Unpopular Opinion: “Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982” Didn’t Hit Hard Enough

Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982 scores points for its raising of numerous feminist issues, but its treatment of them is frequently quite superficial. Here’s how one scene should have been handled differently, shattering stereotypes and suggesting solutions in the process.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes. Photo by Gabe Pierce on Unsplash.

I didn’t like the novel Kim Jiyoung: Born 1982 much at all. There, I said it.

It’s basically a Korean Feminism 101 compendium, which means it didn’t really teach me anything new. Its constant shoehorning of facts and statistics into the narrative ruined it as a work of fiction too. But the biggest flaw was Jiyoung’s constant, infuriating lack of agency, with its flipside that author Cho Nam-joo didn’t really offer any solutions to the numerous hardships she faces either.

That doesn’t mean those hardships aren’t well-described. Like I said in my earlier review, I don’t think it’s a bad book at all. If you personally learned a great deal from it, and/or laughed, cried, and seethed in anger alongside Jiyoung, then I’m hardly going to claim that my own disappointment and frustration mean I’m somehow a much better, more knowledgeable feminist than you.

But Jiyoung’s lack of agency, and Cho’s lack of solutions, are absolutely a hill I’m prepared to die on. One scene in the film set in a subway toilet, albeit not mentioned in the book, illustrates both very well.

In it (55-56:00), Jiyoung (played by Jung Yu-mi) has to get off the subway to change her bawling infant daughter. Once that’s done, she realizes she needs to pee herself, but struggles in the narrow cubicle to hang up her heavy bag with her daughter strapped to her chest. Then, before she attempts again, she eyes the walls and lock nervously, remembering a recent molka (spycam) incident at the place she used to work. The scene then shifts to her home, implying she gave up and went there instead.

At first viewing, it’s difficult to find any fault here at all. Given that the burden of childcare falls overwhelmingly on women, then more men—or, indeed, more unsympathetic childless women—sometimes really do need to be literally shown just how much effort that actually involves. So too, do more men need to realize how stressful it is having to worry about being secretly filmed literally every single time you used any toilets outside of your home, as well as the potential health consequences if you understandably chose to avoid them.

Admittedly, that may seem like a lot to ask of a one-minute scene. Yet with just a little tweaking, it could have achieved those aims very effectively and forcefully. Instead, it largely fails, for three reasons.

The first is because, ironically, guys can relate to the practical difficulties. The indignity of using a cubicle while wearing a suit and carrying a backpack, desperately trying to prevent either from touching all the urine and smokers’ spittle on the floor, is absolutely no joke. As for childcare specifically, my ex-wife would naturally take our daughters with her to the female toilets when they were young, but it’s not like I wasn’t often in just as awkward and uncomfortable situations with them in other cramped locations.

Devoid of any wider context then, which I’ll provide myself in a moment, men’s own issues with using cubicles can mean women’s complaints fall on deaf ears, let alone calls to make women’s toilets bigger than men’s. (In fact, some men even consider the proposal to be reverse-sexism.) This lack of sympathy is misguided, of course, but I can understand it—unless men are flat out told or shown why not, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that more cubicles in place of urinals suffice for women’s need to sit down. That women somehow still have to queue nonetheless, delaying everyone? Pop culture reveals that’s just their own fault, thanks to all the primping, preening, and gossiping that really goes on in there.

Next, the scene doesn’t do enough to convey the visceral fear of spy cameras. This is indeed much harder for men to relate to, because they never have to think about them when using public toilets. So, something much more forceful than Jiyoung’s brief nervous glances was required.

Best would have been a tweak to an earlier scene, which I’ll outline in a moment. But as an emphasis in this one, a more realistic cubicle should have been shown, with every nook, cranny, screw, bolt, and indent jammed with toilet paper and gum. Rather than the toilet the scene was actually shot in, which, complete with a rare heater, was easily the most pristine in Korea, seeing what it’s actually like in women’s toilets would surely have rammed home just how big of a problem spycams are in Korea—in a way that abstract news reports never could.

Image source: The Fact.

That earlier scene (44:30-47:30) is where Jiyoung’s former coworkers discover a spycam had been set up in one of the female toilets, and that their male coworkers had been sharing the videos, followed by meeting Jiyoung in a coffee shop to let her know. In hindsight, it’s all over surprisingly quickly. Whereas in the book, the incident is dealt with over three pages, and among the many grave consequences the coworkers reveal in those is that one victim overdosed on meds—possibly intentionally. This is omitted entirely in the film, but fits with the film’s much more kid-gloves, family-friendly tone overall (In particular, Jiyoung’s husband, played by Gong Yoo, is a vastly more sympathetic and likeable character than in the book. Perhaps a truer portrayal was rejected as harmful to his image?). In its place, the coworkers are not so much in tears as almost laugh off the affair, one joking about borrowing Jiyoung’s daughter’s diapers from now on.

Not only would I have absolutely kept that line about the coworker’s potential suicide instead, I would have devoted a minute to visiting her in hospital too. Was that not worth it to show that spycams have very real, devastating effects on people’s lives?

But if I only had an extra minute’s grace, I would use it to shift Jiyoung’s toilet scene to a few years earlier in her life, before she stopped working to have her daughter. She would be in her smart workclothes and high heels at a hweshik, an (effectively mandatory) after-work dinner with her boss and coworkers, and have to go to the toilet as everyone was preparing to leave to go to a second round at a bar. She would take longer than many of the men would like, because—and herein lies that context, as explained by Sora Chemaly in Time. Because, yes, it really does need explaining, as it’s not at all just about sitting vs. standing:

Women need to use bathrooms more often and for longer periods of time because: we sit to urinate (urinals effectively double the space in men’s rooms) [note also, “Women empty their bladders more frequently than men and take longer – an average start-to-finish time of 60 seconds for men, but 90 for women”—James], we menstruate, we are responsible for reproducing the species (which makes us pee more), we continue to have greater responsibility for children (who have to use bathrooms with us), and we breastfeed (frequently in grotty bathroom stalls). Additionally, women tend to wear more binding and cumbersome clothes, whereas men’s clothing provides significantly speedier access. But in a classic example of the difference between surface “equality” and genuine equity, many public restrooms continue to be facilities that are equal in physical space, while favoring men’s bodies, experiences, and needs.

So when Jiyoung did rejoin the group, one of those impatient men could have made an all too common complaint or joke about holding everyone up for the sake of putting on her lipstick. To which she could have angrily pointed out it wasn’t her fault, for any number of the above reasons she could have chosen to highlight (and/or by having to spend time ramming toilet paper into all those potential camera holes, would have killed two birds with one stone). She could have followed that the obvious solution of “potty parity”—mandating 2:1 or 3:1 female to male toilet size ratios in all new building plans, and/or building more shared toilets—wasn’t at all reverse-sexism, but would benefit both women and the men who had to wait for them.

Indeed, this scene would not be unlike the—MILD SPOILER—final scene in the film, in which Jiyoung actually does confront a guy who accuses her of being a “mom roach,” living the high life gossiping in coffee shops, a parasite on her rich husband and the hard workers who pay the taxes for her holiday of maternity leave. Which is a rare credit to the film, and certainly a better alternative to her just slinking away in shame like in the book, then getting gaslighted by her husband when she complains about it. However, as it’s the conclusion to what’s actually an extremely saccharine-feeling film overall as discussed, it’s somewhat underwhelming as a climax—SPOILER ENDS.

With an extra minute still, I would also add a scene of her as a teenager, suffering from bladder and dehydration problems that her much fawned-over brother avoided, because he could obviously better endure Korean schools’ notoriously dirty and outdated toilets. But I digress. The point is, Jiyoung in the subway toilet with her daughter is just one scene of many that could have been dramatically improved. I curse having read the book Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World by Leslie Kern (2020) in particular, which means I can just no longer unsee the flaws in the scenes in either the book or film. Although, given the former’s popularity, now I do appreciate the value of seeing one’s own lived experiences represented in print, even if Cho neither presents Jiyoung as a role model nor offers any potential solutions to what she faces.

Those responsible for the film however, could have and should have responded to the backlash by taking up that mantle, exploiting the potential of the new visual medium to shock and shame. Instead, they wasted the opportunity by making it as saccharine as possible, all for the sake of people who had probably never actually read the book and were even less likely to watch the film.

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

“Hashtag activism found in translation: Unpacking the reformulation of #MeToo in Japan”—Zoom Presentation by Ms. Saki Mizoroki, Friday April 28, 5:30-7pm JST

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes.

Do any of you reading this in Korea volunteer for a local feminist organization?

As a Western male feminist, or feminist ally if that’s your jam, frankly I’ve never seriously considered it. I’ve always just assumed my presence would be more awkward and complicated than helpful, and probably quite rightly so. There’s visa restrictions against non-Koreans participating in “political” activity too, even for permanent residents.

But are my assumptions correct? Or are they really just excuses?

Because I’ve recently become more interested in contemporary Korean feminist activism than ever. Perhaps, the day I get off my armchair and test those assumptions will come sooner than I think.

If you do ever see my bald head pop up on mutual Instas we follow then, blame Ito Shiori’s Black Box: The Memoir That Sparked Japan’s #MeToo Movement. Not just because because it well deserves its seminal title, but because I was shocked to learn just a few weeks later of the relative failure of that movement compared to South Korea’s. Why? What are the similarities and differences between #미투 and #KuToo? What mutual lessons do they offer for each other? I have to know.

Naturally then, I’ll be all over next Friday’s presentation below (note the open access accompanying article). I’ll also soon be cracking open my copy of Flowers of Fire by Hawon Jung (of course), but first will have to try the more specialized but older (2014) Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The women’s movement against sexual violence by Kyungja Jung while it’s hopefully still relevant.

If you have any other recommendations, please let me know. And I hope to hear your thoughts about next Friday’s presentation too! :)

Join Zoom Meeting https://sophia-ac-jp.zoom.us/j/99468537215 Meeting ID: 994 6853 7215 Passcode: 982771

In 2017, the MeToo hashtag spread across the globe. However, it showed limited success in the Japanese Twittersphere and instead inspired local initiatives such as #WeToo and #Furawādemo (“flower demo”). To understand this reformulation, we analyzed 15 interviews with Japanese social media users and 119 Japanese newspaper articles. The results corroborate the framework we label VTM (values, topics, media), suggesting that an intersection between perceived Japanese values, the topic’s gendered and sexual nature, and media affordances explain the movement’s local development. While perceived Japanese values clash against those associated with #MeToo, new formulations “soften” the protest by blending in values such as reserve and harmony. Overall, we show how perceptions of popular values rather than values as essential orientations shape activism. Finally, we discuss the study’s implications for understanding cultural variance in cyberactivism, highlighting how divergent notions of “safe space” shape such movements.

