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Book Club: Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: I'm welcome to stef I Never Told You, a production
0:08
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio, and welcome to another edition of book Club.
0:23
Speaker 2: Quick content warning for this one, we are going to
0:26
Speaker 2: be briefly not in death, but briefly discussing things around
0:29
Speaker 2: like eating disorders, unhealthy thoughts about weight, discussion around sexual assault,
0:34
Speaker 2: sexual harassment, and mental health. Honestly, yeah, we're not really
0:37
Speaker 2: going to be going too deep into these unless the
0:39
Speaker 2: conversation takes us that way, which it sometimes does. But like,
0:45
Speaker 2: if you're going to go read the book, nope, so yes,
0:49
Speaker 2: today we are reading the international bestseller by Cho Nam
0:52
Speaker 2: Jew translated by Jamie Chang Kim Jong born nineteen eighty two.
0:58
Speaker 2: A novel, It was published in sixteen, and it follows
1:01
Speaker 2: Kim Jeong's a life as a woman in South Korea
1:04
Speaker 2: through schooling, college, family, jobs, marriage, having kids. Although there
1:09
Speaker 2: is a lot of thoughts around not having kids in
1:11
Speaker 2: all of the intersections that come with all of that
1:15
Speaker 2: as a woman, it is both very personal and filled
1:18
Speaker 2: with a lot of facts and statistics. It's like her life,
1:21
Speaker 2: but also showcasing the broader strokes of what she's going
1:26
Speaker 2: through in.
1:27
Speaker 1: Her life right.
1:29
Speaker 3: Yes.
1:29
Speaker 2: It begins with the main character experiencing a mental health
1:32
Speaker 2: issue where she seemingly is impersonating other women, her mother
1:36
Speaker 2: and grandmother, specifically, Her worried husband takes her to get
1:40
Speaker 2: psychiatric help, and then from there the story steps back
1:44
Speaker 2: to certain stages of Kim Jiong's life, her experience being
1:47
Speaker 2: a second daughter of a family of three kids, the
1:50
Speaker 2: youngest one being a son in a society that has
1:53
Speaker 2: preference for sons. It details her experience as a child,
1:56
Speaker 2: a student, a wife, her college experience, her career. She's
2:00
Speaker 2: pressured to leave work by her husband to have a kid,
2:04
Speaker 2: a son, and he promises he'll help out, but she's
2:07
Speaker 2: in her mind his helping out is like things he
2:10
Speaker 2: should have already been doing. She has a difficult birth
2:14
Speaker 2: to a daughter and leaves work entirely to be a housewife,
2:17
Speaker 2: something else she faces judgment for and people criticize her
2:21
Speaker 2: for doing, basically calling her freeloader. And that's when her
2:26
Speaker 2: mental health symptoms starts showing up. And Chunam juw took
2:31
Speaker 2: two months to write the story, and she said she
2:33
Speaker 2: was able to do it so quickly because the main
2:35
Speaker 2: character's life was close to hers. The book has sold
2:39
Speaker 2: more than one million copies as of November twenty eighteen,
2:42
Speaker 2: making it the first million selling Korean novel since two
2:46
Speaker 2: thousand and nine. And it was part of the feminist
2:49
Speaker 2: movement in South Korea, including the Me Too movement there,
2:53
Speaker 2: the four B movement which we've talked about, Escape the Corset.
2:57
Speaker 2: It's been used as an example of a growing desire
2:59
Speaker 2: to discuss gender roles in the country among a certain
3:02
Speaker 2: group anyway, and a movie adaption came out in twenty nineteen.
3:05
Speaker 2: But you're also telling me that it was part of
3:08
Speaker 2: a big backlash, anti feminist backlash as well.
3:12
Speaker 3: So yeah, just as a reminder, this came out in
3:14
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. As we talked about in our previous episodes
3:17
Speaker 3: about feminism in South Korea, the current administration actually took
3:21
Speaker 3: out Women's Equality Task Force, which is actually talked about
3:25
Speaker 3: in the book as it was developed, So there's a
3:27
Speaker 3: bit of backtracking in the government and that there's a
3:30
Speaker 3: big anti feminist movement since then. We also talked about
3:33
Speaker 3: the double standards when this book came out, when celebrities,
3:38
Speaker 3: Korean celebrities were for this or speaking up about this
3:41
Speaker 3: or loving this typically, if you were a woman who
3:44
Speaker 3: loved the book, you were seen as being too feminists,
3:47
Speaker 3: and people would rip the pictures up and be very
3:49
Speaker 3: angry and talking about how they were ruining society. But
3:52
Speaker 3: if a man liked it, they were upstanding, good men.
3:56
Speaker 3: Look at them, how kind they are, They're heroes type
3:59
Speaker 3: of thing. It was really interesting. It's no different today. Yeah.
4:03
Speaker 3: The movie came out in twenty nineteen with My Boy
4:06
Speaker 3: Gong You. I haven't watched it yet because it's too sad.
4:10
Speaker 3: I can't handle a lot of kan stuff right now.
4:14
Speaker 3: It's already hard. But yeah, there's a lot of conversation
4:18
Speaker 3: around it. It did push a lot of feminist movements,
4:20
Speaker 3: a lot of conversation, a lot of opening of the eyes.
4:23
Speaker 3: But again, it also started up a lot of anti
4:26
Speaker 3: feminist rhetoric talking about how women were taking men's jobs.
