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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2018.1477826 (on-line first).
(Printed version is scheduled for August of 2018)
Aljosa Puzar & Yewon Hong (2018) Korean Cuties: Understanding Performed
Winsomeness (Aegyo) in South Korea, The Asia Pacific Journal of
Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2018.1477826
QA: MSK
Coll: NJ
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2018.1477826
Korean Cuties: Understanding
Performed Winsomeness (
Aegyo
) in
South Korea
10
Aljosa Puzar and Yewon Hong
15 Aegyo (performed winsomeness) is a layered articulation of behaviours, gestures, vocal
and linguistic adjustments, narratives and fashions that serve to enact child-like charm
and infantilised cuteness. It is a widely debated but poorly studied phenomenon
observed especially among younger South Korean women and, more seldomly, among
20 men. This article will provide a preliminary ethnographic description of aegyo based
on the fieldwork performed in Seoul, Incheon and Seongnam in 2015 and 2016,
supported by the results of two online questionnaires from early 2016. The article
tackles three separate dimensions. First, it briefly relates aegyo to comparable
articulations of performed winsomeness in the broader East Asian context. Second, it
25 relates it to the elements of Korean traditional or indigenous knowledge. Third, it
explores the meaning of these performances with regards to contemporary figurations
of femininity and the local politics of gender, with aegyo seen as a marked but
normalised multidirectional process between various social actors.
30
Keywords: Aegyo; Secondary Infantilisation; Gendered Performances; Cuteness; South
Korea
Defining Aegyo
35 Aegyo seems to be everywhere in 2018 South Korea, presenting a layered articulation
of kinesics (such as tantrum-like movements, feet stomping, pouting, sulking,
Aljosa Puzar is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana
and Director of the Eurasian Cultural Trends Observatory. He focuses on East Asian youth studies, cutification
studies and liminality studies. Correspondence to: DDr Aljosa Puzar, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva
40 ploscad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Email: aljosa.puzar@fdv.uni-lj.si
Yewon Hong is a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam and research associate at the Eurasian Cultural
Trends Observatory. Her recent ethnographic project and publications tackle young female office culture in South
Korea; her current research project is dedicated to toy culture and the aesthetics of cuteness. Email: yewon.hong@
student.uva.nl
© 2018 The Australian National University
5
2 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
appropriation of pet animal behaviours and so on), vocal and linguistic forms (whis-
pering, high-pitched voice, uptalk, ‘baby talk’, infantilised or diminutive word choices
and similar), more elaborate gestures and movements (such as shadow punching of
the interlocutor’s upper arm, child-like vertical clapping, deliberate clumsiness) and
45 occasionally larger narratives (such as singing entire children songs, appropriating
other longer texts and so on), objects (such as lollypops or teddy bears) and fashions
that are visibly cutified and infantilised. The infantilisation is seen here not as a direct
emulation of child-bound behaviours but as a complicated secondary process among
adults and children alike.1
50 These performances are intensified or marked to a degree that would make them
recognisable as self-standing in the flow of communication and in various social situ-
ations. Still, that visibility or markedness would not make them transgressive or objec-
tionable, except in very formal or other limited communicational contexts. The
phenomenon is observed most frequently among young women and, non-dominantly,
55 among young men. It is more rarely observed among older adults or children except in
highly manufactured forms (such as in advertising or forms of direct imitation).
According to the simple and somewhat inadequate definition provided to us in
preparation to our work by the public service of the National Institute of Korean
Language, aegyo (hangul: 애교, hanja: 愛 嬌 ) is an attitude perceived to be cute
by
60 others. The semantics of the word itself combines two parts: ae ( 愛 ) meaning love,
and gyo ( 嬌 ) meaning ‘charming’ or ‘bewitching’. This ‘lovability’ is performed
between family members, friends and lovers, but also in less intimate realms, such
as educational or work-related, and even between strangers in casual conversations.
Additionally, it can be seen in advertising, in some anthropomorphic qualities
65 assigned to various cute characters, objects or symbolic devices of contemporary con-
sumption (such as brand logos and mascots), both within and beyond the South
Korean mediasphere. It is thus a pervasive cultural phenomenon, entering into pro-
ductive relations with various traditional and non-traditional ideas and co-shaping
gendered and class-bound cartographies of power in South Korea.
70 In 2011, the corresponding co-author to this article introduced a discussion of pre-
tended or exaggerated emotionality in performances of aegyo (as well as its relations to
concepts such as gasik/faking and milgodangigi/mildang/push-and-pull communi-
cation). He proposed the concept of dollification as a tool for understanding not
only South Korean female performances of cuteness, malleability, passivity, and so
75 on, but also their relations to the Western(ised) gaze, both external and internalised,
and to Korean power cartographies. The aegyo was seen as an aspect of otherwise pas-
sivised femininity; it was about the social techniques of enactment/pretending, about
emotional excess and manipulation and, ultimately, about difficult negotiations of
power (Puzar 2011).
80 In her work completed in 2012, American graduate researcher Shelby Strong
focused on the specific style of speech related to aegyo. She correctly described
aegyo as a combination of physical and linguistic features that are generally categorised
to be cute and are often more visible among younger female speakers (Strong 2012).
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 3
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Strong’s research focused on linguistic and vocal/phonetic aspects of the phenomenon,
with the author limiting herself to the analysis of aegyo as principally a mediatic and
pop-cultural phenomenon.
