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Confucian philosophy emphasizes gender roles that place significant restrictions on the consumption of non-traditional products. The authors use wine to advance our understanding of how South Korean female consumers have established a new female gender role and identity by adopting new communities that allow non-traditional consumption while still accepting gender roles. This paper aims to examine how South Korean female consumers create a unique consumption culture with respect to wine consumption.

A hermeneutic approach was adopted to understand what motivates South Korean female consumers to join a wine consumption community and their perceptions about consuming wine. Researchers conducted 26 semi-structured face-to-face interviews that ranged from 45 to 120 min, with an average duration of 1 h.

The results of the study suggest that wine can be a medium for emancipating women from traditional gender roles and social images of women embedded in South Korean society that call for women to sacrifice themselves for their families. In addition, the study’s findings suggest that Western wine marketers need to understand the power of wine consumption communities that are a unique consumption ritual among South Korean female wine consumers.

South Korean female respondents drink wine as both a way to seek pleasure through a Western alcoholic beverage and to consume and experience Western culture and lifestyles. However, South Korean female respondents tend to drink wine within consumption communities, which are a powerful consumption ritual in South Korea. In other words, although South Korean female respondents consume wine to experience and learn about Western culture and lifestyles, they have entirely not abandoned their traditional consumption rituals.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) women leaders in South Korea (Korea) have overcome career challenges in the process of becoming CEOs. The two guiding questions for this study included: what career challenges have MNCs’ women leaders in Korea faced to become CEOs? How have they overcome their career challenges?

The authors used a basic qualitative research design, the goal of which is to understand how people make sense of their lives and experiences. Qualitative data were collected by semi-structured interviews with 15 women CEOs at MNCs in Korea to capture their lived experiences (challenges and strategies) in their careers. The authors used NVivo 11, a qualitative data analysis software, to analyze the interview data.

From data analysis, the authors identified five themes including: becoming a CEO, key success factors, MNC culture, career challenges and career development strategies. The authors found that in the process of becoming CEOs, 15 women leaders faced career challenges that are largely generated by traditional culture, work stress and work–life balance. The authors also found that the women leaders became CEOs through diverse on-the-job experiences (e.g. marketing and sales) and positions (e.g. managers, senior managers and regional directors) with organizational support (e.g. supervisor support).

Given research on organizational support for leadership, human resource practices and working conditions, this study’s findings have qualitatively confirmed the importance of organizational support for women CEOs’ career success. For theory building in women in leadership, the authors suggest that researchers investigate the complex process of becoming women CEOs, including their early experiences in their career in tandem with family background, organizational climate and national culture.

The study findings on women CEOs’ career strategies can be used as a reference for women in the leadership pipeline who aspire to take leadership positions in organizations. A lack of role models or mentors for women leaders is one of the reasons why women give up on their career. Learning career strategies (e.g. global development programs, mentoring and networks) that women CEOs have employed to overcome their career challenges can help women in the leadership pipeline from their early career on.

The authors found that both internal and external factors combined were instrumental in the women CEOs’ career success. What stood out from this study was that the women’s desirable personality attributes might not have materialized without the MNC culture that has been supportive for these women. The women CEOs shared their company’s values and philosophy that is based on gender equality, received supervisor support that is crucial for their career success, experienced diverse jobs and positions along the way and were recognized for their work ethic. Given research on women leaders conducted largely in western contexts, this qualitative study on the lived experiences of women CEOs in MNCs contributes to emerging non-western research by capturing the importance of culture that is uniquely Korean.

The purpose of this study was to compare South Korean female executives’ definitions of career success with those of male executives, identify their career development strategies for success and provide implications for research and practice. Two research questions guiding our inquiry included: How do female executives’ definitions of career success differ from those of male executives? What career development strategies do male and female executives use for career success?

A basic qualitative research design was used and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 male executives and 15 female executives in diverse corporations by using an interview protocol of 13 questions regarding participants’ background, definitions of career success and final thoughts. To analyze the interview data, we used both NVivo 11 and a manual coding method.

Gender differences were detected in the participants’ definitions of career success and success factors. As previous studies indicated, male and female executives had different perspectives on career success: men tended to define career success more objectively than women. Many male executives, through experiencing transforming changes in their careers, began to appreciate work–life balance and personal happiness from success. Gender differences were also detected in their career development challenges, meanings of mentors and networking activities. While work stress surfaced as a challenge that men faced, experiencing the token status in the gendered workplace was a major challenge for female participants.

In this study, three research agendas are presented, needing further investigation on career success, women’s token status and comparative analyses.

