Are Korea's traditional terms for grandparents sexist?
As you may know, paternal and maternal grandparents are distinguished in Korean by adding the prefixes 친 or 외 to the name grandma or grandpa. So your dad's dad is your chin-harabeoji 친(親)할아버지 (lit. "close/intimate/kind grandfather") and your mom's mom is your oui-halmoni 외(外)할머니 (lit. "outside/foreign grandmother").
This method of referring to them seems to have traditional gendered connotations. Think of how a wife would leave her own household upon marriage and live in the man's household, which may likely have been with or at least very near his parents. The kids then would experience life closer and more intimately with the dad's parents. Or at least, social family structures would make them the de facto true family.
We foreigners aren't completely foreign (pun intended) to this notion. Wives (at least until very recently) "lost" their own surnames and became nominally absorbed into the husband's family.
So it's understandable that some Koreans might find this continued nomenclature problematic or sexist.
In fact back in 2021 the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family even put out a post about this. On their Instagram page they listed some phrases that might need to be revised, including these.
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| 친할아버지? 외할머니? Image: Korean MOFEF Instagram |
Since these terms seem to suggest an implicit traditional bias for dad's family, what else can we say? Apparently one solution, that some articles suggest are already being adopted today, is to refer to the grandparents by where they live. So there can be "Busan granny" and "Seoul grandpa" in modern times.
Something to think about. I'm sure however you refer to him, your 할배 will still love you.
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