May 24, 2023 • 35 mins
Today we're talking about Cho Nam-Joo's international bestseller Kim Ji-young, Born 1982: A Novel. It follows the life of the titular character as she moves through her life as a Korean woman.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to stef I Never Told You, a production
of iHeartRadio, and welcome to another edition of book Club.
Quick content warning for this one, we are going to
be briefly not in death, but briefly discussing things around
(00:29):
like eating disorders, unhealthy thoughts about weight, discussion around sexual assault,
sexual harassment, and mental health. Honestly, yeah, we're not really
going to be going too deep into these unless the
conversation takes us that way, which it sometimes does. But like,
if you're going to go read the book, nope, so yes,
today we are reading the international bestseller by Cho Nam
(00:52):
Jew translated by Jamie Chang Kim Jong born nineteen eighty two.
A novel, It was published in sixteen, and it follows
Kim Jeong's a life as a woman in South Korea
through schooling, college, family, jobs, marriage, having kids. Although there
is a lot of thoughts around not having kids in
all of the intersections that come with all of that
(01:15):
as a woman, it is both very personal and filled
with a lot of facts and statistics. It's like her life,
but also showcasing the broader strokes of what she's going
through in.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Her life right.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It begins with the main character experiencing a mental health
issue where she seemingly is impersonating other women, her mother
and grandmother, specifically, Her worried husband takes her to get
psychiatric help, and then from there the story steps back
to certain stages of Kim Jiong's life, her experience being
a second daughter of a family of three kids, the
(01:50):
youngest one being a son in a society that has
preference for sons. It details her experience as a child,
a student, a wife, her college experience, her career. She's
pressured to leave work by her husband to have a kid,
a son, and he promises he'll help out, but she's
in her mind his helping out is like things he
(02:10):
should have already been doing. She has a difficult birth
to a daughter and leaves work entirely to be a housewife,
something else she faces judgment for and people criticize her
for doing, basically calling her freeloader. And that's when her
mental health symptoms starts showing up. And Chunam juw took
(02:31):
two months to write the story, and she said she
was able to do it so quickly because the main
character's life was close to hers. The book has sold
more than one million copies as of November twenty eighteen,
making it the first million selling Korean novel since two
thousand and nine. And it was part of the feminist
movement in South Korea, including the Me Too movement there,
(02:53):
the four B movement which we've talked about, Escape the Corset.
It's been used as an example of a growing desire
to discuss gender roles in the country among a certain
group anyway, and a movie adaption came out in twenty nineteen.
But you're also telling me that it was part of
a big backlash, anti feminist backlash as well.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So yeah, just as a reminder, this came out in
twenty sixteen. As we talked about in our previous episodes
about feminism in South Korea, the current administration actually took
out Women's Equality Task Force, which is actually talked about
in the book as it was developed, So there's a
bit of backtracking in the government and that there's a
big anti feminist movement since then. We also talked about
(03:33):
the double standards when this book came out, when celebrities,
Korean celebrities were for this or speaking up about this
or loving this typically, if you were a woman who
loved the book, you were seen as being too feminists,
and people would rip the pictures up and be very
angry and talking about how they were ruining society. But
if a man liked it, they were upstanding, good men.
(03:56):
Look at them, how kind they are, They're heroes type
of thing. It was really interesting. It's no different today. Yeah.
The movie came out in twenty nineteen with My Boy
Gong You. I haven't watched it yet because it's too sad.
I can't handle a lot of kan stuff right now.
It's already hard. But yeah, there's a lot of conversation
(04:18):
around it. It did push a lot of feminist movements,
a lot of conversation, a lot of opening of the eyes.
But again, it also started up a lot of anti
feminist rhetoric talking about how women were taking men's jobs.
It's been a pivotal point for the current administration as
this platform to get more votes from the anti feminist
(04:38):
group of people.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Interesting, it's sad.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, yeah, And there's been a lot discussion happening around this,
this book and the movie specifically, and the role it
played in all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So it is really interesting if you want to look
up more.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And one of the biggest things throughout this the book
is tracing gender roles in certain stages of life. Yeah,
so let us get into some of these themes, right.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So when Kim Giong was born, Omisok held the input
in her arms and wept because there was a girl saying,
I'm sorry the little girls, she said, hanging her head.
Coban soon repeated warmly to her daughter in law, It's okay,
the third will be a boy. Of course, if you're
at all familiar with any type of Korean history and
(05:32):
types and it actually I guess it's Asian history, and
in general when it comes to children, overpopulation and what
gender is preferred. You have a big conversation about female babies,
little girls being discarded because there's too many. Whether it's
through abortion or whether it's through adoption, or whether it's
just neglect. There's a lot of really sad history. We
(05:56):
know with a one child policy, which was not necessarily
a part of Korea. It was more so in China.
But that's the mindset did happen in Korea because the
men are more likely to care for all the following
things and be able to take care of the entire
entire group of family and community. So yeah, there was
(06:18):
a lot of that conversation for the longest time, which
is actually not true. I found this out. For the
longest time, a lot of the orphanages were thought to
be filled with mainly young girls, but it seemed that
there was a lot of young boys that were adopted
from Korea more so than girls at one point in time.
So very confusing. There's a lot of eugenics on that side,
(06:39):
but we're not going to talk about that quite yet.
But yeah, the obvious conversation is you want a boy,
the blessing is the boy. Boys will always do more
boys are taken care of, boys are coddled. This is
that idea. The book goes on. This was the time
when the government had implemented birth control policies called family
(07:00):
planning to keep population growth under control. Abortion due to
medical problems had been legal for ten years at that point,
and checking the sex of the fetus and aborting females
was a common practice, as if daughters was a medical problem.
This went on through the nineteen eighties and in the
early nineteen nineties, the very height of the male to
female ratio imbalance when the ratio of the third child
(07:23):
and beyond was over two to one. Yeah, so, as
I'm explaining, the desire to have young boys was much higher.
You were prized much more so than girls.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Right, And the author gives a lot of examples of
that throughout the book. Here's a quote. It was a
given that fresh rice hot at the cooker was served
in the order of father, brother, and grandmother. That perfect
pieces of tofuo dumplings and patties were the brothers. All
the girls ate the ones that fell apart. The brother
had chopsticks, socks, long underwear, and school and lunchbags that matched.
(07:58):
All the girls may do with whatever was available. If
there were two umbrellas, the girls shared. If there were
two blankets, the girl shared. If there were two treats,
the girls shared. It didn't occur to the child you young,
that her brother was receiving special treatment, and so she
wasn't even jealous.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
We actually saw an example of this in a Strong
woman Bondsoon. If you remember when she uh cries to
her mother because she's always like, let your brother have it.
Give this to your brother. You're writing away from your brother,
and she finally had enough, She's like, why is it
always him? And actually there's a lot of theme to
that in different K dramas where young women are actually
starting to stand up for themselves, like why is it
(08:36):
him over me? Like what makes him more important than me?