The insistence on the presence of aegyo in the mediasphere and in ‘popular culture’
(in products of cultural industries related to hallyu/‘Korean wave’ and so on), while
not being in itself erroneous, still fails to acknowledge the ubiquitous nature of this
practice in the second decade of the twenty-first century (See the Wikipedia entry
“Aegyo”, n.d.). Winsome enactments are encouraged and visible from early childhood,
with reproductive cycles that, yes, partly assume forms of imitation of various media
products (and, in return, underpin those products), but also encompass various peer-
to-peer and intra-familial transfers. Performers of aegyo may and do often perform
these infantilised cute behaviours as a form of private and intimate seduction or,
more directly, when seeking favours or material rewards, as correctly concluded in
more recent doctoral research and presentations by McGuire (2015).
While it is true that the prevalent type of aegyo principally and primarily relies on
the infantilisation of the gestural, vocal and other repertoire of everyday individual
performances; the practice itself is not childish in the narrow sense and it extends
beyond the adult emulation of what is assumed to be a natural or organic child-
like winsomeness. A peculiar process of adopting the performative repertoire of
adult secondary infantilisation among the actual children is particularly indicative
here.
Some Korean children, sometimes even toddlers, enact aegyo in visible separation or
even contrast to their other performances. This is often visible in online videos, some-
times published by Korean parents glamourising and publicising their offspring. One
can see or hear the input/instructions coming from behind the camera, but also the
moments of self-correction and, generally, training of (and growing into) what is
recognised as aegyo. This over-infantilisation of children (that is, the phenomenon
of children performing or even being made to perform the enacted cute or even ero-
ticised ‘childishness’) is a loop-like phenomenon confirming a self-standing and ‘tra-
velling’ position of aegyo, but also the manufactured or even formal aspects of the
practice. These, on the other hand, do not exclude the apparent spontaneity of
aegyo that is smoothly and seamlessly enacted in everyday communication to a
degree of being often perceived as ‘natural’ (that is, invisibly constructed and normal-
ised) or even ‘innate’.
As part of the landscape of seductive practices and in intimate realms, aegyo often
appears in highly sexualised forms (while remaining ‘infantilised’) and can often be
related to distinctly adult hyper-feminine behaviours (while maintaining the aspect
of winsomeness). The situation might be even more layered in the male version of
the practice, which can range from the pure emulation (often humorous) of forms per-
formed by young girls, to forms that are specifically ‘cutified-manly’ and ‘boyish’, a
dimension that was not addressed by our research and that necessitates additional
fieldwork.
4 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
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Locating Aegyo
The phenomenon of performed winsomeness is, clearly, not unique to Korea, as
similar concepts and infantilised vocal and gestural adjustments exist across East
Asian regions, most visibly in Japan and urban China, and to various degrees of relat-
ability in other cultures. While the phenomenon seems inseparable from other aspects
of cuteness, it might be erroneous to see it and misrepresent it exclusively through its
possible similarity and relation to performed aspects of Japanese kawaii, a concept reg-
ularly tackled by scholars for several decades now (Madge 1998; Brown 2011), or to the
infantilised Japanese performative styles of burikko (ぶりっ子).2
Considering the emotional underpinning of aegyo, one can speculate that the Japa-
nese counterpart of what affectively and discursively underpins and forms Korean
aegyo could rather be found in the somewhat controversial but productive concept
of amae ( 甘 え ), used to describe ideas and behaviours related to one’s desire to be
loved and cared for. Women with amae tendencies will depend on others such as
parents, husbands, older siblings and even on their superiors at work, seeking atten-
tion and protection. Their dependency is often exchanged for the nuanced submission
(García 2007). As the word originally depicts emotions felt by a young child toward his
or her mother (Doi [1962] 2005, 14–21), a woman partaking in the social relation of
amae is conceptually relegated to a position of an immature child of the society,
dependent on care-takers. That provides an important parallel for the feminist take
on South Korean aegyo, but also provides links to the broader aspect of clientelistic
sociality that, along with androcentric patriarchy, contextualises these performances.
Manipulative, enacted and seductive aspects of aegyo visibly relate to the Chinese
culture of sajiao (撒娇), a phenomenon very close to aegyo. The term sajiao encom-
passes meanings such as ‘throwing tantrums’ or ‘acting spoiled’, but also ‘to be coquet-
tish’, while the semantics of 撒 (sa) entails aspects of ‘expression’, ‘giving’ or
‘outpouring’ and 娇 ( jiao) of ‘lovability’, ‘frailty’ but also of ‘being pampered’.
Sajiao is, like aegyo, common within heterosexual romantic relationships (Hurwitz
2013). It is often characterised by small tantrums and pouting, which resembles that
of an unhappy child. Farris (1995), while keeping her discussion mostly within the
boundaries of linguistics and/or linguistic anthropology, understood sajiao, impor-
tantly, as an informal aspect of female empowerment that works while keeping the
mainstream patriarchal power structure intact. Also, she described it as ‘petulancy’
which is highly relatable to the prevalent forms of aegyo. Still, she assumed a
natural linear relation of what is child-bound and what is childish, while we hypoth-
esise a recursive loop-like ‘inoculation’ of more visibly enacted or artificial aegyo
among children. Sajiao is generally accepted to be tied to what is perceived as increas-
ingly liberated and playful Chinese female sexuality, adding layers to traditional
Chinese gender roles, principally in heteronormative romantic relationships (Qiu
2013). This is, again, very similar to how Koreans see and use aegyo.