Three implications for practice have been provided, including organizational support, government’s role and HRD’s role.

Gender differences in this study were not as distinctive as previous literature has indicated. Some male executives valued more subjective career success than others, while a few female executives spoke of more objective definitions than others. These subtle differences could be captured through in-depth interviews. By hearing the participants’ stories, both objective and subjective definitions of success, for both genders, could be observed, which might not have been possible in quantitative research. In addition, the study findings reflect the nature of a uniquely Korean context. The participants worked in a Confucian and military culture, which operates in hierarchical structures and the command and control system, coupled with a heightened camaraderie spirit in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of the National Pension Scheme (NPS) on the economic well-being of older people in South Korea.

It analyses older people aged 60 and over sampled from the third wave of the Korean retirement and income study.

The analysis shows a gendered effect. The NPS is positively associated with the economic well-being of only older men. This gendered impact is probably attributable to the inherent patriarchal structure of the NPS that is based on the strong male bread-winner model.

The results suggest that promoting the female labour market participation, and also reforming the gender structure of the NPS and South Korean labour market, can be a potential policy option to amend gendered economic well-being in later life.

The purposes of the study were to classify South Korean female apparel shoppers into fashion opinion leadership groups and to develop group profdes by lifestyle characteristics, store selection attributes, clothing purchase influences, and sociodemographics. Data (N=271) were collected by questionnaires distributed to 300 South Korean consumers chosen to participate in the investigation. By cluster analysis of the Fashion Opinion Leadership (FOL) scale, four female consumer groups were identified as traditionoriented/culture conscious (29.4 per cent), eco‐nomic‐oriented/price conscious (15.8 per cent), convenience‐oriented/time conscious (28.7 per cent), and appearance‐oriented/fashion conscious (26.1 per cent). Scale reliability with the inter‐national sample was determined by a Cronbach alpha. Groups were compared on the profile descriptors through MANOVA and chisquare statistics. Results indicated that fashion opinion leadership is a base for segmenting South Korean female apparel shoppers. This study suggests ways knowledge about the consumer groups identified can be incorporated into marketing and retail strategies.

This paper explores how gender-related issues are communicated in Korean family-run conglomerates (chaebols) and the roles of women within these businesses. It also addresses to what extent the communication of chaebols about female employment and career development reflects the perception of gender representation in these organisations.

By paying attention to gendered discourse in Korean chaebols, this paper examines what is said and written about gender issues in glottographic statements (texts) and non-glottographic statements (charts and other visuals) of annual reports (ARs) published by five chaebols since 2010. The paper uses a Foucauldian framework to develop the archive of statements made within these ARs.

Although there is an increase in female-employee ratios, ARs show that number of women at the board or senior management level continue to be small. ARs tend to provide numbers related to female employment and retention in their non-glottographic statements, yet these numbers occasionally differ from and frequently are not explained by glottographic statements. The strategies used by chaebols to improve career prospects for their female staff are only vaguely described and rarely evaluated.

This paper looks beyond the existing discourse analysis on “talk and text” by also investigating claims made through graphic and linear/pictorial elements and their interplay with text. This approach opens new understandings of how gendered discourses are constructed and how they (unintentionally) fail to resolve issues and perceptions related to female employment and career development in Korea.

The purpose of this study was to investigate South Korean women entrepreneurs’ motivations to start a business, the challenges they faced in business development and key factors that contributed to their career success.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 women entrepreneurs to gather qualitative details on their experiences and performed a survey with 125 women Chief Executive Officers who are affiliated with the Korean Venture Business Women’s Association.

The authors found necessity-driven push (e.g. economic necessity for family) and opportunity-based pull (e.g. a strong sense of self) motivational factors, challenges (e.g. gender stereotypes) and opportunities (e.g. creating a family-like organizational culture) and key success factors (e.g. personality and loyal employees) for their career success.

There is a strong need to emphasize the import of culture at the national level that would impact women entrepreneurs’ careers and business success. A majority of the studies on HRD in small- and medium-sized enterprises shed light on individual owners’ perspectives only. Researchers need to take multiple-level (i.e. national, organizational and individual) factors into consideration in research on women’s entrepreneurship. Quantitative analysis in this study did not have any statistical significance and there were a few inconsistent findings (e.g. disadvantage as woman Chief Executive Officers) between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Future research is called for to investigate where and why different results occurred by using a mixed-methods research design and inferential statistical analysis for significance.