So it's very very interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, and she has a couple a lot of
times the quotes in these book clubs get unwieldy because
I just want to quote.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The whole book, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And there was another quote that I had in here
that I got rid of that was kind of to
that point. If the older sister being like, you need
to eat, moms, stop giving your noodles to him, Like
stop doing this, We're all going to eat our own portions,
and it essentially devolving into like an argument of like,
well he's the youngest, the mom says, and the older
(09:13):
sister is like, no, he's the boy.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So there were a lot of examples of that through
throughout the book. But there were a lot of examples
of what you were talking about, of sort of girls
and women questioning these things. And there was one story
where while Gejung was in school, there was this thing
where a bunch of the girls weren't be they didn't
(09:37):
have time to eat because they served food in order
of like boys first, girls second, but there was an
allotted time for eating, and so like the girls didn't
have as much time to eat, and them questioning that
and protesting that. So here's a quote around that number
one on the roster was a boy. Everything began with
(09:58):
the boys, and that felt like the right natural thing.
Boys lined up first, Boys led every procession, no matter
where they were headed. Boys gave their presentations first, and
boys had their homework checked first, while the girls quietly
waited their turn board, sometimes relieved that they weren't going first,
but never thinking this was a strange practice, just as
(10:18):
we never question why men's National Registry numbers begin with
a one and women's begin with a two. And then
I liked this quote. Teachers were in the habit of
saying that girls are smarter. Students also thought that girls
were smarter, more mature, and better with detailed work, but
they somehow always elected boys to be class monitors.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, I can relate to this.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Right, here's a thing like I've read so many reviews
and I want to keep talking about it, about how
all wow, Korea does this and all Korea is so
sad and doesn't like the US isn't that far behind. No,
there's not a thing. There's an extreme and there's a
level of violence that have happened in South Korea that's
not looked down on today, which is really really sad.
But it's just quiet here, Like it's just quietly said
(11:05):
here or and or ignored and like calm down. It
is no different, it's just less seen or less talked about.
Oh and we have a whole conversation about periods. And
I appreciated the conversation in this because I'm like, yeah,
I get this. So as Giong lay on her stomach
on the floor to do homework, she clutched her her
(11:26):
tramping lower abdomen and repeated to herself, I don't understand.
Half the population in the world goes through this every month.
If a pharmaceutical company were to develop an effective pill
specifically for menstrual cramps, not the quote pain medication that
makes you sick, they would make a fortune. Her sister
filled a plastic bottle with hot water, wrapped in a
towel and passed it to her. You're right in a
(11:47):
world where doctors can cure cancer and do heart transplant.
There isn't a single pill to treat menstrual cramps, her
sister pointed at her own stomach. The world wants our
urits to be drug free, like sacred grounds in a
virgin forest. Yeah, I don't think about that. We talk
about that on so many levels, about birth control pills
and how ineffective and or real dangerous it is, but
(12:09):
no one really cares.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Right really, and I care.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I like legitimately had this almost this exact same conversation
with a friend of mine where she was like, I
don't get why half of us just are expected to
just do this, like deal with this on a regular
basis and still perform and not like take a break break.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
No, everybody feels shame if we like don't ourselves and yeah, like,
oh no, I'm like, what the hell this is? This
is the world's fault. You should all take the blame.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Sorry, So going on talking about school as the next thing,
which is a big theme and kind of like triggering
a little bit for me. Uh So, here's a quote.
The school dress code was strict expect for girls. One time,
a female student who was held up at the school
gate for wearing sneakers. Protested it was unfair to allow
t shirts and sneakers to mail students only. The student
(13:09):
discipline teacher explained that it was because boys were more
physically active. Quote boys kids sit still for ten minutes
between classes. They ran outside to play soccer, basketball, baseball,
or even a mucktubucky. You can't expect kids like that
to button their shirts all the way to the top
and wear dress shoes. And you think girls don't play
sports because they don't want to. We can't play because
(13:31):
it's uncomfortable to play wearing skirts, tights, and dress shoes.
When I was in elementary school, I went outside every
break to play red rover, hopscotch and skip rope. And
as a punishment for the dress code violation and backtalk,
the female student had to do laps of squat walk
around the school field. The teacher told her to hold
the hymn of her skirt together, so it was thought
to reveal her underwear, but the girl refused. Her underwear
(13:53):
showed each time she took a step in a squat position.
The teacher stopped her after one lap. Another student called
down to the teacher office for dress code violation. Asked
her why she didn't hold her hemp together, and she said,
I wanted the teacher to see with his own eyes
just how uncomfortable this outfit is. And again, this is
very familiar to what is happening today in the US,
(14:15):
not the squatting part, but the dress code.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, yes, and oh yeah, I mean we talked about
that in like our sports episodes, or about the uniforms
required for women.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
In professional sporting events.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
As opposed to men. Here's another quote. It was a
wide world out there, filled with perverts on the bus
and underground. Many suspicious hands grazed her bottom and breast.
(14:53):
Some crazy bastards rubed themselves up against women's thighs and backs.
The girls were disgusted by older boys at Cram School,
church and tutoring sessions, pawing their shoulders, stroking their naps,
and sneaking a peek at their breast through button down
shirts and T shirts with low cut netlines. But the
girls couldn't let out a single horrified cry. All they
could do was remove themselves from the scene. School was
(15:15):
no better. There were always male teachers who reached up
and pinched the soft flesh of the underarm, padded students
on the bottom, or ran their hands down the spine
over the bra strap. Her tenth grade homeroom teacher was
a man in his fifties who carried around a pointer
that had a hand pointing just the index figure on
the tip, which he used to poke girls in the
(15:35):
breast under the guy's drawing attention to the missing name tags,
or to lift girl's skirts to quote check their uniforms.
When he left the stick on the podium by mistake
one day after morning announcements, one classmate with heavy breast,
whose name tag the teacher often checked, marched to the front,
threw the stick on the floor and trampled on it
over and over as she wailed. The girls near the
(15:58):
front quickly picked up the broken pieces and got rid
of them, and her best friend hugged her and comforted her. Yeah, yep, yep,
I had a teacher like that too. We all knew
about him. And then there's a whole story that she
tells about this guy who's following her on a bus
(16:19):
and he's threatening her, and he kind of is like, well,
you're always smiling at me, And then when she finally
kind of gets away from him, and with the help
of a woman who notices, like, oh, of what she's
going through. Her father kind of yells at her for
wearing short skirts. Fur a quote talking to people, which
(16:40):
also feels very familiar. Yes, but here's some quotes around that.
G Young felt she should thank her and called her again.
The woman said she was glad you Young was fine,
and suddenly declared, it's not your fault. There were far
too many crazy men in the world. She'd had her
share run ins with these people, and the problem was
with them, not with the women. Hearing this made Young cry,
(17:01):
trying to swallow her tears. She couldn't say anything back.