4:31
Speaker 3: It's been a pivotal point for the current administration as
4:35
Speaker 3: this platform to get more votes from the anti feminist
4:38
Speaker 3: group of people.
4:39
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
4:40
Speaker 3: Interesting, it's sad.
4:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And there's been a lot discussion happening around this,
4:47
Speaker 2: this book and the movie specifically, and the role it
4:50
Speaker 2: played in all of that stuff.
4:52
Speaker 1: So it is really interesting if you want to look
4:55
Speaker 1: up more.
4:56
Speaker 2: And one of the biggest things throughout this the book
5:00
Speaker 2: is tracing gender roles in certain stages of life. Yeah,
5:07
Speaker 2: so let us get into some of these themes, right.
5:11
Speaker 3: So when Kim Giong was born, Omisok held the input
5:15
Speaker 3: in her arms and wept because there was a girl saying,
5:18
Speaker 3: I'm sorry the little girls, she said, hanging her head.
5:21
Speaker 3: Coban soon repeated warmly to her daughter in law, It's okay,
5:24
Speaker 3: the third will be a boy. Of course, if you're
5:28
Speaker 3: at all familiar with any type of Korean history and
5:32
Speaker 3: types and it actually I guess it's Asian history, and
5:36
Speaker 3: in general when it comes to children, overpopulation and what
5:39
Speaker 3: gender is preferred. You have a big conversation about female babies,
5:46
Speaker 3: little girls being discarded because there's too many. Whether it's
5:49
Speaker 3: through abortion or whether it's through adoption, or whether it's
5:52
Speaker 3: just neglect. There's a lot of really sad history. We
5:56
Speaker 3: know with a one child policy, which was not necessarily
5:59
Speaker 3: a part of Korea. It was more so in China.
6:01
Speaker 3: But that's the mindset did happen in Korea because the
6:06
Speaker 3: men are more likely to care for all the following
6:09
Speaker 3: things and be able to take care of the entire
6:14
Speaker 3: entire group of family and community. So yeah, there was
6:18
Speaker 3: a lot of that conversation for the longest time, which
6:21
Speaker 3: is actually not true. I found this out. For the
6:23
Speaker 3: longest time, a lot of the orphanages were thought to
6:26
Speaker 3: be filled with mainly young girls, but it seemed that
6:30
Speaker 3: there was a lot of young boys that were adopted
6:32
Speaker 3: from Korea more so than girls at one point in time.
6:35
Speaker 3: So very confusing. There's a lot of eugenics on that side,
6:39
Speaker 3: but we're not going to talk about that quite yet.
6:43
Speaker 3: But yeah, the obvious conversation is you want a boy,
6:46
Speaker 3: the blessing is the boy. Boys will always do more
6:49
Speaker 3: boys are taken care of, boys are coddled. This is
6:53
Speaker 3: that idea. The book goes on. This was the time
6:57
Speaker 3: when the government had implemented birth control policies called family
7:00
Speaker 3: planning to keep population growth under control. Abortion due to
7:04
Speaker 3: medical problems had been legal for ten years at that point,
7:07
Speaker 3: and checking the sex of the fetus and aborting females
7:10
Speaker 3: was a common practice, as if daughters was a medical problem.
7:15
Speaker 3: This went on through the nineteen eighties and in the
7:17
Speaker 3: early nineteen nineties, the very height of the male to
7:19
Speaker 3: female ratio imbalance when the ratio of the third child
7:23
Speaker 3: and beyond was over two to one. Yeah, so, as
7:26
Speaker 3: I'm explaining, the desire to have young boys was much higher.
7:31
Speaker 3: You were prized much more so than girls.
7:35
Speaker 2: Right, And the author gives a lot of examples of
7:38
Speaker 2: that throughout the book. Here's a quote. It was a
7:42
Speaker 2: given that fresh rice hot at the cooker was served
7:44
Speaker 2: in the order of father, brother, and grandmother. That perfect
7:48
Speaker 2: pieces of tofuo dumplings and patties were the brothers. All
7:51
Speaker 2: the girls ate the ones that fell apart. The brother
7:53
Speaker 2: had chopsticks, socks, long underwear, and school and lunchbags that matched.
7:58
Speaker 2: All the girls may do with whatever was available. If
8:00
Speaker 2: there were two umbrellas, the girls shared. If there were
8:03
Speaker 2: two blankets, the girl shared. If there were two treats,
8:06
Speaker 2: the girls shared. It didn't occur to the child you young,
8:09
Speaker 2: that her brother was receiving special treatment, and so she
8:13
Speaker 2: wasn't even jealous.
8:14
Speaker 3: We actually saw an example of this in a Strong
8:17
Speaker 3: woman Bondsoon. If you remember when she uh cries to
8:21
Speaker 3: her mother because she's always like, let your brother have it.
8:24
Speaker 3: Give this to your brother. You're writing away from your brother,
8:27
Speaker 3: and she finally had enough, She's like, why is it
8:29
Speaker 3: always him? And actually there's a lot of theme to
8:32
Speaker 3: that in different K dramas where young women are actually
8:34
Speaker 3: starting to stand up for themselves, like why is it
8:36
Speaker 3: him over me? Like what makes him more important than me?
8:40
Speaker 3: So it's very very interesting.
8:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and she has a couple a lot of
8:45
Speaker 2: times the quotes in these book clubs get unwieldy because
8:50
Speaker 2: I just want to quote.
8:51
Speaker 1: The whole book, you know.