While usually not being premeditated and then enacted, but rather appearing as
spontaneous, aegyo is distinctly ‘cultural’. It encompasses distinct behavioural
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5
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patterns, situational contexts and triggers, that is, it pertains to appropriate social
times and places. In suitable environments and moments, it can be considered not
only normal but often even required, in relation to local cultural concepts such as
nunchi (눈치; situational social intelligence) and chemyon (체면; social ‘face’ or
pride), that delineate what still appears as ‘collectivism’ or the affective density of
Korean social life, pervaded by jeong (정; social bond, variously defined as
affection, warmth, kindness, loyalty or love).
It is often understood that one uses aegyo to ask for something or to softly demand
favours and kindness. However, aegyo is also commonly used as a method of gentle
rejection of social obligations or demands, replacing common politeness. It dissipates
negativity caused by human interactions while, at least in part, contributing to the
evermore important sense of social ‘harmony’.
Nunchi, somewhat akin to the Western concepts of ‘emotional intelligence’ and
‘social intelligence’, describes the ability to act in accordance with the situation and
feelings of others that are not openly and outwardly expressed (Choi & Choi 1989,
215). ‘Having nunchi’ implies one’s ability to know how to act in social situations.
Aegyo is no exception to nunchi and the person who performs it in what might be
seen as an unsuitable context or moment can be, and often is, frowned upon. The
same might be true for the aspect of chemyon (social face or pride) that we tested
along with nunchi.
Preserving one’s social face/pride/reputation is often referred to as being essential
for Korean social life. Losing it would cause shame (Choi & Kim 2000). Any behaviour
or action taken by a sound and responsible member of a community should take
chemyon into consideration, meaning that both demands and rejections need to be
performed in such a way that neither of the parties finishes embarrassed or ashamed.
Negativity or aggression caused by the public loss of chemyon is balanced by a
strong local tendency to avoid friction at any cost when it comes to personal inter-
actions (Kim & Yang 2013). Aegyo is often prompted by this need to harmonise poss-
ible discord or to remove interpersonal tensions. It prevents the loss of social face by
temporarily blurring the usual boundaries of public and private, opening the realm of
the ‘familial’ and gently forcing others into an enactment of pretend closeness. Anyone
using aegyo can, at least partly, free oneself from the social responsibility of preserving
one’s own and others’ chemyon by pretending to be like a child—an apparently care-
free (if highly regulated and dependent) member of a community. Such a performer
might be exempted from the more traditional social rituals of keeping chemyon
(including embodied and partly outdated ones, such as the combination of bowing,
kneeling and putting hands/palms/together in the sign of apology, to give an
example) and can replace them with melodramatic vocal ‘tremolo’, soft smiles and
other devices of dulcification and cutification that regulate social intensities. Therefore,
in short, it can be best understood that nunchi keeps aegyo within the pre-existing
social order, that is, of social norms and rituals that ask for and preserve chemyon.
Many young women in South Korea adopt aegyo as a way to negotiate the imbal-
ance of power within patriarchal, androcentric and ageist/gerontocratic environments.
6 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
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Some women openly and persistently invest in their aegyo, trusting it to be one of only
a few available modes of effective communication with people in power. Others
neglect it, or even reject it, often experiencing latent discrimination for not ‘having’
aegyo (as it is often put in Korean language), or being encouraged or gently pressured
to practise it. Women in higher positions (who, in theory, need to please or accommo-
date male authority to a considerably lesser degree) make use of aegyo in their inter-
actions with equals and even subordinates, dulcifying their power. Male forms of such
dulcification, such as the monotonous whispering (accompanied by a restrained type
of half-smile) of the dominant adult men (ajussies) have been observed in the field, but
as yet have not been properly studied.
Counting (on) Aegyo
In order to try to capture the nuances of aegyo as a complex articulation, while focus-
ing on female performances, we developed a mixed research design (principally quali-
tative and, to a degree of supporting evidence, quantitative). Our ethnography relied
on conversations with twelve adult interlocutors, seven female and five male, from
different backgrounds that agreed to in-depth and non-structured interviews.
During the research and in preparation for this article, we took into account some
additional autoethnographic and anecdotal material and discussed the available cir-
cumstantial data from non-ethnographic sources, such as visual and textual narratives
showing current societal trends and helping us to create relevant research questions. A
direct analysis of those other sources nonetheless remains beyond the limited scope of
this article. In support of our ethnography we created two different simple digital ques-
tionnaires. The aim of the first one was to explore the perceptions of the importance
and position of aegyo in Korean social life, including questions on how aegyo relates to
indigenous/traditional cultural concepts. A total of 144 participants took this ques-
tionnaire (age range: 20–55; 90 women and 54 men). The aim of the second question-
naire was to provide insights into individual or personal experiences and perceptions
of performing winsomeness and/or of being on the receiving end of such perform-
ances. We asked an equal number of men and women to respond to this questionnaire,
as we wanted to account for some possible differences in personal perceptions of aegyo
between two traditional/conventional gender figurations. A total of 28 men and 28
women responded (age range: 20–56). We consider the responses to both question-
naires to be strictly indicative, rather than representative. All interviewees and respon-
dents were born and raised as South Korean. Only legally adult and fully informed
participants were interviewed, with all ethnographic and non-ethnographic data
obtained fully anonymised.