And then it continues. G Young quit the cram school
for a long time. She couldn't go near a bus
stop after dark. She stopped smiling at people and did
not make eye contact with strangers. She was afraid of
all men, and she screamed sometimes when she ran into
her younger brother in the stairwell. But she kept thinking
(17:21):
about what the woman said, not my fault. There's far
more great guys out there. If the woman hadn't said
that to her, g Young would have lived in fear
for even longer.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's kind of one of.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Those things where it's like so sad that she quit
and she felt all of these things because we do
see that, we see women being forced out of things
so often and quitting because of things like this. But
it's also nice that she had this woman saying like, no,
it's not your fault, and that those words meant so much. Yeah,
(17:58):
but unfortunately this is not the last of that type
of treatment you young would experience. So now we're moving
kind of the like jobs and careers section. So here's
a quote. Gone were the days when parents thought girls
didn't have to get good grades or receive the same
education as boys. It had long since been the norm
for girls, like boys, to put on a uniform, carry
(18:18):
a backpack, and attend school. Girls thought about what they
would like to do when they grew up, just as
boys did. They planned their careers and competed to achieve
their goals. This was a time of widespread social support
for women's ambitions. In nineteen ninety nine, the year Kim
and Young turned twenty, new legislation against gender discrimination was introduced,
and in two thousand and one, the year Kim geeoung
(18:39):
turned twenty, the Ministry of Gender Equality was formed, but
in certain pivotal moments in women's lives, the woman stigma
reared its head to obscure their vision, stay their hands,
and hold them back. The mixed signals were confusing and disconcerting. Yeah,
it was kind of like what you were talking about
with all kind of the back yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, and unfortunately they're on the back. Yeah. And then
we have this conversation where she is listening in on
what men talk about when women are around kind of yeah.
So here it is ew, that's like chewing gum. Someone
else spit out set of familiar voice. It was an
older member of the club who enjoyed drinking but didn't
(19:23):
force others to do so, and often bought the younger
members food, but avoided eating with them unless they felt uncomfortable.
She'd also had a good opinion of his level headed,
practical way of handling things. Gian couldn't believe her ears.
She listened harder, but couldn't deny that it was him.
He could have been drunk, or perhaps he had said
what he said to overcompensate for being found out about
(19:44):
his feelings for her, and had to say something harsh
to discourage the guys from playing matchmaker. She thought of
many possibilities, none of which helped to make her feel
less devastated. Even the usually reasonable, sane ones verbally degrade women,
even the women they had feelings for. That's what I am, gum,
someone spat out.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, it's pretty brutal because they kind of like had
a good relationship. And she overheard this, and then the
next day the guy is all like, oh no, I'm
still nice. I'm still the good guy and being nice
to her. But after she'd heard this, this.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So it was. It was pretty It was a tough scene.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, here's another one. Sometimes when she was exhausted, she
felt like giving up. And John's cliched wards of encouragement
once you get to college you will lose weight and
get a boyfriend truly inspired her because on young actually
did lose weight and get a boyfriend in college.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, this was a pretty big theme.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Uh, and we're not going to talk about it too much,
but that was that was pretty prevalent throughout Here's another quote.
She had looked around the office one day and realized
that there were no women above a certain pay grade.
She spotted a pregnant woman in the company dining hall
and asked the people at her table how long the
company's maternity leave was, and none of the five, including
one department head, knew the answer because none of them
(21:07):
had ever seen an employee go on maternity leave. She
couldn't picture herself at the company ten years down the
road and resigned. After some thought. Her boss grumbled, this
is why we don't hire women. She replied, Women don't
stay because you make it impossible for us to stay. Yeah,
which is again something we see and talk.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
About to this day.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yep. There was another scene kind of earlier in the
university where Geong went to a career fair and there
were no women, hardly any women there.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Because they never came back.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Right, yep, Here is another quote of sort of like
a really poor like what is that called where we
have to do those human resources meetings? Yeah, yeah, all right,
you're at a meeting with a client company. The client
it's you know, hansy squeezing your shoulder, grazing your thigh,
(22:03):
you know what I mean? Yeah, how you handle that situation?
Let's start with missus Kim Gyong. Geong didn't want to
panic like an idiot or lose points by being too firm,
so she shot for the middle. I'll find a natural
way to leave the room, like going to the toilet
or getting research data. The second interviewee asserted that it
was clearly sexual harassment and that she would tell him
(22:23):
to stop right away. If he didn't, she would press charges.
The mail trustee raised an eyebrow and wrote something down,
which made Gijong flinch. I would check my outfit and
attitudes at the final interviewee, who had the longest to
think of an answer, to see if there were any
problems with it and fix anything that may have induced
the inappropriate behavior in the client.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And then.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Later I would break his arm. Geong shouted later at
the mirror, and you your question is sexual harassment, and
to ask that during a job interview, would you ask
the same question to male candidates?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And there's a lot of discussion too around like cameras
and women's rooms.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Which is actually a big problem right now in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, and posting those on those images on pornography sites
and blaming women for reporting it, for quote, turning the
men into predators. Being told to old ruin the company
ruined men's lives, which again, unfortunately sounds very familiar, but
that's sort of the same thing. It's like it's constantly
turning it on the women, like you're ruining his life
(23:37):
for the thing he did to you. Don't embarrass the company,
like all those sort of sort of conversations.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, it's a whole thing, and it keeps going with
When she meets up with clients, the division head, newly
appointed just three months before after climbing the ladder in
the product development division, gave her an unstoppable flu of
advice coming from experience, including backhanded compliments like you have
a nice jaw line and attractive nose. Just get your
eyelids done in your golden He asked if she had
(24:08):
a boyfriend and whipped out, felt like no, fund's going
where there's no goalie, and once women pop, they can't stop.
He wouldn't stop making her drink. I've passed by limit.
It won't be safe getting home. I'm done, she says,
Why so concerned when there are all these guys to
escort you home. Her thoughts is, your people are my
biggest concern, she thought to herself as she furtively emptied
her glass and the other empty cups and bowls at
(24:30):
the table. She also learned that the guys were paid
better from the very start, but the information started very
little in GM who followed the day's quota of shock
and disappointment, which is again not so incoming here. Although
the pay gap is higher in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Now, and we've talked about that a lot, especially in
tech jobs, about the kind of pressure to like kind
of isolate women, especially younger employees, and get them drunk
and then take them to a hotel room or something,
which is a really dangerous environment.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Here's another quote.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
For safety reasons, the company allowed pregnant employees to push
their work hours back by half an hour. When she
announced her pregnancy at work, one of her male colleagues exclaimed,
Lucky you, you get to come to work late.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Lucky me.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I get to wretch all the time and am unable
to eat or properly, and I'm always tired, sleepy and
soar all over. Giong wanted to say, but held it in.
