Bringing together Korea’s eating disorder researchers

Bringing together Korea’s eating disorder researchers

As the sole host of Korea’s Eating Disorders Awareness Week (EDAW), I am researching the themes and issues to be covered in the seven sessions of our third event in February 2025.

To fully understand and engage with these topics, I immerse myself deeply, processing them, formulating insightful questions to enrich the sessions, and creating content for publication through various channels, including our Rabbits in Submarines Collective blog. Since October, when I began this preparation, my life has resembled that of a top college entrance examinee, immersed in rigorous study and preparation.

I planned the first day’s session as an “eating disorders researchers’ session”. I invited authors whose work I discovered online—scholars who have published papers on eating disorders from various multidisciplinary fields over the past decade. Among them are Prof. Eunha Kim and Myeonghwi Choi, who recently published significant research. Prof. Kim’s paper, Sick/Crazy Young Women and Writing as a Theory of One’s Own: Focusing on the First-Person Narrative of Anorexia Nervosa, analysed my memoir, Swallowing Practice, alongside Chaeyoung’s This Is Also My Life. It was published last April in Feminism and Korean Literature.

Meanwhile, Myeonghwi’s master’s thesis, Analysis of Medical Practice Experience of Eating Disorders in Korean Women, also included an analysis of my memoir, among others, and was submitted this year. Prof. Kim specialises in Korean literature, while Myeonghwi graduated from the Graduate Program of Posthuman Studies.

Euiyoung Kang published her sociology paper, The Eating Disorder Experiences of Women and Their Identification with Feminism, last year and has since continued related research, travelling nationwide to interview volunteers. Her work appears to stem from her own experience and the painful question of why young, radical, politically engaged, and intelligent women suffer from eating disorders despite their critiques of social injustice.

A PhD student in sociology, Euiyoung has a deeply visceral, lived experience with eating disorders. Her earlier research focused on the lived experience movements in Korea, which have centred mainly on psychosis and bipolar disorder. Although she has struggled with anorexia since her teenage years, she shared with me that the idea of writing about her own eating disorder experiences came to her much later.

Jeongun Kim wrote her master’s thesis in Women’s Studies, The Formation of ‘Healthy Dieting’ Discourse in Korean Society and the Individualization of Risk Management, in 2022. Her paper surprised me with its meticulous research and thorough chronicle of the history of diet medicines and technologies in Korea. I hadn’t known that central nervous system stimulants like phentermine were already being sold in Korea in the 1970s.

Jeongun detailed how, despite several reports of young women’s sudden deaths in the late 1980s and early 1990s—including the tragic case of a former national synchronised swimmer in 1989, who died from misuse of diet pills, diuretics and laxatives—production of these pills continued unabated. Even as late as 2005, the International Narcotics Control Board reported that Korea ranked third globally in the consumption of psychoactive appetite suppressants, following Brazil and Argentina, despite Korea’s relatively low obesity rate among OECD nations. Jeongun’s work underscores how the adverse effects of these pills have been framed as the sole responsibility of “careless” young female consumers, a narrative that persists to this day.

Jeehyeon Ryu’s co-authored paper, Pro-Ana: Challenging Body Politics, was published in Media, Gender & Culture in 2021. Its English abstract states:

“The purpose of this study is to read Pro-Ana, which understands anorexia as a way of life, in more nuanced layers. It begins with the recognition that the existing discourse frames Pro-Ana reductively, portraying them only as ‘immature’ patients in need of treatment. The researchers aimed to view Pro-Ana individuals as subjects actively negotiating with societal structures by visualising their voices rather than as passive objects reproducing patriarchal norms or as abstract symbols of resistance. In this study, Pro-Ana was analysed through Butler’s concept of performativity, which emphasises that power does not always function as intended and suggests the potential for resistance and subversion from within.

“The research was conducted by observing and recording Pro-Ana Twitter accounts and KakaoTalk open chat rooms over 10 months, starting in January 2021, and by conducting in-depth interviews with Pro-Ana individuals offline. The analysis revealed that Pro-Ana individuals practised performative subversion in three main ways. First, they adhered to the desires imposed by the beauty industry but simultaneously distorted and subverted the capitalist self, resisting the concept of the ‘flexible subject’ demanded by capitalism. Second, they engaged in ‘unproductive’ performances by erasing traces of sexuality while reproducing the female image shaped by patriarchal norms. Finally, they followed patriarchal logic through obsessive body weighing but also subverted it by visualising pain, sexual desire, or anti-patriarchal practices, identifying themselves as patients and queers.

