ABSTRACT
By examining habitual expressions, ordinary units of words and implicit but repetitive ways of representations in the crime reportages in the news coverage, this chapter illustrates that the prevalent discourse of crime reports contributes to the reproduction of misogynistic values and frameworks in South Korea. For this purpose, we examine two interrelated phenomena on reporting car accidents. The first is an exploration of the semantic evolution of the term Kim-yeosa ["Poorly skilled women driver"] while the second is an examination of the responses to traffic accidents, which are full of various hate speech against women. In so doing, we argue that not only conspicuous, contested and volatile debates, but also routine, prosaic, dull and unremarkable depictions can construct a particular structure of antipathy against women, which we refer to as banal misogyny. The idea of banal misogyny highlights the necessity of re-thinking media reportage through the lens of misogyny, as well as the close connection between gender-biased representation in mainstream news media and hate speech against women online. Furthermore, the perspective of banal misogyny allows us to designate the media as a catalyst for generating online hate speech against women.