The increased support at the national level for entrepreneurship education before and after school that has not received sufficient attention in Korea will allow aspiring women to embark on entrepreneurial career paths from early on. At the organizational level, women entrepreneurs’ efforts to create a family-like organizational culture can be used as references for aspiring women who want to start and develop a business. At the individual level, HRD practitioners can develop leadership programs to share internal and external success factors so that aspiring women entrepreneurs can develop required individual (e.g. personality attributes) and social competencies (e.g. networking) in business development.

The two unique study findings that reflect the importance of cultural context include: our study showed how women entrepreneurs in Korea transformed the challenges they faced in business development into opportunities that can be used for entrepreneurship education for aspiring women entrepreneurs; and women entrepreneurs in Korea were humble enough to ascribe their career and business success to their loyal employees who have stayed in their companies with commitment, which has not been captured in research on women’s entrepreneurship in western contexts.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore how highly educated women respond to career chance events in a Korean context where traditional cultural values and male-dominated organizational culture coexist.

The authors conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with highly educated women operationalized as women with doctoral degrees in and out of Korea. The authors used a collaborative research process with a team of ten Korean-born researchers who have built consensus on research themes through discussions on the collection and analysis of a large data set, thus reducing the researcher bias issue inherent in qualitative research.

In an analysis of the interview data collected, the authors report on three themes: before obtaining a doctoral degree, during and after their doctoral study and responses (coping strategies) to chance events in their careers. Highly educated women’s pursuing a doctoral degree was a way to maintain work–life balance in Korea where women are expected to take a primary caregiver role. After obtaining a doctoral degree, participants struggled with limited job opportunities in the male-dominated higher education. Women’s unplanned and unexpected chance events are intertwined with the male-dominated culture in Korea, and career interruptions as such a chance event, whether voluntary or involuntary, happened largely due to family reasons. In this context, highly educated women responded to chance events largely at individual and family levels and articulated the need for support at organizational and government levels.

The study findings confirm the literature that women’s careers are limited by traditional family roles in non-Western countries where strong patriarchal culture is prevalent. Particularly, women’s career interruptions surfaced as a critical chance event that either disrupts or delays their careers largely because of family issues. Future research is called for to identify both individual and contextual factors that influence women’s decisions on voluntary and involuntary career interruptions as their responses to chance events.

Based on highly educated women’s coping strategies largely at individual and family levels, we suggest national human resource development policies put in place not to lose out on the opportunity to develop highly educated women with doctoral degrees as a quality workforce for a nation’s sustainable economic growth. Additionally, organizations need to be aligned with the government policies and programs for the provision of developmental programs for women in the workplace, beginning with highly educated women’s career planning, while creating organizational culture to promote gender equality as a long-term goal.

The participants’ voluntary career breaks helped them care for their children, be involved in their children’s education, reflect on work–life balance after having long hours of work for many years and move forward with personal satisfaction. Voluntary career breaks can be understood as highly educated women’s unique way of responding to chance events.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a framework for marketing cultural goods (e.g. music) to global markets by examining modes of entry and positioning strategies used by media producers of the South Korean music industry.

An historic analysis was implemented to investigate the modalities and structures through which cultural products are produced and disseminated. Data for this study came from 314 articles collected from www.allkpop.com, a leading English-language, South Korean popular culture news site.

The cultural technology framework consists of the institutionalization of cultural technology, exportation of cultural content, collaborations with local talent, and joint ventures with local markets.

The findings emerge from an analysis of South Korean popular music industries, and further research is needed to generalize the results across cultural industries.

The cultural technology framework can be applied to cultural industries such as music, film, comics, and art, where culture and language could be barriers to adoption.

This study outlines a framework for the modes of entry and positioning strategies of cultural goods (e.g. music) in international markets. Extant literature has examined global marketing from the purview of durable consumer goods and brands, with limited insights into cultural products. More broadly, this paper addresses the call for more qualitative inquiry into international marketing topics.

The aim of this study is to validate the Korean version of the work‐family enrichment (WFE) scale and identify the current status of work‐family enrichment of workers within the Korean cultural context.

The authors performed a forward and backward translation procedure to develop the Korean version of the WFE scale, which contains the linguistic equivalence between the two language versions of the WFE scale (English and Korean). Also, both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were utilized to test the psychometric fit of the underlying structure of the Korean WFE scale compared with the English version.

The results indicate that the Korean version of the WFE indicates psychometric properties parallel to the English version of the WFE. The findings also include differences in the WFE mean scores for Korean workers based on demographic and work‐related variables.

As in the USA, improving the work‐family balance is perceived as a social imperative in other cultural settings. Empirical studies conducted in the Korean context can potentially demonstrate how individualist‐based hypotheses regarding work‐family interface fit a collectivist‐based cultural setting.