“This study sought to expand the existing discourse on the body by focusing on the politics of Pro-Ana performativity. It uncovered the subversive potential of Pro-Ana practices, which challenge and reconfigure fixed meanings within the dominant discourse.”

Shinyoung Woo, a former Korean literature professor who became a full-time novelist, was the final panellist invited to the researchers’ session. I stumbled upon her paper, A Study on the Strategy of Subjectivation Performed by Women with Anorexia in Korean Novels, published in Korean Literary Theory and Criticism in 2021. To my surprise, it analysed Han Kang’s Your Cold Hands with a subtle mention of The Vegetarian, alongside works by other women novelists. It’s striking how Han Kang’s novels portray diverse female characters exhibiting various eating disorder symptoms, yet such aspects of her work have rarely, if ever, been discussed in Korea.

The other two panellists are Prof. Dalong Han and Namkeum Kim. Prof. Han, a nursing professor, published her PhD thesis, Disease Experience of Korean Women with Eating Disorders, in 2015. Namkeum Kim, meanwhile, published her master’s thesis in Counseling Psychology, A Case Study of Men’s Experiences with Bulimia and Recovery, earlier this year.

I have also met and continue to consult via email with Prof. Inhwan Oh, a Health Economics professor and co-author of Economic Burden of Eating Disorders in South Korea, published in the Journal of Eating Disorders in 2021. Although he declined my invitation to join the session, he explained his reservations: he feels he lacks in-depth knowledge about eating disorders, and he also believes the public data used in his research were inherently flawed. In Korea, where treatment options for eating disorders are not covered by National Health Insurance, estimating prevalence solely from National Health Insurance Corporation open data is fundamentally problematic.

I invited Ms Okhee Lim, a prominent feminist of Korea’s senior generation, to moderate the session. She translated several books that brought me solace in my twenties, including Caroline Knapp’s Appetites, works by Elizabeth Grosz, and Phyllis Chesler’s Women and Madness.

These are not all the “researchers” I have uncovered. Kyeongdeok Moon wrote her master’s thesis in Anthropology, The Cult of Slimness in Contemporary Korean Society: Focusing on the Body Projects of ‘Dieting Disordered’ Individuals in 2003. Her research was based on rigorous fieldwork conducted at three private eating disorder clinics that had emerged in the Gangnam area of Seoul during that time but unfortunately collapsed by the 2010s.

Being part of the same generation, I immediately recognised the anonymised “A,” “B,” and “C” clinics she referenced. “C” was Korea’s first private inpatient hospital for eating disorders, where I stayed from November 2001 to March 2002, and “B” was the country’s first private clinic specialising in eating disorders, which I briefly visited in 2004. Moon conducted her fieldwork from 2002 to 2003, and this contemporaneity gave the quotes from her participants—outpatients of the three clinics—a vivid immediacy for me, as if their voices were alive and speaking directly to me now.

Even more strikingly, Moon disclosed her own eating disorder tendencies in the paper, allowing me to grasp just how challenging it must have been for her to undertake such research.

I can’t help but wonder about her whereabouts and well-being. I tried to trace her contact information, inquiring here and there, but the anthropology department she graduated from had no information. The only detail I could gather came from Prof. Sanghee Lee, the renowned anthropologist at the University of California, Riverside, where Kyeongdeok was reportedly pursuing a doctorate that she ultimately didn’t complete. According to Prof. Lee, Kyeongdeok was considered an up-and-coming student by her professors but, regrettably, had to abandon her studies midway due to “personal circumstances.”

And then there was Dr Kwangyoon Suh, who authored A Clinical Study on Anorexia Nervosa, arguably Korea’s first research paper on eating disorders, published in 1980 in the Journal of the College of Medicine, Korea University.

As a psychiatrist at Korea University Hospital during that time, he likely treated a dozen anorexic inpatients between 1970 and 1979, analysing data from 11 of them in his paper. My curiosity about him led me to investigate further. I eventually reached out to the psychiatrist, who appears to have succeeded in his private clinic, and through his response, I learned that Dr Suh, now elderly, is recuperating at home.