She was disappointed by his insensitive remarks, which showed no
concern for all the discomforts and pains of pregnancy, but
she couldn't expect someone who wasn't her husband or family
to understand that.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I will say I think for the most part in
the US, I keep comparing it, but people are starting
to understand how laboring and how difficult pregnancy is. But
there's still this attitude that it's a free rise onhow
that you get special trement, which is completely absurd.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, Yeah, And there's definitely a lot around that in
this book of kind of the like I don't get
while we're not while we're treating this like a free rid, right,
including this coke. Because there was also a lot coming
from professionals like doctors, which is something we've also talked
about before. Quote the doctor chuckle to himself. Back in
(26:21):
my day, women used clubs to do the laundry, lit
fires to boil baby clothes, and crawled around to do
the sweeping and mopping. Don't you have a washing machine
for laundry and vacuum cleaner for cleaning women these days?
What if you got to whine about dirty laundry doesn't
march into the machine by itself. To young thought, the
clothes don't wash themselves with detergent and water, march back
(26:42):
out when they're done and hang themselves in clotheslines. The
vacuum doesn't roll around with a wet and dry rag,
wipe the floor and wash and dry the rags for you.
Have you ever even operated a washing machine or a
vacuum cleaner? M.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah. There's a lot of privilege in these conversations.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yes, oh yes, and a lot of just gaslighting of Flake.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Right, what do you have to write about? You've got
a washing machine now exactly?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And then they talk about once again the preference of
gender and children. It says it wasn't just the older generation.
Women of June's age shamelessly said things like my first
was a girl, so I was nervous until I found
that the sex of the second one. I can hold
my head up high around my in laws now that
I have a boy. Or I started getting myself all
(27:36):
kinds of expensive food when I found out I was
having a boy again, trying to celebrate and impress upon
the fact that boys were of more worth and therefore
worthy of celebrating and or pride.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, And I think this is a bigger conversation we
have been having, but about kind of the damage around
what intentional or not what women inflict on other women
of saying things like that and not realizing sometimes the
internalization that's going on, and especially I feel like a
(28:13):
lot of that's been happening around things like weight, our
body image. But also I saw a meme the other
day that was just like Disney Villains in the nineties outright,
you know, like Mustache Clear in the two thousands, it
was like hidden, you didn't know who they were, and
(28:36):
now it's in your generation trauma.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, yeah, And here's the final quote.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
In twenty four thirteen, around the time Kim Gieong left
the company, one in five married women in Korea quit
their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, or
the education of their young children. The workforce participation rate
of Korean women decreases significantly before and after childbirth. Is
percentage starts at sixty three point eight percent for women
(29:19):
age between twenty and twenty nine, drops to fifty eight
percent for women age thirty to thirty nine, and increases
again to sixty six point seven percent for women over forty.
So it again, we got to kind of see these numbers,
these statistics through Jiyoung's experience, and she did. She ended
(29:40):
up kind of being pressured to leave her job and
then being judged for doing so. Right, she got a
lot of a lot of judgment from people on public transportation,
like just people all around.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
And yeah, the story is a It's an interesting story
because it begins we see a scene of her having
breaks in which she becomes a different person. You see
her becoming her mother, You see her becoming her best
friend who passed away during childbirth, and then it goes
on to her being the actual baby and the husband
trying to figure out what's going on, and then her
being diagnosed with postpartum depression, and at the very end
(30:21):
of the book, we hear the doctor being like, Okay,
this is not it. This is not what we thought.
I don't know if it's disassociative, but that there's something
different to this in which her trauma has gone through
all this process. And even though her childhood was not
necessarily traumatic in the sense of then being poor and
or the mother being too strict, or the mother not
allowing her to find herself, which the mother really did,
(30:42):
wanting her to become who she wanted to be and
follow her dreams and not stop even very adamant about
her the girls having their own bedroom because she never
got to have that, being able to give all these things,
but because of the expectation of society, she fell apart
because she had to let go of so much, many
things to sacrifice for things around her, and no matter
what choice she made, she was wrong by societal standards,
(31:06):
and I think it's interesting. I know one of the
criticisms to the book was that we don't know the
full like the breakdown her life, now what is happening?
It was just more of a look back on a setup.
It was like a setup without an actual ending to it.
And I think that people were like, really, like what
just happened? But it was I think this was book
was a big commentary, and I know that Choe really
(31:32):
wanted to show her aside what she went through and
the things that she had to let go of. She
got to write a book finally, but it took all
of the suffering to get to this point, and I
find that interesting in itself. It is a commentary about
the lack of understanding and lack of rights for women
any social standards. So yeah, it definitely had a big
(31:53):
audience because as simple as the book was and it's
telling and as short as it was, it was as
a slat to the face of the society of South
Korea and where they were at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, and it clearly resonated with a lot of people
for it to get picked up like that. And also
one of the quotes I included where she's talking about
like there were all these you know, positive movements for
women's equality, and then there were all these like backtracking
and the mixed signals were so confusing. Like that I
(32:27):
felt like was really powerful because it is true. It's
like you're being told, oh, we expect you to do
all this stuff now, and you can go and be
anything you want to be, but then there's all these
other things that are telling you, no, you can't, right,
So I felt like that was a really powerful thing.
And then also what you said, like the fact that
there's like quote not an ending, I mean, and that's
(32:47):
this could be me reading too deep, but I feel
like that's sort of you know, the story is still
being written, like her story is still ongoing, This discussion
around women in Czechria is still ongoing. So yeah, I mean,
it really did. It caused a lot of conversation and
it a lot of people really connected with it.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, this is an award winning book in South Korea
as well as an award winning film in South Korea. Again,
it really brought a lot of attention to different things.
I think a lot of the caje abas that I've
been talking about actually came after the fact and started
telling this big story. I just watched one recently called
Because This is Her First Life, and it talks about
(33:28):
harassment in the workplace and women not being able to
move up. So it was really really interesting, a lot
more spicy, like unexpected. I was like, whoa, they're talking
about condoms here, what the hell? But the fact is
that they come to the point that women are starting
to get tired. But that conversation is yes, it looks
like society is moving forward, but tradition holds them back.
(33:48):
And it's really hard to move forward when you have
societal looks, whether it's other women, whether it's members of
your family telling you keep to the old ways, and
you will be criticized for doing the new ways.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
So you better be ready, right, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure
this is something we'll come back and talk about more.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Uh, because there was a lot going on.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It's again, we say this all the time, but these books,
a lot of times we have to choose shorter books,
not that we don't want to read them, but we
kind of are like time wise, but it packs so
much in and like so much in for for something
of its length, So highly recommend it. Go check it out,
(34:32):
and in the meantime, if you would like to recommend
another book for us for our next book club. You
can our email stuff and your mom stuff at iHeartMedia
dot com. You can find us on Twitter. A mostaff
podcasts are on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I've Never
Told You.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You can also find us on YouTube. We have a book.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You can pre order it at stuff you Should Read
Books dot com. Thanks as ow it's to our super
producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Steffan Never
Told you this production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from
my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
Apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to stef I Never Told You, a production
of iHeartRadio, and welcome to another edition of book Club.
