that violence took away?
⚖️ Legal Victory Is Not Emotional Recovery
Even after legal wins, survivors didn’t necessarily feel restored. As Lee recounts, some survivors left the arts entirely. Others found themselves emotionally unraveling only after the verdicts came in. The Artist Rights Protection Act now includes a clause on supporting a return to artistic practice after trauma. But the practice of supporting this remains unfinished.
There are still questions waiting to be answered. Who carries the burden of rebuilding? And who shares it?
🔗 From Hashtags to Systems
Lee was part of the early wave. She helped form the Women Cultural Artists Coalition (WACA) in 2017, where nine artist-led collectives joined forces.
They didn’t just react—they proposed:
Prevention education
Reporting systems
Victim protection and support
Institutional reform
Policy models
This wasn’t a top-down intervention. It was grassroots policy innovation, built by the very people most affected.
🕊️ Still Not Safe—But Safer Together
Her writing closes with the reminder that even now, the arts are not yet safe. Freelancers, students, emerging artists, women, and other marginalized groups remain most vulnerable.
But because of her generation’s work—legislation exists, programs are forming, and conversations like this are possible.
I decided to read this article again when my arts friend Isa Köhler asked about Korea's MeToo movement (Thank you!). As a mid-generation cultural producer and researcher, I read Sungmi Lee’s words with deep respect—and also with a sense of responsibility. This book is a proof that there are people standing at the front lines of systemic change. They not only spoke up—they built the very structures younger generations now depend on.
Today’s political milestone reminds me of another form of resistance—one that unfolded not only through rallies and protests, but through hashtags, testimonies, and policy drafting in the shadows of institutions that had failed to listen.
When martial law was declared on December 3rd, 2024, many feared for the future of this country. But once again, artists, women, students, and young people stood up to protect peace and democracy—just as survivors once stood up to protect dignity and humanity in the arts.
I always thank those who came before us. And I know that we, too, must keep the door open for those who follow. What they began, we now carry forward. Not just through compliance, but through care. Not just through policy, but through practice.
More resources about Korea's MeToo Movement
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