Both interview and questionnaire questions aimed to explore: (a) the relation of
aegyo to other visible occurrences of performed winsomeness and cuteness in other
cultures; (b) the specifically Korean aspects of aegyo; (c) the position of female perfor-
mers of aegyo against the background of patriarchal relations. This section presents an
overview of the findings, bringing forward some of the most indicative voices.
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Ethnographic interlocutors and respondents to questionnaires alike agreed that
there was some type of aegyo in other cultures too. Despite this, Korean aegyo was
described as specific/different, either in terms of its idiosyncrasies or with regard to
the sheer intensity of these performances. Although not directly explaining the differ-
ence, one of the interlocutors claimed Korean aegyo to be different from similar
phenomena in other countries:
Each country has its own aegyo. I mean, of course foreigners cannot get the same
feeling from [Korean] aegyo as we do. Foreigners will not feel the aegyo as we do,
but of course their country will have their aegyo. (PCW, personal communication,
December 23, 2015)
This was in agreement with another interviewee, who said:
I don’t know how to do aegyo in English, but then I think aegyo includes being nice,
smiling and taking care of someone. So in that case, I was doing aegyo to foreign
tourists visiting the guesthouse while I was working there. They were an old
couple, and after me being really nice to them, smiling and stuff, they were very
happy, and even offered for me to visit them. I think Korean aegyo is different
from ‘aegyo’ from other countries. Again, I don’t know how to do aegyo in
English. I also watched lots of Chinese TV series, but then their aegyo was more
about mood, atmosphere and situation, whereas Korean aegyo is more about ono-
matopoeic words and sounds. (THY, personal communication, January 5, 2016)
No interlocutor provided a more precise description of the possible self-standing spe-
cificities of aegyo, and this aspect remained peculiarly vague, even upon additional
questioning.
When asked to compare Korean aegyo with performed winsomeness in other cul-
tures, almost 6 per cent of respondents to questionnaires considered aegyo to be
strictly Korean and beyond comparison with similar behaviours elsewhere. Addition-
ally, more than 33 per cent considered Koreans to be generally better at performing
winsomeness in comparison to people from other cultures. About 24 per cent
responded that, in general, foreigners would appreciate aegyo. About 8 per cent of par-
ticipants assumed that they would dislike it, and a majority of almost 58 per cent said
that would depend on the individual who ‘receives’ aegyo.
The idea of aegyo as pervasive, normalised and rooted in Korean culture was backed
by both qualitative and quantitative research results. With regards to questions specifi-
cally exploring relations between aegyo and Korean traditional cultural concepts,
respondents and interlocutors agreed that the concepts were directly and not just con-
textually associated. To the questionnaire question ‘Does aegyo contribute to the
culture of jeong in Korean society or community?’, over 40 per cent of people
agreed that aegyo does contribute to jeong. Furthermore, in responses related to
nunchi, 37 per cent of responders noted that a woman performing aegyo ‘has
nunchi’, while only 3 per cent said she ‘does not have nunchi’.
The interviewees paralleled these indications: ‘Of course you have to have it
[nunchi]. Someone without nunchi cannot do aegyo well. She does aegyo well
because she has nunchi’ (PCW, personal communication, December 23, 2015). The
8 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
interlocutress provided a small anecdote that demonstrates how nunchi works in the
traditional/indigenous/local conceptual sense as the social regulator of aegyo:
In the case of conglomerate companies, in departments where female workers are
285
rare, women receive special treatment [in a patriarchal sense, such as through pro-
tection or care, but also condescension or gender-specific requests by the dominant
men] so they can do a lot of aegyo. But in our company, nonetheless, there was this
bunwigi3 that would make such behaviours very unusual. One woman was like that
when I was completing an internship. She was doing too much aegyo in this pro-
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fessional setting so she did not get a job offer after the internship. Even during meet-
ings she would make nasal sounds and aegyo, you know. At first, people were saying
the intern is cute, but then it became too much and people thought of her as some-
what strange. (PCW, personal communication, December 23, 2015)
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When asked about how aegyo relates to chemyon (social face or pride) the respon-
dents did not seem to see the connection. Despite some of our interviewees mention-
ing ‘strangeness’ (and possible negative impressions, among others, that could
influence the social position and job prospects of the performer), in answer to the
question about ‘a woman losing or keeping her chemyon with the performance of
aegyo’ a considerable majority of respondents (60 per cent) stated that her chemyon
and her performances of aegyo were not related. One quote generally sums up the
interviewees’ responses: ‘It does not seem like pride has anything to do with aegyo’
(MJK, personal communication, December 18, 2015). Most interviewees, therefore,
did not see how chemyon could be connected to aegyo, a fact of definitive importance
for the future assessment of how socially normalised the practice is, regardless of the
immediate or personal contexts. Only one interlocutor articulated our initial assump-
tion with precision: ‘You need nunchi to know when to deploy aegyo “gun”, then you
have to pretend nothing happened to keep your chemyon’ (MK, personal communi-
cation, December 21, 2015).
In the evaluation of the effects and consequences of aegyo, the responses coming
from interviews and questionnaires remained largely positive and optimistic, almost
without a trace of possible ‘feminist’ dilemmas related to the infantilisation of
female daily performances. Quantitatively, when asked if aegyo was beneficial or detri-
mental for female ‘performers’, only one interlocutor and no interlocutors stated that
it was detrimental for the overall social position of women. To the related question
regarding men (‘Is female aegyo beneficial or detrimental for men?’) no one among
interlocutors and interlocutor reported that it was in any sense detrimental for men.
