@boatyardblues
It is quite hard to answer since it wasn't something I thought about much until recently as I started reading mumsnet more. But I became more aware of it in the UK.
The first time I ever thought about this was in the UK. I went for my smear test and the nurse said "is it ok if I start now?" and "I'm going to insert the (thing, don't know the name) now, is that ok?." That would never happen in Korea. The doctor or nurse just does whatever they need to do without asking.
Rape and consent are bigger issues these days, because of me too and especially recently the mayor of Seoul had a scandal then committed suicide. To give an example, when I was in the UK, a friend told us that she split up with her boyfriend and I asked why and she said because he tried to rape her when she was drunk. And I was so surprised and asked "how can your boyfriend rape you though?" and the others looked at me really shocked. I think until then I really never realized that is possible for boyfriend to rape his girlfriend. I just thought "well you are alone and drunk so..." That is how everyone in my generation thought.
Now we can see that younger generation (of women) thinks something different. And I am happy for them. I will teach my son he must ask and if girl is drunk he shouldn't have sex with her. But if I discuss this stuff with friends, yes, they still say "well she was drunk, she was wearing short skirt, she was in a motel so she can'tbe surprised what happens".
Incase of Seoul mayor, people really blame the woman for speaking out. They say why she speak out and ruin his reputation and life, he didn't rape her, only try to have affair. I don't know.
When someone is covicted of rape, or paedophile, or assault, their photo is displayed around neighbourhood where they live. And recently in my neighbourhood, one man had this situation and it said rape happened in a motel so I think maybe this law change? I don't know. Or girl was underage.
At my son's kindergarten, they try to make children hug sometimes if they had a fight. I saw this one time and say to director "if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to". And other mum say "oh, she says that because she lived in the west". Yes so you see from this that we think of this stuffs as a western concept.
It is very hard to ask anyone in senior position to not do something. So if my older school friend touch me, just have to accept. Yes even one year different. Even my cousin. It's so common for manager to do something bad like this. My friends and I discuss all the time "thank God we are old women and don't have to deal with this stuffs nowadays."
However. Sometimes I think western people feel we are some backward country where the women are passive and men do any thing they want to us. But I saw things in the UK that shocked me. For example, in a club, the women expect to be groped and touched by male customers. If I shout to the guy don't do that, my friends tell me to calm down and not make a scene. In Korea, no. My friends are going to support me and hit him and call him trash and ask him to leave. If a man in the street say to me something in Korea, the people around are going to ask him why he bothers me, does he know me, why does he do this? The older women especially, they are going to support me. It happened to me before, the man say something and a grandmother is cussing him and then walk with me to station. In the UK, everyone just look at ground, oh nothing happens, it's ok, so normal. And it happened in Korea to me maybe one or two times. In the UK, almost every week.
Sometimes the west think we need to catch up to them. But it's not that. We have our own path. We are not behind the west. We can't copy the west because our culture is too different. And in some things, the west need to change too.