8:53
Speaker 2: And there was another quote that I had in here
8:54
Speaker 2: that I got rid of that was kind of to
8:56
Speaker 2: that point. If the older sister being like, you need
9:00
Speaker 2: to eat, moms, stop giving your noodles to him, Like
9:03
Speaker 2: stop doing this, We're all going to eat our own portions,
9:07
Speaker 2: and it essentially devolving into like an argument of like,
9:10
Speaker 2: well he's the youngest, the mom says, and the older
9:13
Speaker 2: sister is like, no, he's the boy.
9:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:16
Speaker 2: So there were a lot of examples of that through
9:19
Speaker 2: throughout the book. But there were a lot of examples
9:22
Speaker 2: of what you were talking about, of sort of girls
9:25
Speaker 2: and women questioning these things. And there was one story
9:28
Speaker 2: where while Gejung was in school, there was this thing
9:35
Speaker 2: where a bunch of the girls weren't be they didn't
9:37
Speaker 2: have time to eat because they served food in order
9:40
Speaker 2: of like boys first, girls second, but there was an
9:44
Speaker 2: allotted time for eating, and so like the girls didn't
9:47
Speaker 2: have as much time to eat, and them questioning that
9:51
Speaker 2: and protesting that. So here's a quote around that number
9:55
Speaker 2: one on the roster was a boy. Everything began with
9:58
Speaker 2: the boys, and that felt like the right natural thing.
10:01
Speaker 2: Boys lined up first, Boys led every procession, no matter
10:04
Speaker 2: where they were headed. Boys gave their presentations first, and
10:08
Speaker 2: boys had their homework checked first, while the girls quietly
10:11
Speaker 2: waited their turn board, sometimes relieved that they weren't going first,
10:15
Speaker 2: but never thinking this was a strange practice, just as
10:18
Speaker 2: we never question why men's National Registry numbers begin with
10:21
Speaker 2: a one and women's begin with a two. And then
10:25
Speaker 2: I liked this quote. Teachers were in the habit of
10:28
Speaker 2: saying that girls are smarter. Students also thought that girls
10:31
Speaker 2: were smarter, more mature, and better with detailed work, but
10:35
Speaker 2: they somehow always elected boys to be class monitors.
10:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can relate to this.
10:41
Speaker 3: Right, here's a thing like I've read so many reviews
10:44
Speaker 3: and I want to keep talking about it, about how
10:46
Speaker 3: all wow, Korea does this and all Korea is so
10:49
Speaker 3: sad and doesn't like the US isn't that far behind. No,
10:53
Speaker 3: there's not a thing. There's an extreme and there's a
10:56
Speaker 3: level of violence that have happened in South Korea that's
10:58
Speaker 3: not looked down on today, which is really really sad.
11:01
Speaker 3: But it's just quiet here, Like it's just quietly said
11:05
Speaker 3: here or and or ignored and like calm down. It
11:08
Speaker 3: is no different, it's just less seen or less talked about.
11:13
Speaker 3: Oh and we have a whole conversation about periods. And
11:18
Speaker 3: I appreciated the conversation in this because I'm like, yeah,
11:21
Speaker 3: I get this. So as Giong lay on her stomach
11:23
Speaker 3: on the floor to do homework, she clutched her her
11:26
Speaker 3: tramping lower abdomen and repeated to herself, I don't understand.
11:30
Speaker 3: Half the population in the world goes through this every month.
11:33
Speaker 3: If a pharmaceutical company were to develop an effective pill
11:36
Speaker 3: specifically for menstrual cramps, not the quote pain medication that
11:39
Speaker 3: makes you sick, they would make a fortune. Her sister
11:43
Speaker 3: filled a plastic bottle with hot water, wrapped in a
11:45
Speaker 3: towel and passed it to her. You're right in a
11:47
Speaker 3: world where doctors can cure cancer and do heart transplant.
11:50
Speaker 3: There isn't a single pill to treat menstrual cramps, her
11:54
Speaker 3: sister pointed at her own stomach. The world wants our
11:57
Speaker 3: urits to be drug free, like sacred grounds in a
11:59
Speaker 3: virgin forest. Yeah, I don't think about that. We talk
12:03
Speaker 3: about that on so many levels, about birth control pills
12:06
Speaker 3: and how ineffective and or real dangerous it is, but
12:09
Speaker 3: no one really cares.
12:11
Speaker 1: Right really, and I care.
12:13
Speaker 2: I like legitimately had this almost this exact same conversation
12:18
Speaker 2: with a friend of mine where she was like, I
12:20
Speaker 2: don't get why half of us just are expected to
12:23
Speaker 2: just do this, like deal with this on a regular
12:26
Speaker 2: basis and still perform and not like take a break break.
12:32
Speaker 3: No, everybody feels shame if we like don't ourselves and yeah, like,
12:37
Speaker 3: oh no, I'm like, what the hell this is? This
12:39
Speaker 3: is the world's fault. You should all take the blame.
12:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
12:47
Speaker 3: Sorry, So going on talking about school as the next thing,
12:52
Speaker 3: which is a big theme and kind of like triggering
12:55
Speaker 3: a little bit for me. Uh So, here's a quote.