Quick content warning for this one, we are going to
be briefly not in death, but briefly discussing things around
(00:29):
like eating disorders, unhealthy thoughts about weight, discussion around sexual assault,
sexual harassment, and mental health. Honestly, yeah, we're not really
going to be going too deep into these unless the
conversation takes us that way, which it sometimes does. But like,
if you're going to go read the book, nope, so yes,
today we are reading the international bestseller by Cho Nam
(00:52):
Jew translated by Jamie Chang Kim Jong born nineteen eighty two.
A novel, It was published in sixteen, and it follows
Kim Jeong's a life as a woman in South Korea
through schooling, college, family, jobs, marriage, having kids. Although there
is a lot of thoughts around not having kids in
all of the intersections that come with all of that
(01:15):
as a woman, it is both very personal and filled
with a lot of facts and statistics. It's like her life,
but also showcasing the broader strokes of what she's going
through in.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Her life right.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It begins with the main character experiencing a mental health
issue where she seemingly is impersonating other women, her mother
and grandmother, specifically, Her worried husband takes her to get
psychiatric help, and then from there the story steps back
to certain stages of Kim Jiong's life, her experience being
a second daughter of a family of three kids, the
(01:50):
youngest one being a son in a society that has
preference for sons. It details her experience as a child,
a student, a wife, her college experience, her career. She's
pressured to leave work by her husband to have a kid,
a son, and he promises he'll help out, but she's
in her mind his helping out is like things he
(02:10):
should have already been doing. She has a difficult birth
to a daughter and leaves work entirely to be a housewife,
something else she faces judgment for and people criticize her
for doing, basically calling her freeloader. And that's when her
mental health symptoms starts showing up. And Chunam juw took
(02:31):
two months to write the story, and she said she
was able to do it so quickly because the main
character's life was close to hers. The book has sold
more than one million copies as of November twenty eighteen,
making it the first million selling Korean novel since two
thousand and nine. And it was part of the feminist
movement in South Korea, including the Me Too movement there,
(02:53):
the four B movement which we've talked about, Escape the Corset.
It's been used as an example of a growing desire
to discuss gender roles in the country among a certain
group anyway, and a movie adaption came out in twenty nineteen.
But you're also telling me that it was part of
a big backlash, anti feminist backlash as well.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So yeah, just as a reminder, this came out in
twenty sixteen. As we talked about in our previous episodes
about feminism in South Korea, the current administration actually took
out Women's Equality Task Force, which is actually talked about
in the book as it was developed, So there's a
bit of backtracking in the government and that there's a
big anti feminist movement since then. We also talked about
(03:33):
the double standards when this book came out, when celebrities,
Korean celebrities were for this or speaking up about this
or loving this typically, if you were a woman who
loved the book, you were seen as being too feminists,
and people would rip the pictures up and be very
angry and talking about how they were ruining society. But
if a man liked it, they were upstanding, good men.
(03:56):
Look at them, how kind they are, They're heroes type
of thing. It was really interesting. It's no different today. Yeah.
The movie came out in twenty nineteen with My Boy
Gong You. I haven't watched it yet because it's too sad.
I can't handle a lot of kan stuff right now.
It's already hard. But yeah, there's a lot of conversation
(04:18):
around it. It did push a lot of feminist movements,
a lot of conversation, a lot of opening of the eyes.
But again, it also started up a lot of anti
feminist rhetoric talking about how women were taking men's jobs.
It's been a pivotal point for the current administration as
this platform to get more votes from the anti feminist
(04:38):
group of people.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Interesting, it's sad.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, yeah, And there's been a lot discussion happening around this,
this book and the movie specifically, and the role it
played in all of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So it is really interesting if you want to look
up more.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And one of the biggest things throughout this the book
is tracing gender roles in certain stages of life. Yeah,
so let us get into some of these themes, right.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
So when Kim Giong was born, Omisok held the input
in her arms and wept because there was a girl saying,
I'm sorry the little girls, she said, hanging her head.
Coban soon repeated warmly to her daughter in law, It's okay,
the third will be a boy. Of course, if you're
at all familiar with any type of Korean history and
(05:32):
types and it actually I guess it's Asian history, and
in general when it comes to children, overpopulation and what
gender is preferred. You have a big conversation about female babies,
little girls being discarded because there's too many. Whether it's
through abortion or whether it's through adoption, or whether it's
just neglect. There's a lot of really sad history. We
(05:56):
know with a one child policy, which was not necessarily
a part of Korea. It was more so in China.
But that's the mindset did happen in Korea because the
men are more likely to care for all the following
things and be able to take care of the entire
entire group of family and community. So yeah, there was
(06:18):
a lot of that conversation for the longest time, which
is actually not true. I found this out. For the
longest time, a lot of the orphanages were thought to
be filled with mainly young girls, but it seemed that
there was a lot of young boys that were adopted
from Korea more so than girls at one point in time.
So very confusing. There's a lot of eugenics on that side,
(06:39):
but we're not going to talk about that quite yet.
But yeah, the obvious conversation is you want a boy,
the blessing is the boy. Boys will always do more
boys are taken care of, boys are coddled. This is
that idea. The book goes on. This was the time
when the government had implemented birth control policies called family
(07:00):
planning to keep population growth under control. Abortion due to
medical problems had been legal for ten years at that point,
and checking the sex of the fetus and aborting females
was a common practice, as if daughters was a medical problem.
This went on through the nineteen eighties and in the
early nineteen nineties, the very height of the male to
female ratio imbalance when the ratio of the third child
(07:23):
and beyond was over two to one. Yeah, so, as
I'm explaining, the desire to have young boys was much higher.
You were prized much more so than girls.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Right, And the author gives a lot of examples of
that throughout the book. Here's a quote. It was a
given that fresh rice hot at the cooker was served
in the order of father, brother, and grandmother. That perfect
pieces of tofuo dumplings and patties were the brothers. All
the girls ate the ones that fell apart. The brother
had chopsticks, socks, long underwear, and school and lunchbags that matched.
(07:58):
All the girls may do with whatever was available. If
there were two umbrellas, the girls shared. If there were
two blankets, the girl shared. If there were two treats,
the girls shared. It didn't occur to the child you young,
that her brother was receiving special treatment, and so she
wasn't even jealous.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
We actually saw an example of this in a Strong
woman Bondsoon. If you remember when she uh cries to
her mother because she's always like, let your brother have it.
Give this to your brother. You're writing away from your brother,
and she finally had enough, She's like, why is it
always him? And actually there's a lot of theme to
that in different K dramas where young women are actually
starting to stand up for themselves, like why is it
(08:36):
him over me? Like what makes him more important than me?
