Website on numbers of could- be mums offline
Want to know many women in your area are of a childbearing age? The South Korean Government thought its citizens might.
Now it has been forced to close its website showing the figures by each city district and region.
The Ministry of the Interior’s website featuring the pink birth map remained closed yesterday, a day after its launch, showing instead a notice that the site i s undergoing corrections to reflect public opinion.
The website had gone offline after just a few hours following criticism that the Government i s trying to shame women for not having babies. Some said the Government treated the birth- rate i ssue as concerning only women, pointing out that no pictures of men was used on the website.
Using pink as the main colour, the site contained information on birth rates, benefits from local governments on child rearing, average marriage age and other data.
On top of the website, it showed a picture of a woman kissing a little girl.
In the birth map, the regions with a higher number of female residents aged 15 to 49 were coloured in dark pink while the regions with a lower number of such women were shown in light pink.
The site also featured a ranking of regions by the number of women aged 15 to 49.
Users could look up how many women who can have a baby resided in their neighbourhood for the past 10 years.
Many users reacted with bewilderment and anger, saying they did not understand what the number of women who can get pregnant has to do with encouraging people to have more babies.
“I felt so angered that it blatantly showed how the Government saw women’s body as the country’s reproductive tools, not that belonging to the woman,” said Lee Min Kyung, a 24- year- old feminism writer. “I felt like nothing has changed and the hatred of women that I have experienced appeared again.”
The Government had touted it as a tool to increase the public’s understanding of the country’s low birth rate and compare the benefits from local governments for having a baby or raising a child.
“It was established to encourage local governments to learn and compare other governments’ benefits and to promote free competition,” the ministry said in the press release distributed at the time of its launch.
Calls seeking comments from the ministry were not answered.
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