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Speaker 3: The school dress code was strict expect for girls. One time,
13:01
Speaker 3: a female student who was held up at the school
13:03
Speaker 3: gate for wearing sneakers. Protested it was unfair to allow
13:06
Speaker 3: t shirts and sneakers to mail students only. The student
13:09
Speaker 3: discipline teacher explained that it was because boys were more
13:12
Speaker 3: physically active. Quote boys kids sit still for ten minutes
13:17
Speaker 3: between classes. They ran outside to play soccer, basketball, baseball,
13:21
Speaker 3: or even a mucktubucky. You can't expect kids like that
13:24
Speaker 3: to button their shirts all the way to the top
13:26
Speaker 3: and wear dress shoes. And you think girls don't play
13:29
Speaker 3: sports because they don't want to. We can't play because
13:31
Speaker 3: it's uncomfortable to play wearing skirts, tights, and dress shoes.
13:35
Speaker 3: When I was in elementary school, I went outside every
13:37
Speaker 3: break to play red rover, hopscotch and skip rope. And
13:40
Speaker 3: as a punishment for the dress code violation and backtalk,
13:43
Speaker 3: the female student had to do laps of squat walk
13:46
Speaker 3: around the school field. The teacher told her to hold
13:48
Speaker 3: the hymn of her skirt together, so it was thought
13:50
Speaker 3: to reveal her underwear, but the girl refused. Her underwear
13:53
Speaker 3: showed each time she took a step in a squat position.
13:56
Speaker 3: The teacher stopped her after one lap. Another student called
13:59
Speaker 3: down to the teacher office for dress code violation. Asked
14:01
Speaker 3: her why she didn't hold her hemp together, and she said,
14:04
Speaker 3: I wanted the teacher to see with his own eyes
14:07
Speaker 3: just how uncomfortable this outfit is. And again, this is
14:11
Speaker 3: very familiar to what is happening today in the US,
14:15
Speaker 3: not the squatting part, but the dress code.
14:19
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and oh yeah, I mean we talked about
14:22
Speaker 2: that in like our sports episodes, or about the uniforms
14:26
Speaker 2: required for women.
14:28
Speaker 1: In professional sporting events.
14:31
Speaker 2: As opposed to men. Here's another quote. It was a
14:47
Speaker 2: wide world out there, filled with perverts on the bus
14:49
Speaker 2: and underground. Many suspicious hands grazed her bottom and breast.
14:53
Speaker 2: Some crazy bastards rubed themselves up against women's thighs and backs.
14:57
Speaker 2: The girls were disgusted by older boys at Cram School,
15:00
Speaker 2: church and tutoring sessions, pawing their shoulders, stroking their naps,
15:04
Speaker 2: and sneaking a peek at their breast through button down
15:06
Speaker 2: shirts and T shirts with low cut netlines. But the
15:09
Speaker 2: girls couldn't let out a single horrified cry. All they
15:12
Speaker 2: could do was remove themselves from the scene. School was
15:15
Speaker 2: no better. There were always male teachers who reached up
15:19
Speaker 2: and pinched the soft flesh of the underarm, padded students
15:22
Speaker 2: on the bottom, or ran their hands down the spine
15:25
Speaker 2: over the bra strap. Her tenth grade homeroom teacher was
15:28
Speaker 2: a man in his fifties who carried around a pointer
15:30
Speaker 2: that had a hand pointing just the index figure on
15:33
Speaker 2: the tip, which he used to poke girls in the
15:35
Speaker 2: breast under the guy's drawing attention to the missing name tags,
15:39
Speaker 2: or to lift girl's skirts to quote check their uniforms.
15:43
Speaker 2: When he left the stick on the podium by mistake
15:45
Speaker 2: one day after morning announcements, one classmate with heavy breast,
15:49
Speaker 2: whose name tag the teacher often checked, marched to the front,
15:53
Speaker 2: threw the stick on the floor and trampled on it
15:55
Speaker 2: over and over as she wailed. The girls near the
15:58
Speaker 2: front quickly picked up the broken pieces and got rid
16:00
Speaker 2: of them, and her best friend hugged her and comforted her. Yeah, yep, yep,
16:08
Speaker 2: I had a teacher like that too. We all knew
16:10
Speaker 2: about him. And then there's a whole story that she
16:15
Speaker 2: tells about this guy who's following her on a bus
16:19
Speaker 2: and he's threatening her, and he kind of is like, well,
16:22
Speaker 2: you're always smiling at me, And then when she finally
16:28
Speaker 2: kind of gets away from him, and with the help
16:29
Speaker 2: of a woman who notices, like, oh, of what she's
16:32
Speaker 2: going through. Her father kind of yells at her for
16:35
Speaker 2: wearing short skirts. Fur a quote talking to people, which
16:40
Speaker 2: also feels very familiar. Yes, but here's some quotes around that.
16:44
Speaker 2: G Young felt she should thank her and called her again.
16:47
Speaker 2: The woman said she was glad you Young was fine,
16:49
Speaker 2: and suddenly declared, it's not your fault. There were far
16:52
Speaker 2: too many crazy men in the world. She'd had her
16:55
Speaker 2: share run ins with these people, and the problem was
16:57
Speaker 2: with them, not with the women. Hearing this made Young cry,
17:01
Speaker 2: trying to swallow her tears. She couldn't say anything back.