Saki Mizoroki is a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo and a visiting research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her research focuses on feminist media studies, drawing on her extensive experience as a journalist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Sophia University and a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked as a journalist for a top-national Japanese newspaper, The Asahi, as well as internet media, BuzzFeed Japan.

This talk is organized by David H. Slater (Professor of Anthropology, FLA).

*Mizoroki, S., Shifman, L., & Hayashi, K. (2023). Hashtag activism found in translation: Unpacking the reformulation of #MeToo in Japan. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231153571

Flyer (PDF): Download from here

Why #MeToo Failed in Japan (Trinity Women & Gender Minorities Review)
Japan’s Me Too Movement and ‘Comfort Women’ Issue: Part 2 – Intersection of History and the Translation of Culture (Research Institute on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery)
In Japan, victims wary of #MeToo movement (Chicago Tribune)
In Japan, Saying ‘Me Too’ Comes With Risks (Voice of America)
In Just Two Minutes, My Eyes Were Opened to Why Resolving the Comfort Women Issue is so Necessary for Japan’s #MeToo
If You Understand Korean, Please Don’t Miss Out: “After Me Too” (애프터 미투, 2021) is Screening October 6-9!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

April Book Club Meeting: “Phoenix Extravagant” by Yoon Ha Lee, Wednesday 26 April, 8:15pm KST

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

A medley of steampunk, fantasy, and magic realism? And featuring multiple animal characters? Frankly, none of those I like at all, let alone when all put together. But, expanding my literary horizons was of the main reasons I started this book club, as was supporting more LGBTQ representation in Korean and Korean-American fiction. So I was already well sold on Phoenix Extravagant (2021) by American writer Yoon Ha Lee (Wikipedia; interview) for this month’s book choice, only then to be even further persuaded by the following excellent, quick review by a fellow club member (posted with permission):

The genre is new to me, a giant leap really. Lots of norm transgressions, in the best possible way. Is it Steampunk, SciFi- Fantasy, Alternative History, Parody…??? Or none/ all?

American-Korean author Lee is not just transgressive in genre blending, but in the themes and characters of his story here. Lee himself identifies an a trans man/ queer (choosing “him/ he”) and his protagonist here is a gender neutral “them/they”. This was less confusing than the anti-woke mob might presume when reading. Non traditional nuclear/ heteronormative families, relationships and people populate this story with disarming naturalness. The whole book eschews complicated narrative and linguistic features, offering an ostensibly straightforward plot and “young adult” level vocabulary (albeit with some rather clever invented vernacular for the world described).

But the themes and historical parallels it clearly (maybe too obviously for a Korean audience) makes to Korea’s colonial experience are also subtly transgressive. It questions the ideas of nationalism and independence (for whom), as well as whether a foreign tyranny is worse than an indigenous one. In historical parallelism, it also questions who or what a loyal citizen/ collaborator is, in the face of daily needs to survive. The role of art also arises, and whether the effects of art can be attributed/ blamed on the artist?

There’s escapism and juvenile fantasy too – if you chose to read it that way. Worth a read!

Please see LibraryThing, The StoryGraph, and/or GoodReads for further reviews, and then, if Phoenix Extravagant still appeals, I’d like to invite you to our meeting on Wednesday 26 April, at 8:15pm Korean time. Just a small, informal event, with a limit of 12 participants to help ensure that they remain as safe a space as possible, please contact me via email or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address) if you are interested in attending. I will contact you to confirm, and will include you in the club reminder email with the Zoom link a few days before the event.

See you on Zoom!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

BUY THIS BOOK—”Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China’s Global Rise” by Monica Liu (2022)

Don’t let my glorious laser tits deter you from an eye-opening interview, and a must-read!

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

First, a quick update to explain my absence this past month,

Basically, I’ve finally gotten my shit together.

I could count the ways. Instead, suffice to say I’m so enthused and energized that I’ve even started paying attention to my laser tits again.

You read that right. (You’ll thank me for passing on this “꿀팁” later.) Ten random notifications from a reminder app a day, I advise, is the sweet spot for perking you up before starting to get annoying:

Naturally then, life chose to reward my newfound drive by bookending those past four weeks with two debilitating colds. Repetitive strain injury has flared up in my right arm too,* leaving me in agony every time I want to do anything even remotely fun or pleasurable with my hand. Like, say, eating or sleeping (what did you think I meant?), let alone banging away at a keyboard.

With my resolve being so sorely tested, literally, my response is to push even harder through my huge backlog of writing, as well as my new plans to completely overhaul this blog and my social media use. What those plans actually are, I’m going to tend towards doing before explaining. But one I already announced back in October—more geeking out over things that bring me joy, no matter how obscure or academic. The difference now being, I realize life is just too short to worry about losing followers who don’t share my obscure passions, or curious, ribald sense of humor.

On that note, the New Book Network’s (NBN) recent podcast interview of Monica Liu, about her new book Seeking Western Men: Email-Order Brides Under China’s Global Rise (2022), is conspicuously bereft of laser tits, but is no less jaw-dropping for all that. Primarily, for Liu’s emphasis on the women’s perspectives and their sense of agency, which in hindsight I’ve much neglected in my own coverage of migrant brides to Korea over the years (understandably, given how so many are exploited and abused, but a neglect nonetheless). Moreover, despite the title of the book, and NBN’s synopsis below, it quickly becomes clear while listening to the interview that Chinese seekers of marriage with Western men share many of the same issues and goals with those Chinese, Central Asian, Russian, and Southeast Asian women seeking Korean men.

Her study of China’s email-order bride industry offers stories of Chinese women who are primarily middle-aged, divorced, and proactively seeking spouses to fulfill their material and sexual needs. What they seek in their Western partners is tied to what they believe they’ve lost in the shifting global economy around them. Ranging from multimillionaire entrepreneurs or ex-wives and mistresses of wealthy Chinese businessmen, to contingent sector workers and struggling single mothers, these women, along with their translators and potential husbands from the US, Canada, and Australia, make up the actors in this multifaceted story. Set against the backdrop of China’s global economic ascendance and a relative decline of the West, this book asks: How does this reshape Chinese women’s perception of Western masculinity? Through the unique window of global internet dating, this book reveals the shifting relationships of race, class, gender, sex, and intimacy across borders.

I strongly recommend listening to the interview yourself; at 39 minutes long, it doesn’t at all drag on like, frankly, most other NBN interviews do. To encourage you to do so, here are several eye-opening excerpts, all lovingly, painstakingly transcribed by myself (my apologies for any minor errors).

(Too young, and too well-off?) Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash.

First, from 7:30-8:45, an important difference between Chinese women seeking Western men to migrant brides in Korea: the former tend to be much older and financially well-off. As we’ll see soon, this has big implications for the power dynamics between prospective partners:

Q) Why really did the Chinese women seek Western men?

A) For a couple of different reasons. Across the board, one main reason I saw was that the women felt aged out of their local dating market, because men of similar age and economic standing tended to prefer much younger, never-married women without children, and so women believed Western men were more open to dating women their age. And there’s also some differences based on the women’s socioeconomic class. A lot of women who are financially well-off have previously been married to very wealthy Chinese men that cheated on them and left them for younger women, and so think that Western men are going to be more loyal and more family-orientated—that being the primary reason. While women who struggled financially, have often divorced Chinese ex-husbands that lost their jobs and couldn’t support their families, and so these women are also seeking financial stability in their new marriages. Finally, there’s also a group of women who wish to send their kids to college in the US, to escape the very, very brutal college entrance exam in China, but they couldn’t do that as single moms that were financially struggling.

Next, from 10:20-11:20, on how Chinese dating marriage agencies both respond to and perpetuate Occidental stereotypes:

Q) Tell us about global financial crisis of 2008 when the men lost their jobs. Did this impact the dating scene?

A) Yes, this certainly impacted the dating scene. At the dating agencies, before the crisis there would be this idea that many of the men would possibly be financially well-off, but actually after the crisis a lot of women were actually discovering off-site that those men that they thought were financially well-off were not in that position, and as a result one of the tactics that the agencies used to promote these men to the women was that these men were loyal, devoted, and family-oriented, and thereby worth of marriage, even if they’re not particularly financially well-off.

Photo by Marcelo Matarazzo on Unsplash.

Then from 13:28-15:11, on the racial hierarchies contained within those Occidental stereotypes. But already, Chinese women’s agency is evident in their readiness to reject or subvert these:

Q) You talked about the discrimination against Black men with the Chinese women, but not other racial groups. Tell us more.

A) When I stepped into the dating agency, I found that Chinese women were very reluctant to date Black men. And for that reason, the agencies actually had a policy to not entertain emails from Black men unless given special permission from the women, in order not to “offend” the women. I’m not exactly sure what their personal reasons were…but I do know China has a long-standing history of anti-Black prejudice where Blacks are stereotyped as savage, hypersexual, and violent.

However, the women didn’t seem to discriminate against other racial groups, and to them, interestingly, the term “Westerner” included not only Caucasians but also Latinos and Native Americans. And occasionally some women would actually refer to Western men of Northern- or Central-European ancestry as “pure white,” and Latin-American men, or men of South-European ancestry, for example Italian men, or Native American men, as “non-pure white.” However, being pure white didn’t seem to actually boost the men’s desirability in the women’s eyes, and in fact I saw that some women in fact preferred the non-pure white look and they found the darker hair and eye color to be more Asian-looking, and more familiar and more pleasing to their eye than someone who is, say, blond-haired and blue-eyed.

Photo by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash.

From 18:24-19:52, on the traditional, patriarchal values the Western men using international dating agencies often bring to their anticipated relationships with Chinese women. Obviously, by no means all (or even a majority) do. But just as obviously, it’s surely no coincidence that many Korean men do the same:

Q) Now give us the profile of the Western male seeking a Chinese woman.

A) The majority of the men enrolled tended to be older, divorced, and tend to come from lower-middle class or working class backgrounds, although some were middle class. I’ve seen a lot of truck drivers, lots of small business owners, and these men tend to feel left behind by globalization as agriculture, manufacturing, and small businesses started declining. So these men actually viewed this changing economic landscape as a threat to their masculinity.

Now a lot of sociologists’ studies show that marriage rates have declined among working class men, and poor men, because women within their own class find them to be too poor to be marriage worthy. So for these men, having slipped down the socioeconomic ladder, they really struggle to hold on to what privilege they have left by pursuing so-called “traditional” marriages, possibly with foreign brides, because they think this will allow them to exert some kind of dominance and control at home. And there’s also some middle class men who, despite being financially stable, they still feel left out of place within the new gender norms that have emerged in Western societies, [supposedly] dominated by feminists who they see as destroying the family and nation through their spoiled behavior and materialism.

Photo by Conikal on Unsplash.