In comparison, almost 47 per cent of all questionnaire respondents stated that it is
directly beneficial for women and almost 50 per cent that it is beneficial for men
(on the receiving end of the performance). In terms of the vertical social mobility,
that is, with regards to questions exploring the direct effect of aegyo on chances in
private and professional lives, no one stated that the practice was generally detrimental
for either private or professional lives. Instead, 41 per cent noted that women skilled at
aegyo were generally better off in both their private and professional lives, with more
than half of such responses coming from male respondents. Almost one third (31 per
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cent) of all respondents agreed that the positive or negative impact of aegyo depended
on the situation, with almost three times as many female respondents (compared to
male ones) taking this ‘relativistic’ view, most certainly grounded in personal experi-
ence and lived realities.
Both interlocutors and interlocutresses concluded that ‘having aegyo’ (as the
practice is often conceptualised locally) was much better for females’ professional
lives, especially in the predominantly male work environments.
In the workplace, I haven’t seen men acting like this. For men, it is just being
friendly. We do have women in the workplace even though we have mostly men,
and the bunwigi is different if we have women at work. If the woman is friendly
and has aegyo, then the bunwigi becomes lighter.
(Question: Is it helpful to the female worker herself if she has aegyo?)
Yes. The evaluation of colleagues would be different. On top of that, if she is good at
her work, there would be synergy. (YCM, personal communication, December 9,
2015)
Interestingly, a female interviewee offered a similar account despite her very different
working experience:
In the workplace, it would be different depending on which type of work it is, or
what kind of bunwigi the workplace has … Would there be more aegyo here, or
would there be more aegyo among female workers at a sales department crowded
with male workers?
(Question: What if the junior workers are men?)
Men in the workplace do not perform aegyo. It would actually be a minus. (MJK,
personal communication, December 18, 2015).
She further emphasised that for girls and women, aegyo goes further than just being
acceptable. (Question: For women, is it a plus?) ‘Yes’. (Question: Long-term?):
Yes. Very much so. I think it can be effective. The likability increases. Say there are
two similar female workers. One is very formal. She is very skilled at work. Then the
men say she is ‘spiteful’. There is another worker who is slightly less skilled but has
aegyo. Then, a lot of male workers try to help her out. To the female seniors/boss it
would not seem very good. […] But if there are men at the workplace, especially if
they are in charge, generally, if the male workers are in charge, then it would be
effective. (MJK, personal communication, December 18, 2015)
According to all interviewees, in the context of a workplace aegyo is almost singu-
larly used by female subordinates in front of male senior workers or bosses and, in
turn, it is widely acceptable, if not encouraged, for female workers to use aegyo.
One male, white-collar interlocutor even concluded his interview by saying, ‘This is
what my workplace wants from female workers’ (YCM, personal communication,
December 9, 2015).
Testimonials on the effectiveness of aegyo are, nonetheless, not limited to the office
subordinates, and go beyond the workplace:
10 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
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I know a girl from our school newspaper. She has a lot of aegyo. She has strong
opinions and, when things are not done according to her will, she becomes very
angry. Once we were deciding on the colour of our group T-shirt. It wasn’t even
an important topic. I guess she didn’t like the colour that everyone else liked; she
wanted mint. She started to talk like a baby, transforming her complaints into some-
thing that resembles aegyo. She threw a tantrum in the end. I also remember her
crying like a baby because someone rejected her opinion. It totally was a tantrum.
(JSH, personal communication, January 9, 2016)
Other interviewees also mentioned the general usefulness of aegyo, while stressing
its role as a communication tool used for those that one cannot address as equals:
I think aegyo is a great tool in communication with [the] elderly. When you talk
softly, they will see you as polite and likable. So aegyo makes it easier to communi-
cate with older people as communicating with them is totally different from talking
to your peers. (BYK, personal communication, January 9, 2016)
When asked to choose from whom they would be comfortable to receive aegyo, 40
per cent of respondents reported that they would feel comfortable receiving it from
subordinates or juniors, while less than 4 per cent said that they would feel comfortable
with such performances coming from people of higher social position. Furthermore,
26 per cent answered that they would be able to perform aegyo for their superiors
or seniors, while 17 per cent noted that they could do it for their subordinates and
juniors.
An overwhelming number of people (71 per cent) chose ‘lover’ (intimate partner) as
someone from whom they would be comfortable receiving aegyo, while a similar
number of people (74 per cent) noted that they would be able to perform aegyo for
their lover. Similarly, 50 per cent and 20 per cent chose the higher values on the
scale from 1 to 5 (4 and 5, respectively), when asked how important aegyo was in
romantic relationships, with 1 being ‘completely irrelevant’ and 5 being ‘very
important’.
