How RPGs Became A Haven For Women in South Korea

In 2016, Korean game designer and podcaster, Choi Mika, posted about a t-shirt on social media. It should’ve been a mundane event that passed without notice. But instead it was the beginning of a dark ordeal for Choi. One that she still struggles to talk about. "It all began so innocently”, she told Rascal over email. “There was a crowdfunding campaign to sell T-shirts printed with the feminist catchphrase, ‘Girls do not need a prince.’ I thought the phrase was meaningful and the shirt was made of quality material (priorities, right?) so I chipped in for mine.”

The t-shirt campaign was run by radical feminist collective, Megalia, to raise funds for victims of gender violence. But Megalia had become a lightning rod for anti-feminist attacks from a GamerGate-like mob. After voice actor Kim Ja-yeon shared a picture of the t-shirt, they harassed her and eventually got her fired from a high-profile video game. But unsatiated, the mob scoured the games industry for other women to victimize. That’s when they found Choi. The story that followed is all-too familiar—-thousands of men, thousands of threats and insults, a tidal wave of hate. 

But there was one important difference. Unlike the video game studios, who almost without exception bent over backwards to appease the trolls, tabletop publishers stood up for Choi. Dayspring Games, the publisher of Call of Cthulhu in Korea, invited anyone unhappy with their stance to cancel their orders. They lost some customers, but new customers more than made up for it. These customers were mostly young women and they burrowed into the shell of this traditionally male-dominated hobby and made a home for themselves. The Korean RPG scene has transformed—it’s now a space where women make up more than half the player base.