And, reluctantly, a final excerpt from 23:21-25:10 (there were so many I wanted to highlight!), on the upending of global masculinity and racial ideals when women are empowered to reject those marriages:

Q) Let’s look now at some of the theories about Western masculinity. What did you find concerning race, class, gender, globalization, and migration?

A) First, I challenge readers to rethink the relationship between race and class…the question I ask is, does Western masculinity still command some degree of hegemonic power in China, despite China’s global rise—and I confirm that it does, by showing how Chinese dating agencies market their Western male clients as morally superior to Chinese men despite their lack or wealth. So the fact is that this portrayal still sells in China, and this reflects this continued superiority of Western culture within the Chinese women’s imagination.

However, in this book I also show a lot of moments when Western masculinity is starting to lose its hegemonic power, and this typically happens in the latter stages of the courtship process, when couples go offline and start meeting face-to-face. And in this book, I show how some of these women quickly rejected their working class, Western suitors, once they realized these men didn’t embody the type of elite masculinity that they were seeking in a partner, and instead these women would choose to continue having affairs with their local Chinese lovers, even if those men were married and not willing to leave their wives. And this is because [they] had these refined tastes, lifestyles, and sexual know-hows that a lot of their foreign suitors lacked.

Two final points of interest to round off. First, by coincidence, shortly after listening to this interview I got an alert that Kelsey the Korean was busy dismantling Western masculinity’s hegemonic power in Korea too:

Next, another well-timed coincidence: the latest issue of the Korean Anthropology Review just dropped, with an article by Han Seung-mi—”Critique of Korean Multiculturalism as Viewed through Gendered Transnational Migration in Asia: The Case of Vietnamese Returnee Marriage Migrants“—that sounds perfectly placed to challenge my own image of migrant brides in Korea as passive victims (my emphasis):

This article analyzes “returnees from marriage migration” by focusing on Vietnamese women from Cần Thơ and Hai Phong who have been to South Korea for marriage migration. In contrast to prevalent concerns in South Korea about the possibility of “child abduction” by Vietnamese mothers/divorcees, the author found many “deserted” Korean Vietnamese children and their mothers in Vietnam through this research. There is also a growing number of Vietnamese “return marriage migrants,” women who came back to South Korea after their first divorce and return to Vietnam. The article emphasizes the complexities and multidirectional trajectories of marriage migration and highlights the agency of female migrants, whose contribution to family welfare and to “development” is often overshadowed by their status within the family.

Does it really matter that, technically, my copy of the book hasn’t actually arrived yet? If you’ve read this far, I hope you too will indulge yourself (38,170 won on Aladin!), and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

*I first had repetitive strain injury about 10 years ago, consequence of having my keyboard too close to me, forcing me to bend my arms to type; fortunately, it resolved itself in a few weeks once I moved my computer just shy of arm’s length. This time round, it’s undoubtedly due to spending hours in bed on my phone, again bending my arms to use it; now that I’ve stopped, hopefully again the pain will go away just as quickly.

In the meantime, I can’t stress enough how much my arm can hurt at the moment, nor how debilitating it is to be literally too scared to use your right hand as a result. So, if you reading this, please do take a moment to consider how you physically use your devices, and for how long!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

March Book Club Meeting: “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-joo, Wednesday 15 March, 8:15pm KST

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Knowing a thing or two about Korean feminism, I avoided reading the most popular Korean feminist novel, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, for the longest time. Ironic, I know, but I just felt it wouldn’t really teach me anything new.

I wasn’t being arrogant. I’m still no ‘expert’ on Korean feminism, and I’m never going to claim to be one. But expert or not, if you’ve spent nearly two decades immersed in a subject, there’s only so much you’re going to gain from a book aimed at a general audience.

Then March’s book club meeting was coming up, originally planned for International Women’s Day on the 8th (postponed because I was sick). It felt time.

So now, having read it…I actually liked it, and would recommend it. But yeah—it really didn’t teach me anything new.

What it does do, and very well, is open a window onto the lived experiences of Korean girls and women. While much of what gets revealed by that may well not be news to anyone who’s shared, witnessed, listened to, read about, and/or studied those experiences, the way Cho Nam-joo summarizes and puts them all together into a succinct, very readable story is still very skillful, and essential for spreading knowledge of them to a wider audience.

Take the following two pages on many Korean schools’ blatantly unfair, sexualizing, and body-shaming dress codes for schoolgirls for instance. Just these few paragraphs alone are far more evocative of what it’s really like for girls than any of the news reports I’ve translated, and much more likely to spur people to action:

It’s also true that while I can’t really think of anything earth-shatteringly new I learned from it, it covers so many aspects of Korean girls’ and women’s lives that it reminded me of many things I’d almost completely forgotten, and got me interested all over again. To give another for instance, a topic I covered here recently was a ruling against a (usually) rarely-enforced law requiring study-rooms to be sex-segregated; providing some context to that, I explained that in many respects Korea is a surprisingly homosocial society, starting with most Korean schools being single sex. Thanks to that same chapter above, “Adolescence, 1995-2000,” I was reminded that even in ostensibly coeducational schools too, the classes themselves are still often single-sex. And that’s just one important fact about Korean school life, packed in among so many others in the chapter on that subject. Likewise, there’s many more jumping out at you in the sections on university, dating, work, marriage, pregnancy, motherhood, and so on.

Yet I only gave it a 3 out of 5, for three reasons.

First, because of frequent, long seques into discussions of background statistics and trends. (I’d previously encountered them in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, finding them very shoehorned in; hearing that they were in Kim Jiyoung too was another big reason why I put off reading it for such a long time.) Sure enough, while there were a lot fewer than I’d expected, they were definitely jarring, completely ruining the immersion in the story. Say, when listening to Jiyoung’s fuming about being discriminated against at job interviews in the mid-2000s, to suddenly being given figures on the numbers of female managers in the mid-2010s, then right back to going back to her fuming ten years earlier. Those stats, to the extent something from ten years in a character’s future even needed including at all, could surely have been brought in much more seamlessly.

Next, for its brevity. For sure, being only 163 pages long will likely have positively contributed to sales. But for what I personally wanted from the book, it felt at least 163 too short.

Specifically, I was approaching it having just read last month’s selection Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, a collection of light horror-themed, often graphic, sometimes disgusting short stories (in the first, a woman’s doppelganger slowly grows out of her feces in her toilet, and begins talking to her). Struggling to understand these earthy, brutally corporeal choices of subjects, and trying to find a common theme to the stories, I gained a sense of women’s much more visceral relationship with their bodies and awareness of their cycles and rhythms, based on their physical difference with men’s.

Which I realize may sound crude and simplistic, and open to multiple (mis)interpretations. So, to be clear, I’m absolutely not saying that women are any less rational than men, that men can’t be emotional or don’t ever have mood swings, that men shouldn’t also be much more aware of their bodies, or that the similarities between men and women aren’t much stronger than the differences. I also completely understand every women’s outrage at ever being dismissed by men for being “hormonal.”

Surprised to suddenly see the image from my 2010 post “Sex and the Red-Blooded Woman” again. Turns out, “Hormonal: The Hidden Intelligence of Hormones” by @haselton,has just been translated into Korean. So naturally, I just ordered it for my birthday! 🤓 https://t.co/wg7fm9ymFY pic.twitter.com/DWtVZ7LTDM

— The Grand Narrative (@JamesTurnbull) February 21, 2022

I still raise that sense though, because I also brought to Kim Jiyoung my own lived experience, discussions with women, and those nearly two decades of immersing myself in various feminist materials and forums, all of which tell me that, yes, speaking very, very generally, (cishet) women do talk about their bodies much more than (cishet) men, talk about men and sex very differently, talk to women very differently than to men (as indeed men do to women), and that the female gaze, libido, and arousal are not at all like cishet men imagine them to be, and so on.

(Update: Having just seen the film, I realize I was so fixated on ~~sex~~ this issue that I neglected several, much more important flaws of the book. So, I cover them in a longer second review here.)

Put that considerable baggage of mine all together, and I was just expecting something much deeper—and less sanitized—from Korea’s most popular and famous feminist novel. Insights into what it’s really like being a woman that I didn’t already know. The numerous things that all women take for granted and so generally don’t discuss, least of all with men, which is why I’m still only learning about them at the tender age of 47.

Indeed, many of them from the first novel I’m (painfully slowly) reading in Korean: Bodies and Women ‘몸과 여자들’ by Lee Seo-su, which I’d easily recommend from anyone wanting an upgrade from Kim Jiyoung. And, given that Bodies and Women is also relatively short, tells me that even in a longer book Cho probably wouldn’t have provided what I was looking for anyway.

Image sources: Aladin, NamuWiki.

The third and final reason though, I couldn’t put my finger on, but somehow felt familiar. Then, as I actually clicked on those 3 stars at The StoryGraph, I was informed that my connection there, Mel of Equal Opportunity Reader, had also given it 3 stars (great minds think alike!), and written a review which hit the nail right on the head. Taken here from the longer one on her blog:

…despite the familiarity of her experiences, Jiyoung herself is nearly impossible for me to relate to. She has an infuriating lack of agency and inner thought–she’s a perfect victim and it’s only her privilege as a member of a stable family who support her financially that keeps her life from being far, far, worse. I found myself frustrated by how safe and protected she actually was and how little she did with that foundation. She’s a flabby marshmallow of a woman who goes along with everything that happens to her and comes out far better than a lot of women do despite that. This is only highlighted by the fact that most of the other women in the story–her mother, her sister, her first boss–all have much more developed, layered personalities, in my opinion.

As she goes on to explain, the book doesn’t really offer any solutions or ways forward, whereas “there [definitely] are in fact ways to claim agency and equity as a woman in the world.” I also suddenly realized the familiarity: all the K-dramas I was exposed to in the early-2000s, in which the hapless long suffering daughters-in-law and/or lowly company employees would just sit there and take abuse all day long, complaining and crying but never actually doing anything about it. Constantly shouting at the screen, just wanting to get up and shake them out of their resignation and passivity, it ruined K-dramas for me for life.

Unlike books ;)

And on that note, if you’re interested in attending the book club meeting—a very safe space, with a maximum of 12 members, but frankly usually more like 4 or 5—then please send me an email, and I’ll pass on the Zoom link before Wednesday. Also, my apologies for the very short notice, but you’re more than welcome to join if you’re just interested in Korean feminism in general, regardless of if you’ve actually read the book. Even most of the reading group questions below, helpfully provided at the end of the edition I bought, don’t at all require it. So please do get in touch!

Update: I forgot to mention there’s still time to ~~cheat by watching~~ check out the movie on Netflix too!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

In Just Two Minutes, My Eyes Were Opened to Why Resolving the Comfort Women Issue is so Necessary for Japan’s #MeToo

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Image by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.

