Gender and the city: correlations between the Gangnam District in Seoul and the tropes of Korean Women from 1970 to 2020

The aim of this paper is to investigate the correlation between gender and urban space. The tropes of Korean women illustrated by media and the changing urban structures influenced by women were examined, focusing on the Gangnam District of Seoul from the 1970s to the 1990s. We draw on insights from social-geographic theories to conceptualize the city as a social space formed by the experiences and relationships between individuals and to indicate how women have been excluded and represented through the gendered segregation of space since the modernization of Korea in the 1960s. My study argues about the tropes of "Gangnam-themed Women" who are portrayed as "speculators," "influential customers," "oversolicitous mothers," and "women crazy about their appearance." Gangnam women were framed as ideal females became they were the very first women to broaden their area of activity into public space with their financial powers. As they played a role in improving the social status of women and fostering Gangnam as a prospective area, an illusion was created that women's rights had been fully achieved. This paper closes by exploring how present-day Korean women struggle against the fantasy of their social position to gain authentic women's rights and space for women.