17:05
Speaker 2: And then it continues. G Young quit the cram school
17:08
Speaker 2: for a long time. She couldn't go near a bus
17:10
Speaker 2: stop after dark. She stopped smiling at people and did
17:13
Speaker 2: not make eye contact with strangers. She was afraid of
17:16
Speaker 2: all men, and she screamed sometimes when she ran into
17:18
Speaker 2: her younger brother in the stairwell. But she kept thinking
17:21
Speaker 2: about what the woman said, not my fault. There's far
17:25
Speaker 2: more great guys out there. If the woman hadn't said
17:28
Speaker 2: that to her, g Young would have lived in fear
17:30
Speaker 2: for even longer.
17:32
Speaker 1: It's kind of one of.
17:33
Speaker 2: Those things where it's like so sad that she quit
17:37
Speaker 2: and she felt all of these things because we do
17:40
Speaker 2: see that, we see women being forced out of things
17:45
Speaker 2: so often and quitting because of things like this. But
17:48
Speaker 2: it's also nice that she had this woman saying like, no,
17:51
Speaker 2: it's not your fault, and that those words meant so much. Yeah,
17:58
Speaker 2: but unfortunately this is not the last of that type
18:02
Speaker 2: of treatment you young would experience. So now we're moving
18:04
Speaker 2: kind of the like jobs and careers section. So here's
18:08
Speaker 2: a quote. Gone were the days when parents thought girls
18:11
Speaker 2: didn't have to get good grades or receive the same
18:13
Speaker 2: education as boys. It had long since been the norm
18:16
Speaker 2: for girls, like boys, to put on a uniform, carry
18:18
Speaker 2: a backpack, and attend school. Girls thought about what they
18:21
Speaker 2: would like to do when they grew up, just as
18:23
Speaker 2: boys did. They planned their careers and competed to achieve
18:26
Speaker 2: their goals. This was a time of widespread social support
18:29
Speaker 2: for women's ambitions. In nineteen ninety nine, the year Kim
18:32
Speaker 2: and Young turned twenty, new legislation against gender discrimination was introduced,
18:37
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and one, the year Kim geeoung
18:39
Speaker 2: turned twenty, the Ministry of Gender Equality was formed, but
18:43
Speaker 2: in certain pivotal moments in women's lives, the woman stigma
18:47
Speaker 2: reared its head to obscure their vision, stay their hands,
18:51
Speaker 2: and hold them back. The mixed signals were confusing and disconcerting. Yeah,
18:57
Speaker 2: it was kind of like what you were talking about
18:59
Speaker 2: with all kind of the back yeah.
19:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, and unfortunately they're on the back. Yeah. And then
19:07
Speaker 3: we have this conversation where she is listening in on
19:11
Speaker 3: what men talk about when women are around kind of yeah.
19:15
Speaker 3: So here it is ew, that's like chewing gum. Someone
19:18
Speaker 3: else spit out set of familiar voice. It was an
19:20
Speaker 3: older member of the club who enjoyed drinking but didn't
19:23
Speaker 3: force others to do so, and often bought the younger
19:25
Speaker 3: members food, but avoided eating with them unless they felt uncomfortable.
19:30
Speaker 3: She'd also had a good opinion of his level headed,
19:33
Speaker 3: practical way of handling things. Gian couldn't believe her ears.
19:36
Speaker 3: She listened harder, but couldn't deny that it was him.
19:39
Speaker 3: He could have been drunk, or perhaps he had said
19:41
Speaker 3: what he said to overcompensate for being found out about
19:44
Speaker 3: his feelings for her, and had to say something harsh
19:47
Speaker 3: to discourage the guys from playing matchmaker. She thought of
19:50
Speaker 3: many possibilities, none of which helped to make her feel
19:53
Speaker 3: less devastated. Even the usually reasonable, sane ones verbally degrade women,
19:59
Speaker 3: even the women they had feelings for. That's what I am, gum,
20:03
Speaker 3: someone spat out.
20:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty brutal because they kind of like had
20:10
Speaker 2: a good relationship. And she overheard this, and then the
20:13
Speaker 2: next day the guy is all like, oh no, I'm
20:16
Speaker 2: still nice. I'm still the good guy and being nice
20:18
Speaker 2: to her. But after she'd heard this, this.
20:21
Speaker 1: So it was. It was pretty It was a tough scene.
20:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's another one. Sometimes when she was exhausted, she
20:30
Speaker 3: felt like giving up. And John's cliched wards of encouragement
20:34
Speaker 3: once you get to college you will lose weight and
20:36
Speaker 3: get a boyfriend truly inspired her because on young actually
20:39
Speaker 3: did lose weight and get a boyfriend in college.
20:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a pretty big theme.
20:45
Speaker 2: Uh, and we're not going to talk about it too much,
20:47
Speaker 2: but that was that was pretty prevalent throughout Here's another quote.
20:52
Speaker 2: She had looked around the office one day and realized
20:54
Speaker 2: that there were no women above a certain pay grade.
20:56
Speaker 2: She spotted a pregnant woman in the company dining hall
20:59
Speaker 2: and asked the people at her table how long the
21:01
Speaker 2: company's maternity leave was, and none of the five, including
21:04
Speaker 2: one department head, knew the answer because none of them
21:07
Speaker 2: had ever seen an employee go on maternity leave. She
21:10
Speaker 2: couldn't picture herself at the company ten years down the
21:12
Speaker 2: road and resigned. After some thought. Her boss grumbled, this
21:15
Speaker 2: is why we don't hire women. She replied, Women don't
21:19
Speaker 2: stay because you make it impossible for us to stay. Yeah,
21:23
Speaker 2: which is again something we see and talk.
21:25
Speaker 1: About to this day.