For sixteen years, I’ve maintained a strict policy of never covering anything related to the “comfort women” issue. I already have my fair share of trolls, thank you very much, so don’t need to add Japanese and Korean ultra-nationalists to the mix.

With this convenient out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude though, I recently realized I’ve been missing a crucial connection to present discourses about sexual violence today, especially in Japan.

It just took two minutes, taken from the New Book Network’s podcast interview of Robert O’Mochain and Yuki Ueno about their book Sexual Abuse and Education in Japan: In the (Inter)National Shadows (Routledge, 2022):

“The fixation with depicting comfort women as fake victims has repercussions for survivors of sexual assault today. Even if victims of abuse are not aware of comfort women issues, they are aware of the danger of being labeled a higaisha-buru (“fake victim”), and in the book we show how the association of ideas between ex-comfort women, and fake victims, and contemporary women who report sexual assault, is still a factor in the silencing of women, who have a right to report sexual assault, but…they remain in the shadows.

And, I think a good illustration of how this is relevant still today, is something that happened in 2020. There were prominent members of the main political party, the LDP, and there was an event there on a program that was looking at (unintelligible Japanese term?) through comfort women issues, and when the issue was under discussion a member of the House of Representatives, Sugita Mio, she made the comment “Women can lie as much they want.” Now she did issue an apology later for saying [that], but she wasn’t censured by her party for the comment. They actually refused to receive a petition against her then, when it came to the LDP headquarters…she is still around—she continues to exert influence as a lawmaker in the Diet. And the comment [about the refusal?] was “Why do you report it?”, so it’s part of public discourse. So I think it indicated there’s a determination there amongst ultra-conservative groups to depict ex-comfort women as fake victims, to cast doubt on their oral evidence, and that will affect all sexual assault survivors. I think that’s an important question that we’re exploring in the book.”

(Robert O’Mochain speaking,16:24-18:33)

Unfortunately for those of you who likewise now want to get their hands on said book, I think I speak for most of us when I say US$160–$204 is slightly out of our price range ㅠㅠ. So too, even US$44–$50 for a copy of Voices from the Contemporary Japanese Feminist Movement edited by Emma Dalton and Caroline Norma (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) that I’ve long had my eye on, when you realize it’s only 141 pages long!

I therefore recommend the podcast interview again then, for more on links to the relative failure of Japan’s #MeToo movement (also Lile Otaki Donohue’s article in Trinity Women & Gender Minorities Review for an excellent 8-page summary and comparison with other countries), and the Daiwa Foundation’s video below for short interviews of the contributors to Voices:

Finally, it’s my birthday next week on—yes, really—International Women’s Day(!), so I think one source on Japan’s #MeToo movement even I can indulge myself on is the self-explanatory Black Box: The Memoir That Sparked Japan’s #MeToo Movement by Ito Shiori :)

Has anyone read any of those books? Or have any other recommendations? Can any Japanese speakers please help with the term I couldn’t make out in the podcast at 17:25? Thanks!

Why #MeToo Failed in Japan (Trinity Women & Gender Minorities Review)
Japan’s Me Too Movement and ‘Comfort Women’ Issue: Part 2 – Intersection of History and the Translation of Culture (Research Institute on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery)
In Japan, victims wary of #MeToo movement (Chicago Tribune)
In Japan, Saying ‘Me Too’ Comes With Risks (Voice of America)
#MeToo to meat: no more soju calendars with nearly nude women in South Korea
If You Understand Korean, Please Don’t Miss Out: “After Me Too” (애프터 미투, 2021) is Screening October 6-9!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

“저의 몸과 저의 섹슈얼리티에 대한 이야기를 해보려고 합니다. 이것은 실로 부끄러운 고백이어서 저는 단 한 번밖에 말하지 못할 것 같습니다. 그러니 가만히 들어주세요.”

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Image sources: Aladin, NamuWiki.

“I want to tell you a story about my body and my sexuality. But it’s going to be so revealing and embarrassing for me, that I can say it only once. So please listen carefully.”

If you can please indulge me, I just want to say I’m very proud of myself for ordering Bodies and Women ‘몸과 여자들’ by Lee Seo-su. It will be the first novel I’ll have read entirely in Korean!

I was instantly sold on it by reviews that mention its intimate coverage of beauty ideals, gender socialization and body-shaming in schools, sexual assault, pregnancy, sex in marriage, pervasive sexual objectification, and the male gaze.

However, there’s also the matter of the other members in The Grand Narrative Book Club,* who are much more knowledgeable and well-read than myself, and have often already read the original Korean versions of the translated novels we discuss. Because while I count myself lucky that I’m never the most interesting person in the (Zoom) room, does the fact I’m the dumbest really need to be so obvious?

In 2023 then, I want to work on disguising that. Starting by getting into the habit of reading novels in their original Korean myself.

Unfortunately, Bodies and Women will not be turning up in the club anytime soon. Lee Seo-su seems to be a relatively new writer, with a discussion in Korean Literature Now about of one of her short stories being all I could find out about her in English. So, although I could translate those persuasive reviews for you here, really any translation add-on for your favorite browser should more than suffice. Instead, hopefully I will find many interesting things in the book itself to pass on later.

Sorry. I did say this post was an indulgence!

However, with that my writer’s block does seem to be cured now too, so it served its purpose. Let me offer some humor too, as a parting gift—but also, a reminder of precisely why those reviews were so persuasive, and books like it so necessary. For I shit you not: these two sponsored ads on Facebook, I saw back to back after googling “몸과 여자들” the hour previously:

Again frankly, probably the juxtaposition is a complete coincidence. After the book itself, googling “몸과 여자들” in fact mostly brings up images of women perusing fine male specimens. But more to the point, during the evening rush hour, Korean advertisers on Facebook deliberately target men with ads for lingerie etc., which they won’t buy, but which do persuade them to swipe left to be rewarded with more lingerie models, then with ads for oh-so-masculine power tools and gaming equipment which they might.

Also, ever since I hit my mid-40s I’ve been inundated with ads for libido and erectile dysfunction treatments, and doubt it’s just me. I don’t mean to laugh at anyone or their partners who actually need to avail themselves of such products, especially since I’ll probably be joining their ranks sooner rather than later (sigh). But many prove just as creepy as campy. For instance, this one where the model’s head was cut off, in stark contrast to when a different advertiser used the same stock photos of her to advertise diet products to women:

Then there’s these screenshots from yet another ad in my feed today, from which I’ll let you form your own conclusion to this post to!

*Finally, the book for January’s meeting on Wednesday the 18th is Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (2017), translated by Anton Hur (2021); I’ll put up an official notice soon. Sorry for not doing so earlier, which is my fault for not realizing that I may not be the only person out there who hasn’t actually read it yet!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

December Book Club Meeting: “I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki: A Memoir” by Baek Se-hee, Wednesday 21 December, 8:15pm KST

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

To round off our last book club meeting of the year, may I present I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki: A Memoir by Baek Se-hee, first published in 2018 and recently translated into English by Anton Hur. Described as “part memoir, part self-help book, and completely engrossing,” by The Korea Society, I Want to Die “is a book that captures the edgy relationship many millennials and Gen Z-ers have with hopelessness, hunger, and the pressure to be perfect.” It also provides, according to Willow Heath of Books and Bao, “a window into the mind of someone with depression, and a hand on the shoulder of anyone who suffers with it themselves,” and I just can’t wait to read it!

Please see LibraryThing, The StoryGraph, GoodReads and the videos below for reviews, and then, if I Want to Die still appeals, I’d like to invite you to our meeting on Wednesday 21 December, at 8:15pm Korean time. If you are interested in attending, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address), and I will contact you to confirm, and will include you in the club reminder email with the Zoom link a few days before the event. At the same time, I will also post a SPOILER FILLED list of suggested discussion topics and questions below, which we’ll use to loosely structure the meeting (so please watch this space!).

But I want to emphasize that they will definitely only be suggestions, as I stress that the meetings are very small and informal really. And also, to help ensure that they remain as safe a space as possible, that there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself. So please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

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As Willow says, this is a very experimental book, both in subject and in format, so mostly these suggested discussion topics and questions will very much just be my observations:

My first is how valuable it is that a book about depression and therapy has become a bestseller in Korea. Mental problems are still hugely stigmatized here, not helped in recent years by incidents such as a murder/arson case by a schizophrenia patient in Jinju in 2019, as well as numerous attacks by men on women that are invariably attributed to mental illness rather than also acknowledging the role of misogyny, which is a much more politically sensitive subject. Accordingly, the government’s mental health care budget and number of trained personnel fall well below OECD average.

In such circumstances, it is very admirable and brave that Baek Sehee has deliberately set out to explain what depression is like for the public. That despite how vulnerable this makes her, she has shown the non-scary and non-judgemental reality of what therapy is actually like (sort of; I’ll return to this below), which is a good start towards encouraging more people in need to visit therapists. I’ve also heard that, especially in Korea it’s very valuable hearing the experiences of an ordinary person rather than a celebrity, and likewise the strong emphasis on her problems with her body image would find a lot of resonance with Korean readers—and Korean women in particular.

Related, can anyone speak to the impact of BTS’s recommendation? Alas, I’m not a fan, so I’d be interested in hearing more about the circumstances of that. Thanks!

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Next, in raising the subject of therapy we can certainly talk about the different attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of it between Koreans and people from other countries, and perhaps also between US residents and people from other English-speaking countries. Indeed, one Western expert(?) is actually quite scathing in her criticisms of the therapist, and I personally thought the therapist tended to be too quick to label what Sehee was going through, regularly shoehorning her issues into various convenient narratives and/or mental conditions rather than acknowledging her individuality and their complexity.

Speaking to the point earlier about how real a picture of therapy sessions Sehee provides, we can also discuss the issue of the transcripts of the conversations being very packaged and edited to make their points. (There’s no interjections, there’s no pauses, there’s no crying or missing minutes, and so on.) In doing so, I don’t think Sehee was being dishonest per se, as it may just have been a practical necessity for the sake of readability. But you could argue that in giving unrealistic expectations of sessions it slightly undermines her intentions to encourage and guide others to seek therapy.

Also, what sex do you think the therapist was? Why?

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How did you find the structure?

In my reading of reviews, the vast majority of people liked the transcripts, but by the middle began to find them increasingly muddled and repetitive, with no clear theme or narrative. The essays—”random observations”—at the end were also almost universally disliked, some reviewers accusing of them of being just padding to justify the book format. I tend to agree.

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Finally, what were the positives and the negatives of the book for you?

Many, we’ve already covered. Additional potential positives include the author’s honesty, and her therapist’s ability to demonstrate links between her feelings and her negative behaviors and habits of which she had previously been unaware—and which is one of the first steps towards addressing them. Reviewers also mention time and time again just how relatable she is.

