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To cite this article: 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
Article views: 23
Defining Aegyo
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
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
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
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.
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
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
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11
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
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).
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 13
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
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.
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 15
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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