So it's very very interesting.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, and she has a couple a lot of
times the quotes in these book clubs get unwieldy because
I just want to quote.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
The whole book, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And there was another quote that I had in here
that I got rid of that was kind of to
that point. If the older sister being like, you need
to eat, moms, stop giving your noodles to him, Like
stop doing this, We're all going to eat our own portions,
and it essentially devolving into like an argument of like,
well he's the youngest, the mom says, and the older
(09:13):
sister is like, no, he's the boy.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
So there were a lot of examples of that through
throughout the book. But there were a lot of examples
of what you were talking about, of sort of girls
and women questioning these things. And there was one story
where while Gejung was in school, there was this thing
where a bunch of the girls weren't be they didn't
(09:37):
have time to eat because they served food in order
of like boys first, girls second, but there was an
allotted time for eating, and so like the girls didn't
have as much time to eat, and them questioning that
and protesting that. So here's a quote around that number
one on the roster was a boy. Everything began with
(09:58):
the boys, and that felt like the right natural thing.
Boys lined up first, Boys led every procession, no matter
where they were headed. Boys gave their presentations first, and
boys had their homework checked first, while the girls quietly
waited their turn board, sometimes relieved that they weren't going first,
but never thinking this was a strange practice, just as
(10:18):
we never question why men's National Registry numbers begin with
a one and women's begin with a two. And then
I liked this quote. Teachers were in the habit of
saying that girls are smarter. Students also thought that girls
were smarter, more mature, and better with detailed work, but
they somehow always elected boys to be class monitors.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, I can relate to this.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Right, here's a thing like I've read so many reviews
and I want to keep talking about it, about how
all wow, Korea does this and all Korea is so
sad and doesn't like the US isn't that far behind. No,
there's not a thing. There's an extreme and there's a
level of violence that have happened in South Korea that's
not looked down on today, which is really really sad.
But it's just quiet here, Like it's just quietly said
(11:05):
here or and or ignored and like calm down. It
is no different, it's just less seen or less talked about.
Oh and we have a whole conversation about periods. And
I appreciated the conversation in this because I'm like, yeah,
I get this. So as Giong lay on her stomach
on the floor to do homework, she clutched her her
(11:26):
tramping lower abdomen and repeated to herself, I don't understand.
Half the population in the world goes through this every month.
If a pharmaceutical company were to develop an effective pill
specifically for menstrual cramps, not the quote pain medication that
makes you sick, they would make a fortune. Her sister
filled a plastic bottle with hot water, wrapped in a
towel and passed it to her. You're right in a
(11:47):
world where doctors can cure cancer and do heart transplant.
There isn't a single pill to treat menstrual cramps, her
sister pointed at her own stomach. The world wants our
urits to be drug free, like sacred grounds in a
virgin forest. Yeah, I don't think about that. We talk
about that on so many levels, about birth control pills
and how ineffective and or real dangerous it is, but
(12:09):
no one really cares.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Right really, and I care.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I like legitimately had this almost this exact same conversation
with a friend of mine where she was like, I
don't get why half of us just are expected to
just do this, like deal with this on a regular
basis and still perform and not like take a break break.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
No, everybody feels shame if we like don't ourselves and yeah, like,
oh no, I'm like, what the hell this is? This
is the world's fault. You should all take the blame.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Sorry, So going on talking about school as the next thing,
which is a big theme and kind of like triggering
a little bit for me. Uh So, here's a quote.
The school dress code was strict expect for girls. One time,
a female student who was held up at the school
gate for wearing sneakers. Protested it was unfair to allow
t shirts and sneakers to mail students only. The student
(13:09):
discipline teacher explained that it was because boys were more
physically active. Quote boys kids sit still for ten minutes
between classes. They ran outside to play soccer, basketball, baseball,
or even a mucktubucky. You can't expect kids like that
to button their shirts all the way to the top
and wear dress shoes. And you think girls don't play
sports because they don't want to. We can't play because
(13:31):
it's uncomfortable to play wearing skirts, tights, and dress shoes.
When I was in elementary school, I went outside every
break to play red rover, hopscotch and skip rope. And
as a punishment for the dress code violation and backtalk,
the female student had to do laps of squat walk
around the school field. The teacher told her to hold
the hymn of her skirt together, so it was thought
to reveal her underwear, but the girl refused. Her underwear
(13:53):
showed each time she took a step in a squat position.
The teacher stopped her after one lap. Another student called
down to the teacher office for dress code violation. Asked
her why she didn't hold her hemp together, and she said,
I wanted the teacher to see with his own eyes
just how uncomfortable this outfit is. And again, this is
very familiar to what is happening today in the US,
(14:15):
not the squatting part, but the dress code.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yes, yes, and oh yeah, I mean we talked about
that in like our sports episodes, or about the uniforms
required for women.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
In professional sporting events.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
As opposed to men. Here's another quote. It was a
wide world out there, filled with perverts on the bus
and underground. Many suspicious hands grazed her bottom and breast.
(14:53):
Some crazy bastards rubed themselves up against women's thighs and backs.
The girls were disgusted by older boys at Cram School,
church and tutoring sessions, pawing their shoulders, stroking their naps,
and sneaking a peek at their breast through button down
shirts and T shirts with low cut netlines. But the
girls couldn't let out a single horrified cry. All they
could do was remove themselves from the scene. School was
(15:15):
no better. There were always male teachers who reached up
and pinched the soft flesh of the underarm, padded students
on the bottom, or ran their hands down the spine
over the bra strap. Her tenth grade homeroom teacher was
a man in his fifties who carried around a pointer
that had a hand pointing just the index figure on
the tip, which he used to poke girls in the
(15:35):
breast under the guy's drawing attention to the missing name tags,
or to lift girl's skirts to quote check their uniforms.
When he left the stick on the podium by mistake
one day after morning announcements, one classmate with heavy breast,
whose name tag the teacher often checked, marched to the front,
threw the stick on the floor and trampled on it
over and over as she wailed. The girls near the
(15:58):
front quickly picked up the broken pieces and got rid
of them, and her best friend hugged her and comforted her. Yeah, yep, yep,
I had a teacher like that too. We all knew
about him. And then there's a whole story that she
tells about this guy who's following her on a bus
(16:19):
and he's threatening her, and he kind of is like, well,
you're always smiling at me, And then when she finally
kind of gets away from him, and with the help
of a woman who notices, like, oh, of what she's
going through. Her father kind of yells at her for
wearing short skirts. Fur a quote talking to people, which
(16:40):
also feels very familiar. Yes, but here's some quotes around that.
G Young felt she should thank her and called her again.
The woman said she was glad you Young was fine,
and suddenly declared, it's not your fault. There were far
too many crazy men in the world. She'd had her
share run ins with these people, and the problem was
with them, not with the women. Hearing this made Young cry,
(17:01):
trying to swallow her tears. She couldn't say anything back.