I’m going to be a contrarian though, and argue that relatability is mostly because there are just so many experiences and feelings covered. That of course there’s going to be some moments when you can completely identify with Sehee and what she’s going through, because who hasn’t ever been depressed, had issues with coworkers, or felt fat (etc.) at some point?

That said, if you deeply related to any—even many—such moments, if they moved you, if Sehee’s thoughts and feelings and/or the therapist’s advice were truly beneficial to you, then nobody can or should want to deny you any of that.

It’s just…there were no moments like that for me.

Probably, because although a lot of people found that although the book can appear to be a very general one about depression and therapy, really her core problems are very specific to her. The advice given, not really relevant to anyone without the exact same.

Indeed, despite the title, do suicide and tteokbokki get any mention at all? Is the book really as universal and relevant as it’s often described and marketed?

My verdict then: 2 out of 5. How about you?

Sehee does have my great admiration and respect for helping start the long, difficult, but very urgent and necessary conversation about mental health that needs to take place in Korea. Having read I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, now I very much hope to read its sequel, and from other authors it spawns on this topic, a genre which was previously dominated by psychiatrists themselves. But however valuable it was to open the doors for more such possibilities, unfortunately this particular one fell flat for me, the delivery and structure somewhat flawed. Sorry!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

October Book Club Meetings: “Broken Summer” by J. M. Lee, Thursday 13 October; and “Concerning My Daughter” by Kim Hye-jin, Thursday 27 October (Both at 8pm!)

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

Sorry for the lack of posts everyone—I’ve just been exceptionally busy and frantic this start of the new semester. On top of all that, my order for Broken Summer seemingly vanished into the aether after processing(!), meaning I finally only received a copy today. That’s much too late for a September book club meeting unfortunately, so instead that one will now be on Thursday October 13, followed by the next one for Concerning My Daughter on Thursday October 27 (both at 8pm).

If you are interested in attending either, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address). I will contact you to confirm, and then include you in the club reminder email with the Zoom link a few days before the event.

Once I’ve read it myself, below will be a SPOILER FILLED list of suggested discussion topics and questions for Broken Summer which we’ll use to loosely structure the meeting (I’ll write a separate post and list for Concerning my Daughter next month). But they will be suggestions only, as I stress that the meetings are very small and informal really. And also, to help ensure that they remain as safe a space as possible, that there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself. So please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to read the books!).

In the meantime then, please enjoy the books, and watch this space for an update with the list of discussion topics. And I’ll look forward to seeing you on Zoom! :)

(Update: For various reasons, those discussion topics and questions were sent in the club email rather than posted here. Sorry!)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

August Book Club Meeting: “Violets” by Kyung-Sook Shin, Thursday August 25, 7pm

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes; 8 minutes with questions.

After a brief rest last month, the book club is back in August with Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin, first published in 2001 and translated into English by Anton Hur this year. Probably neither giant in Korean literature needs any further introduction though(!), so let me direct you post-haste to some reviews of the book instead—Books and Bao, The Guardian, Washington Independent Review of Books, Tony’s Reading List—and then, if Violets still appeals, to invite you to our meeting on Thursday August 25 at 7pm Korean time.

If you are interested in attending, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address). I will contact you to confirm, and will include you in the club reminder email with the Zoom link a few days before the event.

Finally, below is a SPOILER FILLED list of suggested discussion topics and questions that we’ll use to loosely structure the meeting. But these are only suggestions, as I stress that the meetings are very small and informal really. And also, to help ensure that they remain as safe a space as possible, that there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself. So please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

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1) One thing I really liked about this book was Kyung-Sook Shin’s knowledge of her subject, which she gained from working on a farm for six months. As I read, I was surprised at how I couldn’t help but grow more and more intrigued by the intricacies involved in the care of trees and flowers, despite my having no real interest in the subject previously.

Are there any other books that have piqued an unexpected interest for you like this? Or at least, a greater appreciation of the subject? How about just a respect for the depth of the author’s research? In my own personal recent reading history, “The Secret Lives of Dresses” by Erin McKean comes to mind for the former, and “Limitless” by Alan Glynn for the latter two. How about you?

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2) Showing my age, another thing I enjoyed was the frequent mention of using phonecards and phonebooths, something I too reluctantly spent a lot of my time and loans on as a student in the 1990s. Are there any other little time and/or setting-based details like that which you found endearing? Or put you off for that matter?

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3) Is it a fair characterization to say that the first half of the book comes across as a very contemporary and grounded story, akin to previous book club selections like “If I Had Your Face,” “Love in the Big City,” and “Shoko’s Smile”? Only then, upon San’s second meeting with the photographer, to sequeway into something much darker, psychological, and surreal, more akin to, say, “The Vegetarian”? (One reviewer mentions there are “several moments when the narrative voice takes over, appearing to have more power and agency than the characters”; another, that “at times San felt more like an abstract idea rather than a character.”)

Were any of you surprised with that shift? Or, being more familiar with her novels than I am, already knew that surrealism was characteristic of her work? Were you disappointed by the shift? Alternatively, did you not find the transition so jarring, if indeed you agree there was one at all?

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4) There are many ways in which this book explores the themes of misogyny and sexism. For example, in how San’s mother is so ostracized as a single mother after her husband’s death, and so limited in economic opportunities as a woman in rural 1970s Korea, that even with her hair salon work she still has to live with boyfriend after boyfriend in order to provide for herself, mother-in-law, and her daughter—and yet still finds that task so thankless and miserable, that she ultimately leaves them both.

Without prompting, what other examples of these themes stood out to you, or resonated with you the most? Why?

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5) But now very much with prompting, my unpopular opinion is that I’m also finding a great deal of hyperbole and exaggeration about the book’s contents, with many reviewers shoehorning various feminist themes and elements into the book which I argue simply aren’t there at all. (See The Feminist Press for an extensive collection of such blurbs.)

Let me give two specific examples. First:

I have a deep interest in how our usage of (seemingly neutral) public space is very gendered. So, when I heard from Willow in Books and Bao’s “10 Best Books of 2022 (so far…)” video, where they cover Violets from 4:35 to 6:30, and say that (starts at 5:18)…

“It looks at the ways in which men invade women’s spaces, in a very invisible way that we all just take for granted…by touching their arm, or touching their lower back as they scoot past them in a train aisle, or they all just go up to a woman and talk to her when she’s busy, because they believe they have the right to interrupt women. There’s this sense of patriarchy that what a man has to say or do is more important and more valid than what a woman is doing by herself. And there’s a lot of moments in the book that explore that.”

…then I was instantly sold. That they don’t actually mention any of those moments in that video, was of no consequence because they couldn’t in the two minutes available.

You can imagine my frustration then, as I waited in vain for those moments to appear while reading the book. Likewise, in Willow’s earlier dedicated review video below, in which they expound upon this theme of men invading women’s personal space in great length (starts from 9:00), still they ultimately give one brief instance—the goosebumps incident—from the book itself:

Simply put, I’m just not seeing what they’re seeing. And in that vein, I’m not seeing a lot of what’s claimed in the blurbs either. (Which are exaggerated in order to sell you the book, granted—but I’m finding them echoed verbatim in the reviews.)

That being said, I’m not saying those examples are not necessarily there. They may have just been too subtle for me, consequence of not approaching the book with the right frame of mind, and/or my baggage from a long life of unwittingly dominating my own personal space as a cishet male. If anyone could point out what went under my radar then, I would be very grateful. Similarly, is there anything you expected to see, but likewise struggled to find? Please mention them, and hopefully we can all help each other to find them!

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6) The second specific example: in the afterword written in 2021, Kyung-Sook Shin herself says (my italics):

“This is the story of a woman unable to find a place to fit in the world, suddenly swept up into a warped desire for love that eventually breaks her; it is the story of a woman punished by violent men in a cruel city because she is unable to express her confused desire for love and connection, who then disappears into the dark.”

Which, not least because it’s coming from the author herself, sounds like a perfectly fair, uncontroversial characterization of the book, especially in light of the brutal ending. But still—would it completely unreasonable to point that except for that specific incident, almost all of the bad things that happen to San seem to be self-inflicted?

Of course, there are good reasons for San’s psychological sabotage and frail, weak, violet-like condition. Many of these reasons—most even—seem clearly related to the patriarchal circumstances of her upbringing, of her society in general, and of her present-day circumstances. But, crucially, only indirectly. So, with the proviso that in the second, more abstract half of the book I struggled to grasp what was happening most of the time, is it not fair to ask:

Does she literally only meet the photographer three brief times in the entire novel? The last occasion only after a gap of many months, after which he has no memory of her?
If true, how is her overwhelming, consuming obsession with him and his confusion—it can’t even be called rejection—his fault? Or men’s fault in general?
Who, other than herself, causes her to enter a fugue-like state and prostrate herself in a on the construction site?
Who, other than herself, “punishes” her? Which “violent men” do so, other than her rapist in the penultimate chapter?

Again, please forgive me if I’m appearing willfully polemical and disingenuous in raising what may seem such awkward questions, but my confusion and slight misgivings about popular descriptions of the contents are genuine. So, if anyone can help address those, and/or help me look at the book in a new light, I’d be very grateful!

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7) But still with the unpopular opinions sorry(!): San’s first meeting with the photographer, in which he is not shy expressing his disdain for what he considers an aesthetically bland photo subject (violets), and by implication shows his dismissal of San’s expertise, occupation, and/or interests, is again often cited by reviewers as a powerful example of the pervasive sexism that San encounters in her daily life. And by all means, I get that vibe too. I appreciate that (most) men often act that way (knowingly or unknowingly) towards women but not men, and so women encounter it to a degree which men might find astounding.

And yet, technically, in that particular scene, can the reasons for the photographer’s attitude be unequivocally tied to his and San’s respective genders or sexes? As a long-term resident of three countries beyond my native UK so far, whose interests and opinions in each have often been decidedly non-mainstream in my host cultures, and sometimes even considered a direct challenge to perceived norms of masculinity and sexuality, I’ve often been the brunt of similar dismissive attitudes towards what I hold dear, from men and women alike. Which is why the claimed gender symbolism of San and the first photographer’s meeting rings a little hollow for me.

♥♥♥

8) Finally, back to Willow’s dedicated review and description of a crucial scene at the beginning of the book (from 8:20 below), in which they say…

“San and her friend [Nam-ae] in Chapter 1 have the most beautiful, romantic moment in literature that I’ve read in literature in years. It took my breath away, these two young girls, exploring their intimacy with one another.”