Voices from our interviews show this as well, as our interviewees stated that it would
be common for men and women to perform aegyo in the context of intimate
relationships:
But then I believe aegyo works way better for the opposite sex than for talking with
older people. Why? It’s … it’s so obvious! It’s almost like asking why heterosexuals
like the opposite sex and homosexuals like the same sex. Aegyo is one of the charms
people can have, and I think it can be sexual. (HYP, personal communication,
January 5, 2016)
The majority of interviewees stressed the importance of using aegyo in communi-
cation with the opposite sex, if not within a direct romantic relationship. Some of
them further described the difference between these two:
So aegyo would be mostly used between lovers or by women who want some atten-
tion or to be liked. This is the purpose. But men like women who have aegyo because
women can hide their purpose. They can cover up their purpose and use aegyo as an
instinct to make themselves liked. The purpose is underneath their actions. So they
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can achieve their purpose without disappointing the opposite party. To be likable is
like an instinct. Women instinctively know what can make them likable for men. I
think that is an instinct. (HJP, personal communication, December 21, 2015)
Similarly, another interlocutor addressed aegyo between lovers:
Aegyo would be used more between different sexes, maybe when one person is
asking for favours. As for the celebrities performing aegyo on TV, there is no
problem with it as long as they are cute and pretty. It could be called a form of exag-
gerated aegyo, but from a man’s perspective, it doesn’t matter because they are
pretty. Maybe this form of aegyo in real life is only possible between lovers. It is
the image of someone who can perform aegyo very well. It could be called the
best form of aegyo. (CSH, personal communication, December, 5, 2015)
The important aspect of many among these opinions is the strongly felt difference
between enacted (pretend) aegyo as opposed to the ‘genuine’ (‘instinctive’ or ‘natural’)
one. The questionnaire results show that 70 per cent of people believe that aegyo can be
enacted or genuine, depending on the situation, and the interviewees offered
explanations:
If my girlfriend displayed aegyo to anyone else, I would not like it. If only to me … of
course, I would not dislike it. There is no purpose behind this aegyo if she is only
doing it to me. It would depend on whether there is a purpose or not. It would
differ depending on the situation. If there was too much [aegyo] in the workplace,
it would be frowned upon. But it would be better received if it were performed in
family, between lovers, or to your father. Like I said, I think the difference is
whether you have a purpose or not. [In these cases] it looks like there is no
special purpose. (PCW, personal communication, December 23, 2015)
An interlocutress presented her opinion on the differentiation between pretended
and natural aegyo:
I also have a friend who has lots of aegyo but is unaware of it. She is popular among
friends. Her aegyo is just natural, like a habit or even innate nature. You can just feel
that there is no pretending in her aegyo. I think the less it is pretended, the better it
seems, but then at the same time I don’t think that is important. No matter how fake
it is, if it works, using it wisely is a smart thing. (HTY, personal communication,
January 5, 2016)
Despite the general prevalence of aegyo, there are still those who do not wish to use
aegyo, and those who deem aegyo unsuitable:
I don’t like aegyo because for me it feels like ‘free riding’. For instance, in group
work, there is always one person who does aegyo when apologising for not doing
his or her work. For me aegyo doesn’t work because it is not real. It is not real
because aegyo doesn’t suddenly produce the work that should have been done. I
hate the extreme aegyo. I have a cousin who got married and started to use her
baby-talk speech style all the time. Even after giving birth to a child, she continues
to talk like a baby. No one among her family members is fond of it, but we don’t say
it in front of her because it would make everyone embarrassed. If you do aegyo with
nunchi, then you can change the situation but [if you do not, it does not work].
However, I hate those who always talk with aegyo. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, I’m weak,
12 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
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450
455
460
465
470
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480
I’m innocent, I’m cute, so you must help me do everything’. It’s like putting oneself
into extreme passivity, and that is not good. (JSH, personal communication, January
9, 2016)
Other interlocutors commented on the people who are uncomfortable with aegyo:
It is different according to age. If you are a peer, or in the same age group, you
can say ‘Ah what is that?’ But as you get experience, and get older, then you can
just see them as cute. Because you have become more relaxed. Simply, it means
that she, the one performing aegyo, is not your competitor anymore. (MJK,
December 18, 2015)
Another male interlocutor was of a similar opinion: ‘If someone doesn’t have aegyo,
she might not be able to. Then she will be annoyed at the girls who are able to
perform aegyo well because she herself cannot do it, but others do it so well’ (YCM,
personal communication, December 9, 2015). Utilitarian and competitive (or compe-
tition-aware) aspects in many expressed opinions seem conjoined with the essentialist
view of aegyo (or its assumed innateness).
One interlocutor commented on women who do not ‘have’ aegyo:
Girls with aegyo and girls without aegyo are different in nature. It is a personality
difference. Being sweet, cheery, but not necessarily positive; there is a personality
with lots of aegyo and a personality without lots of aegyo. Even upon watching
lots of YouTube videos [of young women doing aegyo], some are not able to do
it. (PMY, personal communication, December 9, 2015)
One male interlocutor described women who do not have aegyo as ‘not very cheer-
ful, and always serious. People always try to avoid that kind of person’ (KMH, personal
communication, February 2, 2016). He further discussed conditions such as appear-
ance and the age of people from whom he can and cannot accept aegyo:
Is it weird? They [foreigners] will like it too. They may not understand it as we do.
And Hyeri [a celebrity famous for her aegyo] is pretty. Well, if Lee Kuk-Joo [another
celebrity, generally not considered beautiful by the typical current South Korean
beauty standards] is performing aegyo [laughs]; age is important, but I think appear-
ance is important as well. Maybe not for someone’s performance of aegyo, but how
people receive aegyo can be different. (KMH, personal communication, February 2,
2016)
Another interlocutor more clearly stated his liking for this celebrity’s aegyo, saying:
‘Women will find Hyeri’s aegyo annoying, but men will almost be swept off their
feet. It is good. She is pretty! She is cute and pretty. I want to hug her in my arms’
(CSH, personal communication, December 5, 2015). One male interlocutor even felt
that he can ‘rightfully demand from women to brighten up the strict office environ-
ment’ by performing aegyo (YHK, personal communication, February 11, 2016).