And then it continues. G Young quit the cram school
for a long time. She couldn't go near a bus
stop after dark. She stopped smiling at people and did
not make eye contact with strangers. She was afraid of
all men, and she screamed sometimes when she ran into
her younger brother in the stairwell. But she kept thinking
(17:21):
about what the woman said, not my fault. There's far
more great guys out there. If the woman hadn't said
that to her, g Young would have lived in fear
for even longer.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's kind of one of.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Those things where it's like so sad that she quit
and she felt all of these things because we do
see that, we see women being forced out of things
so often and quitting because of things like this. But
it's also nice that she had this woman saying like, no,
it's not your fault, and that those words meant so much. Yeah,
(17:58):
but unfortunately this is not the last of that type
of treatment you young would experience. So now we're moving
kind of the like jobs and careers section. So here's
a quote. Gone were the days when parents thought girls
didn't have to get good grades or receive the same
education as boys. It had long since been the norm
for girls, like boys, to put on a uniform, carry
(18:18):
a backpack, and attend school. Girls thought about what they
would like to do when they grew up, just as
boys did. They planned their careers and competed to achieve
their goals. This was a time of widespread social support
for women's ambitions. In nineteen ninety nine, the year Kim
and Young turned twenty, new legislation against gender discrimination was introduced,
and in two thousand and one, the year Kim geeoung
(18:39):
turned twenty, the Ministry of Gender Equality was formed, but
in certain pivotal moments in women's lives, the woman stigma
reared its head to obscure their vision, stay their hands,
and hold them back. The mixed signals were confusing and disconcerting. Yeah,
it was kind of like what you were talking about
with all kind of the back yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, and unfortunately they're on the back. Yeah. And then
we have this conversation where she is listening in on
what men talk about when women are around kind of yeah.
So here it is ew, that's like chewing gum. Someone
else spit out set of familiar voice. It was an
older member of the club who enjoyed drinking but didn't
(19:23):
force others to do so, and often bought the younger
members food, but avoided eating with them unless they felt uncomfortable.
She'd also had a good opinion of his level headed,
practical way of handling things. Gian couldn't believe her ears.
She listened harder, but couldn't deny that it was him.
He could have been drunk, or perhaps he had said
what he said to overcompensate for being found out about
(19:44):
his feelings for her, and had to say something harsh
to discourage the guys from playing matchmaker. She thought of
many possibilities, none of which helped to make her feel
less devastated. Even the usually reasonable, sane ones verbally degrade women,
even the women they had feelings for. That's what I am, gum,
someone spat out.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, it's pretty brutal because they kind of like had
a good relationship. And she overheard this, and then the
next day the guy is all like, oh no, I'm
still nice. I'm still the good guy and being nice
to her. But after she'd heard this, this.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So it was. It was pretty It was a tough scene.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, here's another one. Sometimes when she was exhausted, she
felt like giving up. And John's cliched wards of encouragement
once you get to college you will lose weight and
get a boyfriend truly inspired her because on young actually
did lose weight and get a boyfriend in college.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, this was a pretty big theme.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Uh, and we're not going to talk about it too much,
but that was that was pretty prevalent throughout Here's another quote.
She had looked around the office one day and realized
that there were no women above a certain pay grade.
She spotted a pregnant woman in the company dining hall
and asked the people at her table how long the
company's maternity leave was, and none of the five, including
one department head, knew the answer because none of them
(21:07):
had ever seen an employee go on maternity leave. She
couldn't picture herself at the company ten years down the
road and resigned. After some thought. Her boss grumbled, this
is why we don't hire women. She replied, Women don't
stay because you make it impossible for us to stay. Yeah,
which is again something we see and talk.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
About to this day.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yep. There was another scene kind of earlier in the
university where Geong went to a career fair and there
were no women, hardly any women there.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Because they never came back.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Right, yep, Here is another quote of sort of like
a really poor like what is that called where we
have to do those human resources meetings? Yeah, yeah, all right,
you're at a meeting with a client company. The client
it's you know, hansy squeezing your shoulder, grazing your thigh,
(22:03):
you know what I mean? Yeah, how you handle that situation?
Let's start with missus Kim Gyong. Geong didn't want to
panic like an idiot or lose points by being too firm,
so she shot for the middle. I'll find a natural
way to leave the room, like going to the toilet
or getting research data. The second interviewee asserted that it
was clearly sexual harassment and that she would tell him
(22:23):
to stop right away. If he didn't, she would press charges.
The mail trustee raised an eyebrow and wrote something down,
which made Gijong flinch. I would check my outfit and
attitudes at the final interviewee, who had the longest to
think of an answer, to see if there were any
problems with it and fix anything that may have induced
the inappropriate behavior in the client.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And then.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Later I would break his arm. Geong shouted later at
the mirror, and you your question is sexual harassment, and
to ask that during a job interview, would you ask
the same question to male candidates?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And there's a lot of discussion too around like cameras
and women's rooms.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Which is actually a big problem right now in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, and posting those on those images on pornography sites
and blaming women for reporting it, for quote, turning the
men into predators. Being told to old ruin the company
ruined men's lives, which again, unfortunately sounds very familiar, but
that's sort of the same thing. It's like it's constantly
turning it on the women, like you're ruining his life
(23:37):
for the thing he did to you. Don't embarrass the company,
like all those sort of sort of conversations.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, it's a whole thing, and it keeps going with
When she meets up with clients, the division head, newly
appointed just three months before after climbing the ladder in
the product development division, gave her an unstoppable flu of
advice coming from experience, including backhanded compliments like you have
a nice jaw line and attractive nose. Just get your
eyelids done in your golden He asked if she had
(24:08):
a boyfriend and whipped out, felt like no, fund's going
where there's no goalie, and once women pop, they can't stop.
He wouldn't stop making her drink. I've passed by limit.
It won't be safe getting home. I'm done, she says,
Why so concerned when there are all these guys to
escort you home. Her thoughts is, your people are my
biggest concern, she thought to herself as she furtively emptied
her glass and the other empty cups and bowls at
(24:30):
the table. She also learned that the guys were paid
better from the very start, but the information started very
little in GM who followed the day's quota of shock
and disappointment, which is again not so incoming here. Although
the pay gap is higher in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Now, and we've talked about that a lot, especially in
tech jobs, about the kind of pressure to like kind
of isolate women, especially younger employees, and get them drunk
and then take them to a hotel room or something,
which is a really dangerous environment.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Here's another quote.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
For safety reasons, the company allowed pregnant employees to push
their work hours back by half an hour. When she
announced her pregnancy at work, one of her male colleagues exclaimed,
Lucky you, you get to come to work late.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Lucky me.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I get to wretch all the time and am unable
to eat or properly, and I'm always tired, sleepy and
soar all over. Giong wanted to say, but held it in.