…and go on to describe it as an unfortunately sad, but very much life-defining moment for San. Which raises two final questions:

8a) San and Nam-ae are only ten in this scene. Ten. Do you have any similarly explosive, life-defining moments from such a young age? Romantic or otherwise?* Because without wanting to detract from anyone’s ability to interpret and enjoy a novel in any way they damn well please, personally I can’t but help but see Willow’s takeaway as a projection of a more mature sensibility onto San than her age really warrants.

(*I realize this may be too private and TMI for a book club meeting. So please don’t worry—as with any of these questions, answering is completely optional!)

8b) Lest we forget, recall we are talking about two nude ten-year old girls kissing.

Although I personally question if “romantic” is really the correct term to describe such an interaction between children, I don’t deny anyone the right to regard it as such, regardless of their age, gender, or sexuality. But do you sense a huge double-standard in who would be publicly admit it? What would be your reaction if you were at a bookish party and met someone like myself, a middle-aged cishet man, who claimed that that scene was the most romantic moment he’d read in years? That he found it so romantic in fact, that it made him cry? No, really?

See you in the meeting! ;)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

June Book Club Meeting: “Korean Teachers” by Seo Su-Jin, Thursday June 30, 7pm

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The semester is finally winding down, I’m finding free time to research and write, and I’m happy to announce that I will have new posts for you very soon (thank you for your patience!). But in the meantime, great minds continue to think and…er, read alike, which brings me to this month’s book: Korean Teachers by Seo Su-Jin (Harriet Press, Aladin, Amazon), first published in Korean in 2020 and then in English in March this year. In short, it’s a quick, very readable, and very contemporary book about four Korean teachers in a Seoul university, which anyone who’s ever worked a Korean hagwon, school, or university will instantly be able to relate to, as well as students of Korean too. But as the synopsis from the publisher Harriet Press explains, really it’s about much more than that:

Winner of the Hankyoreh Literature Award, Seo Su-jin’s debut novel follows four Korean language lecturers at Seoul’s prestigious H University over the course of an academic year. Readers will spend one season with each of the four protagonists—Seon-yi in the spring, Mi-ju in the summer, Ga-eun in the autumn, and Han-hee in the winter—getting a close glimpse into the challenges and joys of sharing a new language and culture with students from abroad.

As readers delve into the story of each woman and the unique paths they have chosen to become a Korean lecturer, they watch Seon-yi, Mi-ju, Ga-eun, and Han-hee deal with a myriad of social and ethical challenges that accompany their job and their personal lives. From asserting themselves as modern-day career women braving sexism from both students and coworkers, to the shocking revelation that students, too, are treated unfairly as some are deemed to be more ‘desirable’ than others by H University. Some of the teachers had to bow to these pressures, but what fate would befall those who fought against the grain? Each of these women must ultimately find her place as a conduit between her students and an increasingly multicultural Korean society.

Praised as a novel that questions why highly educated women are still facing the formidable hurdle of ‘becoming somebody’ in Korean society, Korean Teachers is gratifyingly piquant as it skillfully peeks into the lives of contemporary women and how they challenge the societal norm where gender discrimination is ever so prevalent.

For further information, both about the book and more about the reality of conditions for Korean university teachers, please also check out this author interview in the Korea Times and this dedicated Reddit thread.

Finally, below is a SPOILER FILLED list of suggested discussion topics and questions that we use to loosely structure meetings. But the meetings are still very small and informal really, and, to help me ensure they’re as safe a space as possible, there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself. So please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

Update: With many parallels to the issues for Korean teachers raised in the book, the Yonsei’s Korean Language Institute Union is currently in the second year of its dispute with Yonsei University.

Update 2: For the July 28 meeting, we’ve chosen Violets by Kyung-sook Shin (2001, trans. 2022). A separate announcement will be made later, but in the meantime please enjoy these reviews from The Guardian and Books and Bao:

♥♥♥

General Questions/Thoughts

Anyone who’s ever worked a Korean hagwon, school, or university will instantly relate to the teachers’ many complaints about their management, bureaucracy, and students. Do you have any similar experiences to share?
How about similar experiences as a Korean language student?
The teachers in the book all have different opinions on the appropriate levels of how social to be with students, how difficult to make their courses, and what the students’ needs are. Which teacher’s opinions are most like your own?
Did anyone else find the romanized Korean words pretty difficult to follow at times? I wish the original Hangul had also been included alongside them, and am frustrated that so few translations of Korean works provide these!

Spring Semester—Seon-yi

If you were a teacher, what would you do if you discovered that your adult students were surreptitiously taking (appearance focused, but non-sexual) pictures of you at your workplace and uploading them to social media?
Obviously, Seon-yi is very upset that Quan is ultimately going to be deported, losing all the considerable money he and his wife Phuong invested in coming to Korea. It also results in a mass exodus of Vietnamese students, for which she is unfairly blamed. Should she have handled it differently? Could she have handled it differently, seeing as, ironically, she was the only victim among the teachers who didn’t file a police report?

Summer Semester—Mi-ju

Have you, or someone you know, made a similarly egregious case of misgendering someone? What happened and what were the consequences?
How could Mi-ju have avoided her own mistake?
In Korea, my students invariably struggle with my attempts to use even the most basic sexuality and gender-inclusive language in the classroom, and would much prefer I stuck to simply he/she and assuming everyone is heterosexual (admittedly, most of my students are low-level; by no means is their reluctance necessarily due to ignorance or homophobia). What have been your own experiences with using such language in Korea, or indeed in any country where little thought is given to political correctness, let alone preferred pronouns?

Autumn Semester—Ga-eun

I liked the point about Ga-eun being popular with the students partially because she teaches low-level classes—whereas as you advance, progress becomes much more difficult and frustrating, and this gets reflected in lower student evaluations for those trying to teach you more difficult stuff. This is reflected in my own evaluations!
Are there points where Ga-eun is too accommodating of Tanya’s depression? Which sounds cold, so let me rephrase it: are there instances where accommodating Tanya’s mental health needs ultimately defeats the purpose of her attending the classes at all? To further explain: in a “Korean Gender” summer school course I taught once, I required students to give a presentation, having learned from my own favorite lecturer 20 years earlier that being able to give presentations is a much more useful and necessary skill than writing essays, and that gaining confidence in public speaking, does, well, ultimately require actually speaking in public at some point. Then I was confronted with a student who was able to give a perfectly fine presentation, but only to me alone—which placed me in quite a dilemma.
What do you think of Hye-seon’s method of warning Ga-eun of the possible consequences of her illicit relationship with Yuto? Seeing as it shocks her into quitting her job, then I’m guessing not very highly. But how would you have handled it instead?

Winter Semester—Han-hee

I respected Han-hee’s realism in this story, her having no illusions about the chances of taking up comfortable university positions in England after her English husband Jacob’s absence from academia for four years. Ironically then, the notion of a PhD holder settling for teaching at a kindergarten, one of the standard, entry level ESL jobs for foreigners in Korea which most do straight after graduating, felt anything but realistic.
Were the problems with her physical health ultimately her own fault? How badly did she need to continue working in the late stages of her pregnancy? Certainly, it seems clear that she wouldn’t have been hired at H University again, which is why she wanted to prove how essential she was. But would getting a similar job elsewhere later, at a commensurate or slightly lower pay and level, really have been that difficult? Or am I completely underestimating the sexism and difficulties faced by mothers hoping to return to the workforce?
I admired Han-hee’s grit too, in resolving to wait for years if necessary for the sake of justice. But in light of what happens at H University in the next story, do you think in the end she will give up and move to the UK with Jacob?

Short-Term Winter Course—Seon-yi

Did anyone else cringe at how immature the international students sounded, finding them more like high-school children than adults?
Do you think that, again, Seon-yi will be made a scapegoat, in this case by both H University and the media?

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

May Book Club Meeting: “I’m Waiting for You: And Other Stories” by Kim Bo-young, Thursday May 26, 7pm

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

For this month’s meeting, we’re covering I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories by SF giant Kim Bo-Young (2021), translated by Sung Ryu and Sophie Bowman. As described by Amazon:

Two worlds, four stories, infinite possibilities

In “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way,” an engaged couple coordinate their separate missions to distant corners of the galaxy to ensure—through relativity—they can arrive back on Earth simultaneously to make it down the aisle. But small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away. As centuries on Earth pass and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. In two separate yet linked stories, Kim Bo-Young cleverly demonstrate the idea love that is timeless and hope springs eternal, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and the deepest despair.

In “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” humanity is viewed through the eyes of its creators: godlike beings for which everything on Earth—from the richest woman to a speck of dirt—is an extension of their will. When one of the creations questions the righteousness of this arrangement, it is deemed a perversion—a disease—that must be excised and cured. Yet the Prophet Naban, whose “child” is rebelling, isn’t sure the rebellion is bad. What if that which is considered criminal is instead the natural order—and those who condemn it corrupt? Exploring the dichotomy between the philosophical and the corporeal, Kim ponders the fate of free-will, as she considers the most basic of questions: who am I?

For further reviews, please see Locus, Asia Media, London Korea Links (who advises against the audio version), and, of course, Books and Bao (from 1:52 if the video doesn’t automatically start there):

If you’re interested in attending, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address). I will contact you to confirm, and will include you in the club email a few days before the event with a list of suggested discussion topics and questions that we use to loosely structure meetings. But the meetings are still very small and informal really, and, to help me ensure they’re as safe a space as possible, there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself. So please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

(Apologies for the very short notice this month BTW! Meanwhile, the book choice for the next month’s meeting, to be held on Thursday June 30, will be “Korean Teachers” by Seo Su-jin)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

April Book Club Meeting: “Shoko’s Smile: Stories” by Choi Eun-young, Thursday April 28th, 7pm

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

The moment I choose the acclaimed Shoko’s Smile for April’s bookclub meeting on Thursday the 28th, I learn that author Choi Eun-young and translator Sung Ryu will be giving a live virtual talk at the Korean Literature Night the night before!

Time may be of the essence though—a note on the signup page says there’s a deadline of April 10 to register. While that may actually just be referring to entering the draw to win a free copy of the book, and indeed a moment ago I was still able to register to attend, if you also want to do so I recommend registering as soon as possible just in case.

But I still recommend attending our own meeting too of course!

If you’re interested, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address), and I will contact you a week or so before the event. To keep the meetings remain small and informal, and to help me ensure they’re as safe a space as possible, there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself, so please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to order and read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

March Book Club Meeting: “Tower” by Bae Myung-hoon, Thursday March 31st, 7pm

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.

Just a short announcement sorry—this first week of semester has been very hectic, and on Friday I injured my knee, making it painful to walk (did I mention my university is on a steep mountain?). But more posts are nearing completion, and in the meantime it gives me great relief and pleasure to direct you to Philip Gowman’s excellent review and many related links at London Korean Links for this month’s book club choice—Tower by SF maestro Bae Myung-hoon, (2009), released in translation last year.