One interlocutress specifically reported on how she was forced to perform cuteness
or cute behaviours as a young child, and was ‘forced to be the Gippeum Jo of the
family’, referring to a group of female entertainers serving the North Korean Leader
(KHJ, personal communication, January 9, 2016).
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These voices show how directly or indirectly, aegyo can be expected from young
women or even demanded. Such a direct demand for the cutified figurations of fem-
ininity and the submissive positionality of women was confirmed to various contexts,
from intimate to familial, from educational to labour-related. The more familial or
intimate the context is, participants expect or hope for more of the ‘natural’ or
innate types of aegyo, with very little second-order insight about the constructed
aspects of these performances.
Interpreting Aegyo
The findings of our fieldwork, along with supporting evidence from questionnaires
and other relevant sources, largely confirmed our initial definitions of aegyo as a
layered phenomenon standing in productive relations with other ideas and concepts
typical of Korean remaining hierarchical (patriarchal and gerontocratic) societal
organisation, with one notable exception (the one of ‘social face’ discussed below).
Most of the interviewees and respondents acknowledged the existence of visible or
marked female performances of winsomeness or cuteness in other parts of the world,
and only a small proportion of those that answered questionnaires responded that
aegyo exists exclusively in Korea. Aegyo was also largely and generally taken to be fem-
inine. Interlocutors indicated its usage in asking for various favours. A majority of
interviewees made clear that, in their opinion, aegyo serves various concrete purposes,
such as softening the atmosphere of certain situations, entertaining or amusing
superiors or gaining career-related benefits. Interlocutors and interlocutresses
agreed that aegyo can be appreciated by non-Koreans. Not surprisingly, our findings
confirm aegyo as a phenomenon comparable to Japanese, Chinese and other phenom-
ena of cutified and charming behaviours. Interestingly, while acknowledging the pres-
ence of similar winsomeness in other cultures, many of the interviewees still believed
that there is some local specificity of aegyo and of its position in Korean culture,
without being able to describe it comparatively.
No interlocutor denied the prevalence and particular appropriateness of aegyo in
intimate relationships, but they also confirmed the pervasive nature of this phenom-
enon that, despite usually being specifically gendered, pertains to the regulation of
social intensities beyond the heterosexual intimate realm. This ‘normalcy’ of aegyo,
that is, the normalisation of still visible/marked performed winsomeness, was
further made visible by the indigenous-theoretical analysis, as ethnographic interlocu-
tors and respondents to questionnaires alike did not have any problem in seeing the
phenomenon as smoothly conjoined or commonsensically related to other culturally
specific Korean concepts, such as nunchi and jeong.
Societal harmony, an important motif in discussing East Asian lived realities, uses
aegyo as the equal ingredient not only in how affective and discursive dimensions of
life are spontaneously lived, but also in how they get consciously and purposefully con-
ceptualised (that is, in local second-order considerations). What is considered ‘proper’
or ‘good’ about aegyo always depends on subtle regulation by the unwritten rules of
14 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
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nunchi, or culturally shaped situational intelligence, therefore allowing these perform-
ances to be acceptable across generational and class lines, in a wide range of social situ-
ations. The discussion on nunchi was to be complemented by the exploration of
chemyon, as many of the situations in which nunchi is required or even forced ulti-
mately serve the goal of saving one’s social face, or chemyon. While most of the inter-
locutors responded positively to the idea of aegyo being related and performed with
nunchi, they mostly did not see the relation with chemyon or social face/pride/repu-
tation, offering mostly pragmatic and utilitarian views of the phenomenon. Aegyo
was seen as a straightforward and legitimate tool in the overall field of competition/
striving. The lack thereof is considered to be a practical problem, with exaggerations
of aegyo socially punishable only by the betrayed purpose, but there was no tendency
to see the aegyo as a tool of inequality, that is to say, as a tactical but never strategic
movement within the boundaries of the patriarchal power structure.
The overall impression coming from the fieldwork is that neither ‘successful’ nor
‘failed’ aegyo could really affect chemyon. It is too early to draw conclusions from
this unexpected finding without taking into account generational and other factors
that might have left the concept of chemyon beyond the contemporary everydayness
and self-perception of some Koreans. Younger Koreans often conceptualise the
concept of ‘face’ through a less formal verb jjokpalrida (쪽팔리다), or ‘selling out
the face’, amounting to ‘being shamed’ without the traditional concept mentioned.
The word chemyon itself, on the other hand, is still widely used by media with
regard to ‘pride and reputation’ in politics or sports. Some additional special fieldwork
would be needed in order to assess these nuances. Unlike nunchi and jeong that imply
wide, inclusive and horizontal forces, chemyon can implicate certain ‘vertical’ qualities
or even imply patriarchal hierarchies. Trying to understand this finding, we sampled
the online usage of chemyon when it appears together with aegyo and found more than
one man-to-man online conversation about the need to remove some of the ‘mascu-
line chemyon’ if one is to perform ‘girlish aegyo’. So, even if this might pertain to some
very limited or particular set of situations, and the additional research is needed prior
to any conclusion, it remains entirely possible that the lack of direct connection (gen-
erational, gender-bound or class-related) of aegyo and chemyon in the conceptual uni-
verse of our interlocutors might in the end testify to the tricky power game of aegyo as
the tactical tool of young and female, that is, of the societal weaklings dependent less
upon their recognisable ‘face’ but rather on the direct kindness of others. Thus, the
silence about what aegyo can do to one’s social face could indirectly speak to our fem-
inist problematising of the practice.