She was disappointed by his insensitive remarks, which showed no
concern for all the discomforts and pains of pregnancy, but
she couldn't expect someone who wasn't her husband or family
to understand that.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
I will say I think for the most part in
the US, I keep comparing it, but people are starting
to understand how laboring and how difficult pregnancy is. But
there's still this attitude that it's a free rise onhow
that you get special trement, which is completely absurd.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Right, Yeah, And there's definitely a lot around that in
this book of kind of the like I don't get
while we're not while we're treating this like a free rid, right,
including this coke. Because there was also a lot coming
from professionals like doctors, which is something we've also talked
about before. Quote the doctor chuckle to himself. Back in
(26:21):
my day, women used clubs to do the laundry, lit
fires to boil baby clothes, and crawled around to do
the sweeping and mopping. Don't you have a washing machine
for laundry and vacuum cleaner for cleaning women these days?
What if you got to whine about dirty laundry doesn't
march into the machine by itself. To young thought, the
clothes don't wash themselves with detergent and water, march back
(26:42):
out when they're done and hang themselves in clotheslines. The
vacuum doesn't roll around with a wet and dry rag,
wipe the floor and wash and dry the rags for you.
Have you ever even operated a washing machine or a
vacuum cleaner? M.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah. There's a lot of privilege in these conversations.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yes, oh yes, and a lot of just gaslighting of Flake.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Right, what do you have to write about? You've got
a washing machine now exactly?
Speaker 3 (27:15):
And then they talk about once again the preference of
gender and children. It says it wasn't just the older generation.
Women of June's age shamelessly said things like my first
was a girl, so I was nervous until I found
that the sex of the second one. I can hold
my head up high around my in laws now that
I have a boy. Or I started getting myself all
(27:36):
kinds of expensive food when I found out I was
having a boy again, trying to celebrate and impress upon
the fact that boys were of more worth and therefore
worthy of celebrating and or pride.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, And I think this is a bigger conversation we
have been having, but about kind of the damage around
what intentional or not what women inflict on other women
of saying things like that and not realizing sometimes the
internalization that's going on, and especially I feel like a
(28:13):
lot of that's been happening around things like weight, our
body image. But also I saw a meme the other
day that was just like Disney Villains in the nineties outright,
you know, like Mustache Clear in the two thousands, it
was like hidden, you didn't know who they were, and
(28:36):
now it's in your generation trauma.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, yeah, And here's the final quote.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
In twenty four thirteen, around the time Kim Gieong left
the company, one in five married women in Korea quit
their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, or
the education of their young children. The workforce participation rate
of Korean women decreases significantly before and after childbirth. Is
percentage starts at sixty three point eight percent for women
(29:19):
age between twenty and twenty nine, drops to fifty eight
percent for women age thirty to thirty nine, and increases
again to sixty six point seven percent for women over forty.
So it again, we got to kind of see these numbers,
these statistics through Jiyoung's experience, and she did. She ended
(29:40):
up kind of being pressured to leave her job and
then being judged for doing so. Right, she got a
lot of a lot of judgment from people on public transportation,
like just people all around.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
And yeah, the story is a It's an interesting story
because it begins we see a scene of her having
breaks in which she becomes a different person. You see
her becoming her mother, You see her becoming her best
friend who passed away during childbirth, and then it goes
on to her being the actual baby and the husband
trying to figure out what's going on, and then her
being diagnosed with postpartum depression, and at the very end
(30:21):
of the book, we hear the doctor being like, Okay,
this is not it. This is not what we thought.
I don't know if it's disassociative, but that there's something
different to this in which her trauma has gone through
all this process. And even though her childhood was not
necessarily traumatic in the sense of then being poor and
or the mother being too strict, or the mother not
allowing her to find herself, which the mother really did,
(30:42):
wanting her to become who she wanted to be and
follow her dreams and not stop even very adamant about
her the girls having their own bedroom because she never
got to have that, being able to give all these things,
but because of the expectation of society, she fell apart
because she had to let go of so much, many
things to sacrifice for things around her, and no matter
what choice she made, she was wrong by societal standards,
(31:06):
and I think it's interesting. I know one of the
criticisms to the book was that we don't know the
full like the breakdown her life, now what is happening?
It was just more of a look back on a setup.
It was like a setup without an actual ending to it.
And I think that people were like, really, like what
just happened? But it was I think this was book
was a big commentary, and I know that Choe really
(31:32):
wanted to show her aside what she went through and
the things that she had to let go of. She
got to write a book finally, but it took all
of the suffering to get to this point, and I
find that interesting in itself. It is a commentary about
the lack of understanding and lack of rights for women
any social standards. So yeah, it definitely had a big
(31:53):
audience because as simple as the book was and it's
telling and as short as it was, it was as
a slat to the face of the society of South
Korea and where they were at that point in time.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah, and it clearly resonated with a lot of people
for it to get picked up like that. And also
one of the quotes I included where she's talking about
like there were all these you know, positive movements for
women's equality, and then there were all these like backtracking
and the mixed signals were so confusing. Like that I
(32:27):
felt like was really powerful because it is true. It's
like you're being told, oh, we expect you to do
all this stuff now, and you can go and be
anything you want to be, but then there's all these
other things that are telling you, no, you can't, right,
So I felt like that was a really powerful thing.
And then also what you said, like the fact that
there's like quote not an ending, I mean, and that's
(32:47):
this could be me reading too deep, but I feel
like that's sort of you know, the story is still
being written, like her story is still ongoing, This discussion
around women in Czechria is still ongoing. So yeah, I mean,
it really did. It caused a lot of conversation and
it a lot of people really connected with it.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, this is an award winning book in South Korea
as well as an award winning film in South Korea. Again,
it really brought a lot of attention to different things.
I think a lot of the caje abas that I've
been talking about actually came after the fact and started
telling this big story. I just watched one recently called
Because This is Her First Life, and it talks about
(33:28):
harassment in the workplace and women not being able to
move up. So it was really really interesting, a lot
more spicy, like unexpected. I was like, whoa, they're talking
about condoms here, what the hell? But the fact is
that they come to the point that women are starting
to get tired. But that conversation is yes, it looks
like society is moving forward, but tradition holds them back.
(33:48):
And it's really hard to move forward when you have
societal looks, whether it's other women, whether it's members of
your family telling you keep to the old ways, and
you will be criticized for doing the new ways.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
So you better be ready, right, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure
this is something we'll come back and talk about more.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Uh, because there was a lot going on.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It's again, we say this all the time, but these books,
a lot of times we have to choose shorter books,
not that we don't want to read them, but we
kind of are like time wise, but it packs so
much in and like so much in for for something
of its length, So highly recommend it. Go check it out,
(34:32):
and in the meantime, if you would like to recommend
another book for us for our next book club. You
can our email stuff and your mom stuff at iHeartMedia
dot com. You can find us on Twitter. A mostaff
podcasts are on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I've Never
Told You.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
You can also find us on YouTube. We have a book.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
You can pre order it at stuff you Should Read
Books dot com. Thanks as ow it's to our super
producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Steffan Never
Told you this production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from
my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app,
Apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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