21:27
Speaker 2: Yep. There was another scene kind of earlier in the
21:33
Speaker 2: university where Geong went to a career fair and there
21:36
Speaker 2: were no women, hardly any women there.
21:38
Speaker 3: Because they never came back.
21:40
Speaker 2: Right, yep, Here is another quote of sort of like
21:44
Speaker 2: a really poor like what is that called where we
21:50
Speaker 2: have to do those human resources meetings? Yeah, yeah, all right,
21:57
Speaker 2: you're at a meeting with a client company. The client
22:00
Speaker 2: it's you know, hansy squeezing your shoulder, grazing your thigh,
22:03
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Yeah, how you handle that situation?
22:06
Speaker 2: Let's start with missus Kim Gyong. Geong didn't want to
22:10
Speaker 2: panic like an idiot or lose points by being too firm,
22:12
Speaker 2: so she shot for the middle. I'll find a natural
22:15
Speaker 2: way to leave the room, like going to the toilet
22:17
Speaker 2: or getting research data. The second interviewee asserted that it
22:21
Speaker 2: was clearly sexual harassment and that she would tell him
22:23
Speaker 2: to stop right away. If he didn't, she would press charges.
22:26
Speaker 2: The mail trustee raised an eyebrow and wrote something down,
22:29
Speaker 2: which made Gijong flinch. I would check my outfit and
22:32
Speaker 2: attitudes at the final interviewee, who had the longest to
22:35
Speaker 2: think of an answer, to see if there were any
22:38
Speaker 2: problems with it and fix anything that may have induced
22:41
Speaker 2: the inappropriate behavior in the client.
22:44
Speaker 1: And then.
22:46
Speaker 2: Later I would break his arm. Geong shouted later at
22:50
Speaker 2: the mirror, and you your question is sexual harassment, and
22:54
Speaker 2: to ask that during a job interview, would you ask
22:57
Speaker 2: the same question to male candidates?
23:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of discussion too around like cameras
23:08
Speaker 2: and women's rooms.
23:10
Speaker 3: Which is actually a big problem right now in South Korea.
23:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and posting those on those images on pornography sites
23:18
Speaker 2: and blaming women for reporting it, for quote, turning the
23:21
Speaker 2: men into predators. Being told to old ruin the company
23:25
Speaker 2: ruined men's lives, which again, unfortunately sounds very familiar, but
23:29
Speaker 2: that's sort of the same thing. It's like it's constantly
23:32
Speaker 2: turning it on the women, like you're ruining his life
23:37
Speaker 2: for the thing he did to you. Don't embarrass the company,
23:42
Speaker 2: like all those sort of sort of conversations.
23:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a whole thing, and it keeps going with
23:49
Speaker 3: When she meets up with clients, the division head, newly
23:52
Speaker 3: appointed just three months before after climbing the ladder in
23:54
Speaker 3: the product development division, gave her an unstoppable flu of
23:57
Speaker 3: advice coming from experience, including backhanded compliments like you have
24:02
Speaker 3: a nice jaw line and attractive nose. Just get your
24:05
Speaker 3: eyelids done in your golden He asked if she had
24:08
Speaker 3: a boyfriend and whipped out, felt like no, fund's going
24:11
Speaker 3: where there's no goalie, and once women pop, they can't stop.
24:14
Speaker 3: He wouldn't stop making her drink. I've passed by limit.
24:18
Speaker 3: It won't be safe getting home. I'm done, she says,
24:20
Speaker 3: Why so concerned when there are all these guys to
24:22
Speaker 3: escort you home. Her thoughts is, your people are my
24:25
Speaker 3: biggest concern, she thought to herself as she furtively emptied
24:28
Speaker 3: her glass and the other empty cups and bowls at
24:30
Speaker 3: the table. She also learned that the guys were paid
24:33
Speaker 3: better from the very start, but the information started very
24:36
Speaker 3: little in GM who followed the day's quota of shock
24:40
Speaker 3: and disappointment, which is again not so incoming here. Although
24:45
Speaker 3: the pay gap is higher in South Korea.
24:47
Speaker 2: Now, and we've talked about that a lot, especially in
24:50
Speaker 2: tech jobs, about the kind of pressure to like kind
24:56
Speaker 2: of isolate women, especially younger employees, and get them drunk
25:01
Speaker 2: and then take them to a hotel room or something,
25:05
Speaker 2: which is a really dangerous environment.
25:08
Speaker 1: Here's another quote.
25:09
Speaker 2: For safety reasons, the company allowed pregnant employees to push
25:12
Speaker 2: their work hours back by half an hour. When she
25:15
Speaker 2: announced her pregnancy at work, one of her male colleagues exclaimed,
25:18
Speaker 2: Lucky you, you get to come to work late.
25:20
Speaker 1: Lucky me.
25:21
Speaker 2: I get to wretch all the time and am unable
25:23
Speaker 2: to eat or properly, and I'm always tired, sleepy and
25:27
Speaker 2: soar all over. Giong wanted to say, but held it in.
25:30
Speaker 2: She was disappointed by his insensitive remarks, which showed no
25:34
Speaker 2: concern for all the discomforts and pains of pregnancy, but
25:37
Speaker 2: she couldn't expect someone who wasn't her husband or family
25:40
Speaker 2: to understand that.
