South Koreans Are Calling For Universal Access to Menstrual Products

On May 26, two days before Menstrual Hygiene Day, South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong announced that she was working to ensure that young women and girls can have free access to menstrual products. Jang told reporters she was working to propose a revision of the country’s Youth Welfare Support Act to allow women aged nine to 24 to access period products for free and called for support from other lawmakers.

“Having access to safe and hygienic menstruation management must be recognized as all women’s rights, but Korea has long been notorious for poor actions to ensure this human rights issue,” she said.

Sanitary products in South Korea are some of the most expensive in the world; a study conducted by the Korean Women’s Environmental Network (KWEN) found that sanitary pads in South Korea were nearly 40 percent more expensive than overseas sanitary napkins.

KWEN urged “stricter sanitary pad safety management standards” in the country, highlighting how menstrual products were not only sold at high prices but also marketed through content that plays on women’s anxieties about menstrual hygiene.

“Menstruation is a normal and natural physiological phenomenon,” KWEN said in a statement. “Companies should immediately stop advertising that targets women's bodies and menstruation and the government should actively monitor menstruation-hating depictions to improve gender equality.”

South Korea’s “period poverty,” or the lack of access to safe sanitary products often due to financial constraints, came under scrutiny in 2016 when “insole girls” made national headlines. The term referred to girls who were unable to afford period products after the leading brand of menstrual products, Yuhan-Kimberly, raised their pad prices by 20% and resorted to using insoles of sneakers instead of pads. This story opened up a broader discussion about menstruation in South Korea, where the topic has long been considered shameful and taboo. It also led to official measures, such as Seoul offering free sanitary pads at public facilities across the capital city in 2018.

The “insole girls” also led to revisions of the Youth Welfare Act, which provides a basis for free access to period products for younger people in poverty, in 2021. But Jang highlighted a “blind spot” in the current version of the law: Only 173,000 out of 243,000 who are eligible have applied, and that number accounted for only 4.4% of girls and women aged nine to 24. Her new bill will be critical to tackle these concerns.

“Many women living in poverty face the arduous challenge of managing their menstrual cycles, a matter that is often regarded as an ‘uncomfortable’ social issue rather than a natural bodily function,” Haein Shim, women’s rights activist and spokeswoman for the feminist organization Haeil, told the FBomb. Menstruation, she added, is a “fundamental aspect of women's lives” that is “treated as a deeply personal and private matter, which can impose significant psychological, emotional, and economic burdens on individual women and girls.”

Period poverty in South Korea is “underreported and unaddressed” due to “the pervasive lack of comprehensive sex education in South Korea, coupled with a limited understanding of women's bodies,” Shim said. “The prevailing male dominance within the Korean government has long turned a blind eye to women's issues,” she said, adding, “Governments should address this problem by treating menstrual hygiene products and related products as public goods and integrating them into the educational curriculum nationwide.”

Moreover, Shim said, South Korea would benefit from shifting the cultural language on menstruation to “foster an environment that naturally encourages women to openly discuss” the matter. “There is no shame in using the term ‘menstruation’ or ‘period,’ as it is an essential aspect of our shared human experience.”