If you’re interested in attending, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address), and I will contact you a week or so before the event. To keep the meetings remain small and informal, and to help me ensure they’re as safe a space as possible, there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself, so please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to order and read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

February Book Club Meeting: “Love in the Big City” by Sang Young Park, Thursday 24th 7:00pm

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

Hello everyone! For February’s book club meeting on Zoom, we’re reading Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park (2021), translated into English by Anton Hur and recently released in paperback. As described by publisher Grove Atlantic in the US (published by Tilted Axis Press in the UK):

Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores and went into nine printings. Both award-winning for its unique literary voice and perspective, and particularly resonant with young readers, it has been a phenomenon in Korea and is poised to capture a worldwide readership.

Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life.

A brilliantly written novel filled with powerful sensory descriptions and both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.

For glowing reviews. see Asymptote, Electric Literature, NPR, The New York Times, and you may also be interested in an interview of Park by Hur at Words without Borders, as well as Hurs’ reflections at Literary Hub on translating a bestselling queer Korean novel as a gay Korean man. Alternatively, if videos are more your thing, then check out an author talk at The Korea Society, a conversation between Park and Alexander Chee and an interview of Park by Hur at LTI Korea, and, of course, Books and Bao’s excellent quick review below:

For purchasing the book, try Aladin in Korea (hardback), or publishers Grove Atlantic (US) and Tilted Axis Press (UK).

If you’re interested in attending, please contact me via email, or leave a comment below (only I will be able to see your email address), and I will contact you a week or so before the event. To keep the meetings small and informal, and to help me ensure they’re as safe a space as possible, there’s a limit of 12 participants including myself, so please get in touch early to ensure your place (and give you time to order and read the book!).

See you on Zoom!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Announcing the First Book of The Grand Narrative Book Club: “If I Had Your Face” by Frances Cha, Thursday 27 January 7:00pm

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

If you wannabe my lover, you gotta get with my books.

Or, if you just want to be my friend (your loss!), I’ll settle for a shared love of books in general.

Just as in a romance though, a relationship on that basis can still entail a bittersweet mix of passion and frustrated longing. Specifically, as my own taste in books has rarely meshed with my friends’, I’ve found there’s only so much I can wax lyrical about my latest conquests when they’re so unlikely to ever read them themselves. And with 52 books read in 2021, plus a goal of 72 in 2022, that’s of lot of pent-up passion not to have an outlet for.

But you already know where it’s going to go now.

As I type this, I’m loving If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha, “a fierce social commentary about gender roles, class divisions and, yes, plastic surgery in South Korea.” I’ve been especially struck by how realistically Cha depicts the daily lives and conversations of the four main young(ish) Korean female characters, much more so than in previous Korean or Korea-related fiction I’ve encountered. “Finally,” I said to myself, “I’ve found characters in a book talking just like my Korean friends and I talk!”

Yet we’re not in our 20s or early-30s either. Beyond the swearing and sex talk that I love so much, does Cha indeed portray their lives realistically? It’s been especially difficult for someone with my background to tell, slowing down my reading with so many nagging thoughts and questions.

Then something occurred to me in the shower. It’s a popular book, making Time’s list of 100 must-read books in 2020 for instance, meaning there’s many of you out there with your own opinions, insights, and maybe even your own nagging questions. So why not share them with each other on Zoom?

I’m envisaging something very intimate and informal, cameras on, with a maximum of 12 participants (but in practice probably much fewer than that). To ensure it’s as safe a space as possible, I’ll screen all attendees as much as I’m able, the Zoom link will be invite only, and once it’s started I’ll be very busy behind the scenes to ensure things run smoothly.

Just for that last reason alone, I want to be clear that this will be a discussion, and definitely not any kind of lecture, webinar, or even dominated by me. While in my duties as host I will have prepared many hopefully interesting questions and potential talking points to raise if necessary, I strongly encourage—nay, demand—everyone attending to come up with at least couple of their own (please!).

For those amongst you who are interested but haven’t read the book yet, I’m thinking that by Thursday, January 27 is plenty of time to order, read, and digest it, and that 7pm on that evening (Korean time) is both late enough to ~~drink~~ eat first, and early enough to get a discussion of a decent length in before people get tired. We could also decide the next month’s book then too.

If you’re interested in attending, please leave a comment below (your email address will only be visible to me) or contact me, and I’ll get in touch in a group email closer to the date. Any thoughts, suggestions, and advice for running a book club would also be very welcome.

See you on Zoom!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Why You’re NOT Living in a Feminist City: Two must-reads on living as a single woman in Korea and overseas

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes. Image (cropped) by Sara Aho on Unsplash.

“Daily reports of stalking sharply increase after implementation of anti-stalking law“—The Korea Herald, 18/11/2021.

When I read that, I happened to be in a coffee shop next to Remark VILL, an expensive serviced apartment building in Busan. Last year, I highlighted the owner’s sexist, infantilizing advertising campaign, which featured then 32 year-old actor Im Se-mi enthusing about being able to rely on maintenance staff to change her lightbulbs and unblock her toilet instead of her father, as well as showing us how eager she was to lose her virginity to the male guests she could now invite. (Yes, really. Maybe there’s a good reason those commercials are no longer available.) But while I did have to acknowledge the attraction of and dire need for the security services Remark VILL’s buildings offered their female residents, I also pointed out they represented yet another “pink tax,” which most single women simply couldn’t afford. And I have to highlight them again today too, for the exquisite coincidence of what I then read next in Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World by Leslie Kern (2020, pp. 164-165), which I’d gone to that coffee shop to finish:

“In my research on gender and condominium development in Toronto, I found that developers and real estate agents enthusiastically marketed condos to women with the idea that the 24-hour concierge and security staff, as well as technical features such as handprint locks, CCTV, and alarm systems, made condos the safest option for women living downtown. These features were highly touted when condos were arriving in ‘up and coming’ neighbourhoods that had previously been stigmatized or seen as abandoned, industrial areas. I argued then that by making condos ‘safe’ for women, developers were smoothing their path to expansion into neighbourhoods that might otherwise have been risky real estate investments. This expansion certainly wasn’t going to make life any safer for the women who would be displaced by this form of gentrification. Nor does it tackle domestic violence in any way. Furthermore, asking women to ‘buy’ their safety through condo ownership contributes to the trend of privatization, where people are held responsible for their own well-being, even their safety from crime. Making safety a private commodity in the city means that it becomes less and less available to those who lack the economic means to secure themselves. This is certainly a long way from an intersectional feminist vision of a safer city for women.”

“We may not know exactly what a safe city looks like, but we know that it won’t involve private safety measures. It won’t rely on the police to prevent or adequately investigate crimes. It won’t throw sex workers, people of colour, youth, or immigrants under the bus to create the appearance of safety. It won’t be centred on the needs and desires of privileged white women. And it won’t expect physical changes to undo patriarchal dominance.”

My apologies for the white lie of the post title: by no means is Kern only or even mainly concerned with single women in her book, with Korea—as in Seoul—only getting a total five lines in it. Critics also tend to agree on two glaring flaws: her focus on the Global North, and her lack of solutions to the many problems she outlines. Yet her narrow focus can also be considered a strength: personally, I enjoyed that her book is so firmly rooted in her own experiences in Canada and the UK as, variously, a girl, university student, mother, divorcee, single-parent, and feminist geographer, for she brings a lot of wit, personal anecdotes, and insights to those experiences that you sense would be lacking about subjects less close to home. In addition, she is at great pains throughout to point out that her cishet, middle-class, and white privilege mean ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities can have very different experiences to her, as well as to expand upon those.

Even without the coincidence at the coffee shop that threw my own objectivity out the window, it’s an easy, eye-opening, and thoroughly enjoyable read overall, which would appeal to both newcomers to the dreaded F-word and diehard urban activists alike. It should also be required reading for the (overwhelmingly) male architects, urban planners, and city councilors who generally take their own urban lives as the default norm—and so have no idea how inconvenient, difficult, ill-suited, and even dangerous their policies can be for the very different lives of female residents of their towns and cities.

If you would like something more specifically about single Korean women though, then consider Living on Your Own: Single Women, Rental Housing, and Post-Revolutionary Affect in Contemporary South Korea by Jesook Song (2014), based on interviews of 35 single women in late-20s to late-30s.

Actually, this may be a tough sell once you realize those interviews were conducted in 2005-2007; since then, Korea’s single household rate has skyrocketed, a massive demographic shift that has potentially radically transformed many of the issues that Song describes. The book is also especially frustrating for being, well, just too damn short, with less than a hundred pages of actual chapters. In particular, it lacks one on navigating sex and relationships outside of marriage, which would have been invaluable in an era when, thanks to the stigma and fear of being caught engaging in either, other academic researchers had difficulty finding any interviewees at all. Another valid criticism is that her interviewees are unrepresentative, all of them being self-selecting, all remaining unmarried by choice rather than because they lacked the means, 90 percent of them being former activists, and with a significant minority identifying as lesbian. Hence, when compared to their contemporaries, there’s the uncharacteristic strength of their shared wherewithal and inclination to brave living alone at a time when that often led to being ostracized—which Song herself recognizes.

However, she does cover sex and relationships in passing. In addition, given how “stubbornly” unmarried 30-something women are generally considered “difficult” by their families, society, and policymakers alike, with their wants and needs easy to ignore, that Song has provided material on a group so often rendered voiceless and marginalized is reason alone to order the book in my view. But its main strength is how, by (explicitly) providing such a rare examination of what a hitherto abstract concept like “developmental state” means for ordinary people on the ground, she demonstrates how the Korean state’s goals, filtered through the lenses of familial and societal patriarchy, resulted in pervasive financial discrimination against women. So convincing is she of its huge scale in fact, that actually I’m not at all convinced that aspect of single Korean women’s lives has “radically transformed” at all in the 15 years since Song’s interviewees told her about its impacts on them.

Let me finish with some examples from pages 43-44 of the second chapter, described by one recent reviewer as “discuss[ing] the economic structure that marginalizes single women in trying to finance the lump sum required to secure decent housing. Young single women were excluded not only from official financing measures, driven by neoliberal restructuring, but also conventional informal financing. She also illustrates how cultural gender norms are reflected in loan conditions that only cater for heterosexual married couples, making securing housing even harder for single women”:

Sorry (not sorry) for not having an e-book to copy and paste from, but those are available. Meanwhile, I bought my physical copy from Aladdin in Korea, for about the same price as from publisher Suny Press.

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

One Quick Thing You Absolutely Must Read to Understand Modern East Asia

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Original image source: The Chosun Ilbo, August 2015. For a discussion, see here.

It’s not often that one brief book chapter helps your whole degree make sense overnight. Even less often that someone will rescue a nearly 30 year-old, long since out of print tome from obscurity and offer that chapter as a free download.