25:41
Speaker 3: I will say I think for the most part in
25:44
Speaker 3: the US, I keep comparing it, but people are starting
25:48
Speaker 3: to understand how laboring and how difficult pregnancy is. But
25:52
Speaker 3: there's still this attitude that it's a free rise onhow
25:55
Speaker 3: that you get special trement, which is completely absurd.
26:00
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And there's definitely a lot around that in
26:04
Speaker 2: this book of kind of the like I don't get
26:07
Speaker 2: while we're not while we're treating this like a free rid, right,
26:12
Speaker 2: including this coke. Because there was also a lot coming
26:14
Speaker 2: from professionals like doctors, which is something we've also talked
26:17
Speaker 2: about before. Quote the doctor chuckle to himself. Back in
26:21
Speaker 2: my day, women used clubs to do the laundry, lit
26:24
Speaker 2: fires to boil baby clothes, and crawled around to do
26:26
Speaker 2: the sweeping and mopping. Don't you have a washing machine
26:29
Speaker 2: for laundry and vacuum cleaner for cleaning women these days?
26:33
Speaker 2: What if you got to whine about dirty laundry doesn't
26:36
Speaker 2: march into the machine by itself. To young thought, the
26:38
Speaker 2: clothes don't wash themselves with detergent and water, march back
26:42
Speaker 2: out when they're done and hang themselves in clotheslines. The
26:45
Speaker 2: vacuum doesn't roll around with a wet and dry rag,
26:48
Speaker 2: wipe the floor and wash and dry the rags for you.
26:51
Speaker 2: Have you ever even operated a washing machine or a
26:54
Speaker 2: vacuum cleaner? M.
27:01
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a lot of privilege in these conversations.
27:06
Speaker 2: Yes, oh yes, and a lot of just gaslighting of Flake.
27:09
Speaker 1: Right, what do you have to write about? You've got
27:12
Speaker 1: a washing machine now exactly?
27:15
Speaker 3: And then they talk about once again the preference of
27:19
Speaker 3: gender and children. It says it wasn't just the older generation.
27:23
Speaker 3: Women of June's age shamelessly said things like my first
27:27
Speaker 3: was a girl, so I was nervous until I found
27:29
Speaker 3: that the sex of the second one. I can hold
27:31
Speaker 3: my head up high around my in laws now that
27:33
Speaker 3: I have a boy. Or I started getting myself all
27:36
Speaker 3: kinds of expensive food when I found out I was
27:38
Speaker 3: having a boy again, trying to celebrate and impress upon
27:42
Speaker 3: the fact that boys were of more worth and therefore
27:46
Speaker 3: worthy of celebrating and or pride.
27:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is a bigger conversation we
27:55
Speaker 2: have been having, but about kind of the damage around
28:00
Speaker 2: what intentional or not what women inflict on other women
28:05
Speaker 2: of saying things like that and not realizing sometimes the
28:10
Speaker 2: internalization that's going on, and especially I feel like a
28:13
Speaker 2: lot of that's been happening around things like weight, our
28:17
Speaker 2: body image. But also I saw a meme the other
28:21
Speaker 2: day that was just like Disney Villains in the nineties outright,
28:27
Speaker 2: you know, like Mustache Clear in the two thousands, it
28:32
Speaker 2: was like hidden, you didn't know who they were, and
28:36
Speaker 2: now it's in your generation trauma.
28:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And here's the final quote.
28:59
Speaker 2: In twenty four thirteen, around the time Kim Gieong left
29:02
Speaker 2: the company, one in five married women in Korea quit
29:05
Speaker 2: their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, or
29:08
Speaker 2: the education of their young children. The workforce participation rate
29:12
Speaker 2: of Korean women decreases significantly before and after childbirth. Is
29:16
Speaker 2: percentage starts at sixty three point eight percent for women
29:19
Speaker 2: age between twenty and twenty nine, drops to fifty eight
29:22
Speaker 2: percent for women age thirty to thirty nine, and increases
29:25
Speaker 2: again to sixty six point seven percent for women over forty.
29:30
Speaker 2: So it again, we got to kind of see these numbers,
29:35
Speaker 2: these statistics through Jiyoung's experience, and she did. She ended
29:40
Speaker 2: up kind of being pressured to leave her job and
29:44
Speaker 2: then being judged for doing so. Right, she got a
29:50
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of judgment from people on public transportation,
29:55
Speaker 2: like just people all around.
29:57
Speaker 3: And yeah, the story is a It's an interesting story
30:00
Speaker 3: because it begins we see a scene of her having
30:03
Speaker 3: breaks in which she becomes a different person. You see
30:06
Speaker 3: her becoming her mother, You see her becoming her best
30:08
Speaker 3: friend who passed away during childbirth, and then it goes
30:11
Speaker 3: on to her being the actual baby and the husband
30:14
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what's going on, and then her
30:17
Speaker 3: being diagnosed with postpartum depression, and at the very end
30:21
Speaker 3: of the book, we hear the doctor being like, Okay,
30:22
Speaker 3: this is not it. This is not what we thought.
