How Roe v. Wade affects South Korea’s abortion bill

18-year-old South Korean student Heidi Nam writes about the global impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Courtesy of Heidi Nam)

18-year-old South Korean student Heidi Nam writes about the global impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

On the morning of June 24, 2022, the first thing I saw on my Instagram feed was a breaking news report from The New York Times titled: “Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade.” I was shocked. My head spun at the destructive implications of this decision. This development was no doubt historic — and not at all positive.

As an international student born and raised in Busan, South Korea and currently attending Deerfield Academy in the U.S., I have had the privilege of being immersed in both cultures from an early age. Although I’m embarrassed to admit it, the first thing I felt when I read the news was relief that I’m not a U.S. citizen. I knew that the overturning of Roe V. Wade was terrible, that it would strip women of their freedom and bodily autonomy. I was deeply concerned and wanted to help women at risk in any way I could. But I was also counting my blessings that the Supreme Court decision wouldn’t affect the women back home in South Korea as much. 

Until I realized that it actually could. The U.S.’s global influence means that American politics don’t just impact U.S. citizens; they could affect the lives of women and girls in South Korea too. 

“The U.S.’s global influence means that American politics don’t just impact U.S. citizens; they could affect the lives of women and girls in South Korea too,” Heidi shares. (Courtesy of Heidi Nam)

Only a decade ago, Korean schools subjected thousands of girls to American-made anti-abortion film propaganda in the classroom. One of these movies was “The Silent Scream,” a 1984 short film that propagated false medical information about the dangers of abortion, including clips that suggested the procedure could cause pain to an unborn fetus. Although physicians and medical experts debunked these myths in 1985, teachers continued to use “The Silent Scream” in Korean classrooms as late as the early 2010s. 

The widespread use of anti-abortion propaganda resulted in inaccurate and fear-inducing sex education in many Korean schools. My mom told me she remembers teachers presenting her and her classmates with anti-abortion films when she was in school. While I’ve never been exposed to these films in class, the schools I attended in Korea didn’t ever mention sex or sexual health (my U.S. classes skirted around the topic of safe sex as well). 

In South Korea, anti-abortion or incomplete sex education — in tandem with the criminal persecution of abortion that could result in up to a year in prison — has created a culture of fear around the procedure. In 2018, the Korean Women’s Development Institute found that 70% of fertile Korean women fear abortion. Still, neither cultural nor legislative measures have been effective in preventing abortions from happening; in 2017, an estimated 50,000 procedures were carried out illegally in South Korea. The intense legal persecution of abortion forces women to look for unsafe alternatives outside the hospital, which could result in uterine perforation or even death.

In the last few years, reproductive rights for South Korean women have come a long way. In 2018, after an estimated 3,000 women protested against restrictive abortion laws in Gwanghwamun Plaza, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled that the criminalization of abortion was unconstitutional. In October 2020, the Korean government announced it would draft a bill to decriminalize abortion up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy. 

“In South Korea, anti-abortion or incomplete sex education — in tandem with the criminal persecution of abortion that could result in up to a year in prison — has created a culture of fear around the procedure.”

— Heidi Nam

Abortion was officially decriminalized in South Korea in January 2021, providing a glimmer of hope for women’s rights in a predominantly patriarchal society. I felt simultaneously hopeful and dejected, because although the ruling brought forth a much-needed development, it came too late and didn’t accomplish enough. Although abortion is now decriminalized in South Korea‚ which means criminal sanctions against the procedure have been removed from the law, it is not protected as a legal right. This means that even after this ruling, women seeking abortions continue to be turned away from hospitals, cannot access insurance coverage and do not receive public health guidelines about reproductive health care.

In this context, the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June of 2022 comes at a sensitive time for South Korea. 

Since 1973, Roe v. Wade — a legal case in the U.S. in which the Supreme Court ruled that the restrictive regulation of abortion was unconstitutional — has served as a basis for activists in Korea and other countries to push for reproductive rights. For decades, the Korean feminist movement has used the Roe v. Wade ruling as a historical precedent for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion; the U.S. and other countries that valued women’s rights, they argued, had all recognized abortion as a fundamental right. 

Now, the same influence that Roe v. Wade had on the rest of the world is in danger of working in the opposite direction. Already, mere months after the Supreme Court decision, Korean Christian conservationists are using the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a basis for their anti-choice cause. In Christian Today, Korea’s leading Christian publication, anti-abortionist activists strongly called for the prevention of “murder,” stating that they “welcome the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to respect the right of the fetus to live.” Commenting on the current legal vacuum in Korean abortion rights, conservative leaders are pushing for a new bill to reverse the decriminalization of abortion and “defend fetal rights.”  

These worrying developments suggest that the Supreme Court decision threatens not only to turn back the clock for women’s rights in the U.S., but in many nations around the world. But it’s not too late to take action to protect the gains we’ve made over the last decade. In the U.S., demanding representatives protect the legal right to abortion and pass more state-level pro-abortion legislation will be the key. In South Korea, however, where the public does not often engage in discourse about women's rights for fear of stigma or even general reluctance, sparking that discourse will be the most important step. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision angers me, but that anger is keeping me motivated to work for change and support those who are already creating legal victories in individual states, like Abortion Out Loud and NARAL Pro-Choice America, as well as Korean advocates and civic groups for women’s rights and protection, like Korean Women's Associations United and the Women’s Human Rights Institute of Korea. 

Women across the world must stand together to protect our hard-won victories and minimize the damage of this catastrophic decision. In the U.S., we must contact local and regional leaders to ask for their responses to the Supreme Court’s decision and gather resources to help women in need of abortion services to form contingency plans. Since the implications of the decision are far-reaching, we must keep following up on news reports about Roe v. Wade to educate ourselves about the changing situation. We must continue to fight for women’s reproductive rights — not only in our home countries, but everywhere.