It’s ridiculous and infuriating that all these individuals have never come together and, in most cases, don’t know of one another. This is a direct consequence of the lack of any public sphere in Korea for discussing eating disorders. If psychiatrists had founded a Korea Academy of Eating Disorders, it would likely have taken the form of an Academy of Psychiatry of Eating Disorders—reductionist, fragmented, and patronising. In that sense, I’m almost relieved that such an organisation has not yet been established in Korea.

How regrettable it is that all those works—regardless of their maturity and accomplished depth—by individuals who, in many cases, have their own lived or living experience of eating disorders, remain virtually unknown to researchers worldwide.

These valuable contributions are written only in Korean and buried in local archives, inaccessible to the broader academic community.

As someone who also wrote about the narratives of eating disorders—researching online communities and drawing heavily from my own experiences for my undergraduate graduation thesis—I deeply understand this frustration. At the time, I felt profoundly ashamed of my work—not just because of the themes themselves, but because I believed no one else would dare to write unapologetically about such subjects, let alone their own experiences.

Now, I truly want to connect with young researchers like the person I once was—to talk with them, to share insights, and to bring forth much smarter and wiser ideas through our collective reflections.

• While I was writing this article, people were gathering in Yeouido, surrounding the National Assembly, in a weeks-long protest to impeach the Korean president. Feminists, the marginalised, the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities came together, waving witty flags and brandishing K-pop fandom cheering sticks. Now,  we are free and ready to work once more to pursue justice.

REFERENCES

Eunha Kim, Sick/Crazy Young Women and Writing as a Theory of One’s Own: Focusing on the First-Person Narrative of Anorexia Nervosa, Feminism and Korean Literature, 2024, Vol., No.61, pp. 106-134.
https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART003079864

Myeonghwi Choi, Analysis of Medical Practice Experience of Eating Disorders in Korean Women, Master’s Thesis, Graduate Program of Posthuman Studies, Ewha Women’s University, 2024.
https://dspace.ewha.ac.kr/handle/2015.oak/269152

Euiyoung Kang, The Eating Disorder Experiences of Women and Their Identification with Feminism, Proceedings of the Korean Sociological Association Annual Conference, 2023, pp. 37-38.
https://www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE11738487

Jeongun Kim, The Formation of ‘Healthy Dieting’ Discourse in Korean Society and the Individualization of Risk Management, Master’s Thesis, Graduate Program in Women’s Studies, Ewha Women’s University, 2022.
https://dspace.ewha.ac.kr/handle/2015.oak/259859

Jeehyeon Ryu, Pro-Ana: Challenging Body Politics, Media, Gender & Culture, 2021, Vol.36, No.4, pp. 5-59.
https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002793822

Shinyoung Woo, A Study on the Strategy of Subjectivation Performed by Women with Anorexia in Korean Novels,Korean Literary Theory and Criticism, 2021, Volume 25, Issue 3 (No. 92).
https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002750437

Dalong Han, Disease Experience of Korean Women with Eating Disorders, Korean Journal of Adult Nursing, 2015, Vol.27, No.6, pp.695 – 706.
http://dx.doi.org/10.7475/kjan.2015.27.6.695

Namkeum Kim, A Case Study of Men’s Experiences with Bulimia and Recovery, Master’s Thesis, Graduate Program in Counseling Psychology, Chosun University, 2024.
https://oak.chosun.ac.kr/handle/2020.oak/17998

Sang Min Lee, Minha Hong, Saengryeol Park, Won Sub Kang & In-Hwan Oh, Economic Burden of Eating Disorders in South Korea, Journal of Eating Disorders 9, 30 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-021-00385-w

Kyeongdeok Moo, The Cult of Slimness in Contemporary Korean Society: Focusing on the Body Projects of ‘Dieting Disordered’ Individuals, Master’s Thesis, Graduate Program in Anthropology, Seoul National University, 2003.
https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/handle/10371/22003

Kwangyoon Suh, A Clinical Study on Anorexia Nervosa, Journal of the College of Medicine, Korea University, 1980, Vol. 17, No. 2.
https://dcollection.korea.ac.kr/srch/srchDetail/000000031312