30:24
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's disassociative, but that there's something
30:26
Speaker 3: different to this in which her trauma has gone through
30:29
Speaker 3: all this process. And even though her childhood was not
30:32
Speaker 3: necessarily traumatic in the sense of then being poor and
30:36
Speaker 3: or the mother being too strict, or the mother not
30:39
Speaker 3: allowing her to find herself, which the mother really did,
30:42
Speaker 3: wanting her to become who she wanted to be and
30:45
Speaker 3: follow her dreams and not stop even very adamant about
30:49
Speaker 3: her the girls having their own bedroom because she never
30:51
Speaker 3: got to have that, being able to give all these things,
30:54
Speaker 3: but because of the expectation of society, she fell apart
30:58
Speaker 3: because she had to let go of so much, many
31:00
Speaker 3: things to sacrifice for things around her, and no matter
31:02
Speaker 3: what choice she made, she was wrong by societal standards,
31:06
Speaker 3: and I think it's interesting. I know one of the
31:08
Speaker 3: criticisms to the book was that we don't know the
31:11
Speaker 3: full like the breakdown her life, now what is happening?
31:15
Speaker 3: It was just more of a look back on a setup.
31:18
Speaker 3: It was like a setup without an actual ending to it.
31:22
Speaker 3: And I think that people were like, really, like what
31:24
Speaker 3: just happened? But it was I think this was book
31:26
Speaker 3: was a big commentary, and I know that Choe really
31:32
Speaker 3: wanted to show her aside what she went through and
31:34
Speaker 3: the things that she had to let go of. She
31:37
Speaker 3: got to write a book finally, but it took all
31:39
Speaker 3: of the suffering to get to this point, and I
31:42
Speaker 3: find that interesting in itself. It is a commentary about
31:46
Speaker 3: the lack of understanding and lack of rights for women
31:48
Speaker 3: any social standards. So yeah, it definitely had a big
31:53
Speaker 3: audience because as simple as the book was and it's
31:56
Speaker 3: telling and as short as it was, it was as
32:00
Speaker 3: a slat to the face of the society of South
32:03
Speaker 3: Korea and where they were at that point in time.
32:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it clearly resonated with a lot of people
32:09
Speaker 2: for it to get picked up like that. And also
32:11
Speaker 2: one of the quotes I included where she's talking about
32:15
Speaker 2: like there were all these you know, positive movements for
32:19
Speaker 2: women's equality, and then there were all these like backtracking
32:23
Speaker 2: and the mixed signals were so confusing. Like that I
32:27
Speaker 2: felt like was really powerful because it is true. It's
32:29
Speaker 2: like you're being told, oh, we expect you to do
32:32
Speaker 2: all this stuff now, and you can go and be
32:34
Speaker 2: anything you want to be, but then there's all these
32:37
Speaker 2: other things that are telling you, no, you can't, right,
32:40
Speaker 2: So I felt like that was a really powerful thing.
32:42
Speaker 2: And then also what you said, like the fact that
32:44
Speaker 2: there's like quote not an ending, I mean, and that's
32:47
Speaker 2: this could be me reading too deep, but I feel
32:49
Speaker 2: like that's sort of you know, the story is still
32:51
Speaker 2: being written, like her story is still ongoing, This discussion
32:54
Speaker 2: around women in Czechria is still ongoing. So yeah, I mean,
32:59
Speaker 2: it really did. It caused a lot of conversation and
33:02
Speaker 2: it a lot of people really connected with it.
33:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an award winning book in South Korea
33:10
Speaker 3: as well as an award winning film in South Korea. Again,
33:13
Speaker 3: it really brought a lot of attention to different things.
33:16
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the caje abas that I've
33:18
Speaker 3: been talking about actually came after the fact and started
33:22
Speaker 3: telling this big story. I just watched one recently called
33:25
Speaker 3: Because This is Her First Life, and it talks about
33:28
Speaker 3: harassment in the workplace and women not being able to
33:30
Speaker 3: move up. So it was really really interesting, a lot
33:33
Speaker 3: more spicy, like unexpected. I was like, whoa, they're talking
33:37
Speaker 3: about condoms here, what the hell? But the fact is
33:40
Speaker 3: that they come to the point that women are starting
33:42
Speaker 3: to get tired. But that conversation is yes, it looks
33:45
Speaker 3: like society is moving forward, but tradition holds them back.
33:48
Speaker 3: And it's really hard to move forward when you have
33:52
Speaker 3: societal looks, whether it's other women, whether it's members of
33:55
Speaker 3: your family telling you keep to the old ways, and
33:57
Speaker 3: you will be criticized for doing the new ways.
34:00
Speaker 2: So you better be ready, right, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure
34:06
Speaker 2: this is something we'll come back and talk about more.
34:09
Speaker 1: Uh, because there was a lot going on.
34:11
Speaker 2: It's again, we say this all the time, but these books,
34:14
Speaker 2: a lot of times we have to choose shorter books,
34:16
Speaker 2: not that we don't want to read them, but we
34:18
Speaker 2: kind of are like time wise, but it packs so
34:22
Speaker 2: much in and like so much in for for something
34:27
Speaker 2: of its length, So highly recommend it. Go check it out,
34:32
Speaker 2: and in the meantime, if you would like to recommend
34:36
Speaker 2: another book for us for our next book club. You
34:39
Speaker 2: can our email stuff and your mom stuff at iHeartMedia
34:42
Speaker 2: dot com. You can find us on Twitter. A mostaff
34:44
Speaker 2: podcasts are on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I've Never
34:49
Speaker 2: Told You.
34:49
Speaker 1: You can also find us on YouTube. We have a book.
34:52
Speaker 2: You can pre order it at stuff you Should Read
34:53
Speaker 2: Books dot com. Thanks as ow it's to our super
34:56
Speaker 2: producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contributor Joey.
35:00
Speaker 2: Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Steffan Never
35:03
Speaker 2: Told you this production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast from
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