According to our findings, aegyo is almost certainly a strong contributing element to
the discursive organisation of the ‘ideal Korean woman’, repeatedly reinforced by nar-
ratives and images produced and reproduced throughout everyday lives and mediatic
representations. This dimension, along with those ethnographic voices that directly
testified about pressures to perform aegyo or those ethnographic voices that demanded
such performances, open up many possibilities for future critical analysis or even the
action research of the practice.
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A considerable number of interlocutors and respondents indicated that aegyo works
as favourable to women not only in private realms—between romantic partners,
family members and friends—but also in the world of female labour. In this latter
context, aegyo appears to be a peculiar form of spec (a ‘konglish’ abbreviation from
‘specification’, describing a favourable element of one’s experience or skills, enhancing
career prospects). But if one asks where the favour lies, that is, where the exact locus of
benefits received is, it is easy to conclude that such benefits still relate to the patriarchal
organisation of local femininity under the masculine gaze, beyond any logic of equality
or direct empowerment. Our interviews, questionnaires and field observations con-
firmed how individual performances of winsomeness emulate and even recursively
underpin the unequal power distribution, and how people compromise and negotiate
with what amounts to societal oppression.
Of strong interest here is a visible difference between female and male views of
aegyo, with both groups seeing prevalently positive effects of aegyo but with female
participants seeing these positive impacts as more relational and situation-dependent.
More male interlocutors and respondents wanted to see it as ‘natural’ (innately female,
inherent or fixed). This leads us to the question of how aegyo is normalised (or, in
other words, depoliticised) in South Korean society, but also how it gets internalised
or drummed in, and what is the impact of this slow ‘growing into’ such normalised
gendered performances.
Frequently defined and redefined by people as a social skill and capitalist career tool,
aegyo can also be seen as a specific form of indigenous female knowledge. The per-
formances are often indicative of ambition or of female social striving. In contrast,
its occasional imaginary innateness (or utter internalisation) is requested for the per-
formance to be fully accepted or welcomed, especially by men. This further compli-
cates the aspects of ‘paradoxically spontaneous’ female agency as the individuals
must negotiate for, but can never obtain, ‘free’ agency outside the society (Gill 2008,
436).
Performances of winsomeness are clearly related to tangible female rights and (the
lack of) equity, but also to the formation of gendered subjectivity in relation to the
post-feminist conjuncture that proliferates and normalises different forms of ‘soft
power’. Such persistent softening of power and modulation of female agency contrib-
utes to the cutification of social interactions on a larger scale and, long-term, closing
the cycle that unites capitalist operations (including the adjacent developmental
models), spectacular images and living bodies. This is why it might be important to
direct some of the future research towards transgressive or even subversive aspects
of aegyo, disrupting the productive cycles of social cutification. Along with studying
those who refuse to do it, those who are accused of the lack of it and those who use
infantilisation to purposefully cutify otherwise sombre and differently oppressive situ-
ations or relations, the task of understanding the ethical and political potentiality of
aegyo might be achieved by studying the important meta-level, or the second-order
performance, when aegyo serves as a social commentary and the expression of
irony. While it can be said that the post-feminist sense of irony often opens doors
16 A. Puzar and Y. Hong
to neopatriarchal abuse, the irony of aegyo as a female play might still present an
important affective and discursive resource, allowing us to partially re-think the para-
doxical agency and feminist politicality of South Korean ‘cuties’.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to our friend Sehee Eom (Seoul, Republic of Korea) for contributing to our field
research and for helping us to collect data presented in the ethnographic section of this article,
and to Dr Sol-A Yu (Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea) for facilitating our research and
for the encouragement to publish these findings.
Notes
[1]
The secondary infantilisation in this sense was proposed by Goffman (1979, 72–77) in his work
on gender in advertising where ‘the parent-child complex—taken in its ideal middleclass
version’ is a ‘source of behavioral imagery’ for the socially produced ‘expressions’ of femininity.
For the early ethological work of Konrad Lorenz studying responses to the ‘infantile’ and for its
critical evaluation in contemporary cuteness studies, see Dale et al. (2017). Different from both
of these theoretical dimensions is the back-loop imitation of this secondary infantilisation by
the children themselves, as hypothesised later in this article. For discussion on the emotionality
of cuteness, see Strong (2012) and Sherman and Haidt (2011).
[2]
For the broadly related theoretical debate about cuteness and agency, especially within the
affect-focused studies, see the chapter ‘The Appeal of the Cute Object: Desire, Domestication
and Agency’ by Dale et al. (2017, 35–55). For the timely case study of cutified agency in Sin-
gapore (and beyond), see Abidin (2016).
[3]
Bunwigi here means ambiance or atmosphere, the social ‘air’ or feeling of the place. Bunwigi
was not part of our questionnaires as it was not assumed to be on the same level of locally
specific conceptual importance as our specifically tested cultural concepts that traditionally
define Korean interpersonal relations (nunchi, chemyon and jeong).
ORCID
Aljosa Puzar http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5931-7577
Yewon Hong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7044-5692
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