Let me thank Shuyi Chua of the Education University of Hong Kong then, for providing a scan of Manuel Castells’ “Four Asian tigers With a Dragon Head: A comparative analysis of the state, economy, and society in the Asian Pacific Rim,” from R. Appelbaum & J. Henderson (eds.), States and development in the Asian Pacific Rim (1992). Not only did it give me one of my first genuine Eureka moments at university, but it’s still so relevant and helpful today that it took pride of place in my recent presentation above, and hence my finding Chua’s link.

(It’s probably still technically illegal to offer it publicly though, which is why I’ve never done so myself. So take advantage while you can!)

Let me also thank Professor Michael Free and his students at Kangwon National University, for the opportunity to wax lyrical about some of my favorite topics to them. If anyone reading would also like me to present to their students sometime in person or via Zoom, if for no other reason than to remind them that it’s not just you that gets excited about your subjects, please give me a buzz.

Finally, a big apology to everyone for not writing for so long. With so little physical social interaction over the summer, and with even what face-to-face contact I do get now almost entirely confined to my family and students, then frankly the weeks and months somewhat blurred into one another, making it difficult to pay much attention to the deadlines I set myself on the (always too many) posts I have in the pipeline. Inspired by my work on the presentation now though, I will try very hard to have one of my longer and more thought-provoking ones ready for you next week.

Until then!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Books I Read in 2021, Part 1: January to June

“Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled”—Mindy Kaling.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.

Language was invented, Robin Williams enlightens us in Dead Poets Society, to woo women. But the modern consensus is that it was developed by all sexes, to woo all sexes (PDF). I wonder then, would that have occurred to his progressive character in 1959? Would he have been equally candid teaching in a girls’ boarding school instead?

I like to think so.

Yet if words do indeed possess such power, that means I’m surely doing myself a grave disservice by not showing off how many of them I’ve read so far this year. And how better to do that, than by encouraging discussions about the books they were in?

If my brief seductions below work their magic then (or if you’d just like to show everyone how smart you are yourself!), please let your feelings known in the comments—or in my Zoom talk tomorrow, which is still open for registrations! :)

♥

1. The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (1992) by Lynda Nead, 2.5/5

Nead is insightful on pornography and feminist art here, but frustrates the reader with only 108 pages of text and images before the endnotes, wasting most of them on a somewhat incoherent philosophical argument.

2. Dalí (1996) by Gilles Néret, 2.5/5.

With barely any painting mentioned that isn’t also provided, this visual feast is a great book to inspire further interest in the artist, and would have been especially welcome in the pre-internet age it was published. Unfortunately however, that inspiration is about all it provides today, as Dalí’s other artworks in other media are almost completely ignored, and Néret’s fast-paced prose lacks even basic biographical information.

3. The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910–1945 (2008) by Theodore Jun Yoo, 4/5.

An excellent source on the conditions for female factory workers in particular. Only 4/5 though, for ending so abruptly when it feels like you’re actually only halfway through, and which leaves flustered ebook readers worried that their file has been corrupted!

4. The Youth of Early Modern Women (2018), ed. by Elizabeth Storr Cohen and Margaret Reeves, 5/5.

A very eye-opening reveal of the methods, possibilities, and richness of this hitherto “hidden” history, with short, very readable chapter lengths and a wide variety of topics also being a bonus. Of much more relevance to studying women in later periods and/or non-European socities than its title would seem to seem to suggest, I’m very eager to apply its lessons to analyzing modern-day Korea!

5. Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (2006) by Mel Gordon, 3.5/5.

A wild account of a wild time and place. Yet surprisingly short for all the research that clearly went into it, and very frustrating to read due its awkward two-column format and overabundance of images.

6. Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict (2018) ed. by Allison Alexy and Emma E. Cook (2018), 4/5 (OPEN ACCESS).

Many frustratingly short and uneven chapters, but overall a must-read that exposed big gaps in my knowledge and challenged preconceptions I didn’t realize I had. Has many, many parallels to Korea too.

7. Erotic Ambiguities: The female nude in art (2000) by Helen McDonald, 3/5

McDonald is an excellent read when on the solid ground of describing feminist art, and the politics thereof. But her vague, wordy writing style is much less convincing when applied to more abstract topics in later chapters, which are also somewhat outdated.

8. The Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World (2006) by Ketu Katrak, 1.5/5.

Many insights here, but unfortunately its theme-based approach covering women writers from former British colonies in, Africa, the Caribbean, and especially India will quickly overwhelm any reader not already intimately familiar with British colonial history, and often it can frankly be quite a challenge to determine which continent the author is actually discussing in any particular paragraph. This is a pity, because had Katrak confined her study to one region, and provided some historical context, this could have been a much more accessible and popular book.

9. Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (2010) by Kathleen Rooney, 5/5.

A slim but surprisingly deep, erudite discussion on art, the history of nude modelling, and public perceptions of beauty, told through the author’s own experiences. Recommended!

10. Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections between Peru and South Korea (2020) by Erica Vogel, 4.5/5 (OPEN ACCESS).

A fascinating look at a community that I frankly didn’t know existed, with much to teach about Korean immigration and religion in the process.

11. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (2001) by Gillian Rose 4/5.

Reading this in 2021, naturally this first edition was a little outdated in its coverage. It was also surprisingly and ironically lacking in images in later chapters, and would have really benefited from including some practical case studies. But it remains a good introduction overall, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the 4th edition (2016), which at twice the length probably addresses many of those shortcomings.

12. Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction (2008) by Veronique Mottier, 2/5.

With only 150 pages to devote to the subject, an impossible task for any author, but Mottier’s disjointed, WEIRD-focused attempt still disappointed nonetheless. Much better for the series would have been several regional or country introductions instead.

13. Waiting (1999) by Ha Jin, 2.5/5.

A universal, well-told story, but unfortunately the final Part 3 of the book feels very rushed, the main characters’ unexpected, Crime and Punishment-like transformations coming across as very sudden and inauthentic. A real missed opportunity.

14. Breasts and Eggs (2020) by Mieko Kawakami, 5/5.

A surprisingly universal story with only light touches of its Japanese setting, my only complaints are the frequent vivid dream/vision sequences, ironic for whom are otherwise such realistic characters. Still, totally worth the hype!

15. Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal (2002) ed. by Tom Reichert & Jacqueline Lambiase, 3.5/5.

A very uneven volume, with chapters ranging from outstanding and insightful to vacuous and full of jargon. Generally though, it was very educational and relevant, even two decades later.

16. High-Rise: A Novel (1975) by J. G. Ballard, 2.5/5.
Growing up with many of Ballard’s novels in my father’s bookshelves, I’ve come to expect that I have to make many suspensions of disbelief to enjoy them. But this particular one started off much more grounded and realistic than most, so that it rapidly turned fantastical anyway came as a big disappointment, compounded by the lack of any real conclusion. Although the book is often hailed as a social commentary on class and apartment living then, in my opinion it’s anything but, Ballard squandering that opportunity by having all its protagonists quickly losing themselves into his typical dreamlike fugues.

17. Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature (1974) by Thor Heyerdahl, 3/5.
An extraordinary man tells about the first extraordinary location he visited—what’s not to like? Yet 25 years after my first reading, my eyes frequently glazed over at his overly histrionic writing style, his philosophical musings about humanity, nature, and civilization frankly not particularly insightful. Had he spent that time giving more voice to his wife accompanying him instead, on providing more practical details on how they accomplished their shared trip and survived on the island, and/or on what he saw there that compelled him to launch his Kon-Tiki expedition 10 years later, I could have seen myself rereading this at least a third time.

Based on my skim-reading however, Senor Kon-Tiki: Thor Heyerdahl (1967) by his friend Arnold Jacoby does appear to fill many of those gaps, so I’ll look forward to that.

18. Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2015) by Rosalind S. Chou, 3/5.

An informative and pertinent work, marred by an unceasing victimhood narrative and a dogmatic insistence that nobody can overcome their socialization, prejudices, and racial stereotypes when choosing a romantic partner.

19. Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface (2005) by Adeline Masquelier (ed.), 4/5.

One of those books that takes a close look at things you took for granted, only to make you realize how culturally specific the meanings you attached to them were—and how profoundly gendered.

Also, very serendipitous to have read before Filthy Fictions: Asian American Literature by Women (2004) by Monica Chiu, which by coincidence I’m finishing as I type this.

20. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (1992) by Asunción Lavrin (ed.), 5/5.

One day in March 1997, I had to read a chapter in this for a Latin American history assignment. A woman sitting across from me in the university library was so intrigued by the title, she was easily persuaded to become my first girlfriend shortly thereafter.

Never underestimate the seductive power of a good book 🤓

(Which it is. Age having robbed me of my rose-tinted glasses, I expected to be thoroughly disappointed upon a rereading. But in fact, it’s even more informative and interesting than I remembered!)

21. Armies of the Caliphates 862-1098 (1998) by David Nicolle, 3.5/5.

Because sometimes you just have to linger over a brief, lavishly illustrated guide like this, and let your historical imagination go wild…

22. To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987) by Robert Heinlein, 3/5.

A favorite childhood author (which if you know him, explains a lot!), I enjoyed rereading these memoirs of the sassy AF Maureen Long. But the story becomes a mess when it starts focusing less on her than on her time-traveling relatives.

23. The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II (1997) by Iris Chang, 1.5/5.

Without disputing (most of) the harrowing facts presented about the massacre, nor Chang’s invaluable service in raising public awareness of it in the West, I simply can’t recommend this terribly written history.

24. The Woman in the Purple Skirt (2021) by Natsuko Imamura. 1.5/5.

Persuaded to buy this after watching @FestiveBuoy‘s (a.k.a. Books & Bao) video review, I was disappointed to find it only mildly amusing, much too short to find deeper meanings in, and to have a spectacularly underwhelming ending. Still, it’s always good to have one’s horizons expanded, and I have faith that I’ll enjoy the next book I discover through their excellent channel :)

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

Books I Read in 2020

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes. Photo by Nathan Bingle on Unsplash.

All the books I read in 2020, with my ratings.

Only the titles and links, alas, as my university’s jam-packed December had me receiving frantic phone calls from students as late as Christmas and Boxing Day. But now that I’m free, I’d love an excuse to talk about any of the books you’ve read or are interested in. Please do give me a buzz if so, either in the comments here or on Facebook or Twitter.

Also, I’m itching to atone for my many unfulfilled writing promises this year. To cut to the chase, by posting every Monday from now on, starting with this warm-up.

How? Why? What’s different?

The old me would be answering those questions now, instead of working on coming posts. Whereas the new me doesn’t have anyone’s time to waste, and has already deleted their social media apps on their phone to help them focus ;)

Until Monday then. And Happy New Year!