Excerpts from my Conversations with Yeong-eun

"You’d rather die alone than have to support someone else for the rest of your life"

Below are excerpts from my conversations with Yeong-eun, a 42-year-old South Korean woman living in Busan.

Yeong-eun is currently a private English tutor and previously worked abroad with special needs children and the homeless. She is unmarried, doesn’t have kids, and lives with her mom, who she has been helping since her dad passed away. She is also a first-rate raconteur and, I have found, an excellent resource for understanding Korea better. 

I talked to her about her life, the competitiveness of Korean society, education, reasons for not having kids, military conscription, North Korea, nuclear weapons, and much more.

Note: Yeong-eun speaks very good English, but I have edited where necessary for clarity. Enjoy. 

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You’ve already talked about this a bit, but how would you describe your childhood? 

We were just studying all the time trying to get into the best university. 

I think like everyone else, we were very forced, and we thought that was the only way to be successful. Luckily, I was pretty good at school.

It was pretty stressful, right?

Yeah—I can talk about this. 

I mean, I was very suicidal when I was in middle school and high school. Everyone is under so much pressure to be the best, and if you’re not first place, then you don’t deserve anything. 

Where do you think the competitiveness comes from? 

I think society pushes everyone in that direction. 

You know, you’ve probably noticed we always want to get everything done very fast. Bali bali.¹

There was a pizza delivery service that said if we don’t deliver in 30 minutes you don’t have to pay. But then a delivery guy died in a car crash. He was under so much pressure to deliver it on time that he had a car accident and died. That’s why they got rid of the service. 

That’s just one example of how much pressure we’re under. When it comes to university, people know you have to go to the best university to guarantee anything. So we were pushed to be the best. 

Just going to a good university at that time was enough to be successful—it’s changing now—but when I grew up, that was around 2000. Even after IMF, people believed that if you went to a good university, everything would be guaranteed for your life—a good job, a good life, a good family.²

But do you think Korea was super competitive before it started growing so fast? Like at the end of World War II?

Not right away, it probably started in the 1970s. There was a guy who burned himself to protest against the government and companies not following labor laws back then. There was no minimum wage.

Under Park Chung-hee

Yes, he was a piece of shit. His daughter is a piece of shit as well. 

At that time, let’s say you’re the first daughter and have two younger brothers. You’d have to support them because the family wouldn’t be able to. So you’d work 20 hours a day in the factory and send that money to the family so the boys would have a good education. It was good that everyone worked so hard, but they weren’t happy.  

You know, I believe in the evolutionary perspective. Someone who was probably quite laid back and relaxed couldn’t have a family at that time. So people like that are probably extinct now. In Korea, I think the hard worker’s gene is in our blood. 

I’ve thought about this because the Korean peninsula doesn’t have many resources, it’s densely populated, it’s been invaded a lot. It seems like the only way you could survive is to be very hardworking. 

Yes, and you know, even today, you don’t have any job security. If you’re not efficient you’re out. Before IMF—probably for 10 years in the 80s there was some sort of job security—once you actually work for one company you can retire from there. 

But that’s not the case anymore. At that time, everyone thought, “The company is my family.” And the companies forced that idea on all the employees as well. You work for a family, not a company. Blah blah blah. It had good synergy–good, win-win. 

It sounds like what I’ve read about Japanese company culture. But it becomes a problem because you can’t bring in new people.

Exactly, that happens. 

You know, everything happening in Korea already happened in Japan. Low birth rate happened in Japan, now it’s happening here. Now the economy is getting a little better in Japan, so I think it might be the case for Korea in two decades or so. That’s why I don’t worry about anything… but myself. [laughing]

So at that time—the 90s—I was forced, society pushed everyone to be the best. You have to be excellent to live a better life. So if you’re feeling behind then you feel suicidal. Like I’m useless.

So you wouldn’t say you had a happy childhood? 

No.  

But before middle school? Elementary school?

I don’t think it has to do with being Korean or anything—or it could be. Our family is pretty depressed all the time. I think it’s our genes. My brother is a bit depressed—in a way quite artistic—my sister as well. My mom is like that. 

And so whenever I think of my childhood I don’t really have happy moments. I mean I was very loved by my family, but life itself was... I mean, my parents used to fight a lot. It didn’t really affect me. But it affected my brother and sister a lot because they were older.

As far as I remember—I was six—I remember a very big fight between my mom and dad. But after that, I was really busy just with schoolwork, so I didn’t really care. But my mom and my sister and my brother probably suffered a lot. 

And at that time, my mom used to make good money just by having a small convenience store. The economy was really good back in the 1980s, I guess.  

What happened is, my mom didn’t have enough chance to have an education. So she wanted to make sure that we got as much education as possible. Just like what do you call it? Helicopter mother? Or Asian tiger mom? 

So my mom said, you know, you need to go to this hagwon, that hagwon after that.³ 

So in elementary school, I went to three different hagwons. Even back then. 

What kinds did you go to? I heard they had hagwons just for things like memorization. 

Yeah, mine were quite practical and fun—I really enjoyed it. Do you know calligraphy?

Yeah. 

Yeah, I was writing Chinese characters to learn them better. My mom wanted to make sure that I could read Chinese letters.⁴  

So I probably went to that hagwon for a couple of years. I did contests for calligraphy and that kind of stuff. 

And piano lessons—I’ve forgotten everything, but I can still read notes. I went because my brother didn’t get a good grade in music. He told my mom to send me since he didn’t have a chance to learn. 

Where else did I go? I don’t know if you know about this—I didn’t actually learn it—there is a Chinese calculator you use with your hands. There were a lot of hagwons for those. 

Why?

Because then you didn’t have to have to use a calculator.

For mental math?

Yeah. I never got to that point, but my mom wanted to make sure that I could do math faster than others.⁵

So I went to three hagwons in elementary school. In middle school, I went to one but it had four lessons a day. 

Did you like school or the hagwons more? 

You know, that’s an interesting question. I didn’t like any—I guess I had no choice. I just tried to enjoy it at the time. 

I went to girls' middle and high schools—I wasn’t even interested in any boys—but at hagwons, there were some boys as well. So that was the only way I could mingle with the opposite gender. 

Is your school mixed? 

It’s all girls. 

Oh, good for you. You must be very popular there. Do you get chocolates or gifts?

I’ve gotten some. 

Oh, so cute. 

Yeah, so I went to a girls’ school. 

Would you say there’s not much dating at Korean schools?

Not for me. I was so into just, you know, getting a better grade and going to the better university. 

I mean young people—they’re so busy with school. They don’t have time. 

But I think to be honest these days, how can I say—in my school we didn’t really have a problem with bullying. Have you heard about that?

It’s like—I forgot the word—ostrich—no that’s the animal. Like, exclude. 

Ostracize.

Yeah, ostracize. Back then we didn’t really ostracize anyone in our classroom. But I think the more competitive society becomes, the higher the chance that people bully each other. 

So I had a pretty good—what do you call it—high school life. 

Social life?

Yeah, you know, we played badminton together and would hang out during lunch breaks. 

Because everyone was a girl, you know, we didn’t have to worry about getting changed. We would just wear sweatpants under our skirts. 

So you know I’m just, playing some board game on the floor. And luckily we had lunch and dinner provided. We had to pay, but we didn’t have to go buy it or anything like that. It would just come to the classroom. 

You stayed at school for dinner?

In high school, we stayed at school until nine to study. 

Kids today don’t stay until nine, right?

No, they just go to hagwons after school. But, you know, when we left at nine, it was too late for a hagwon, so we would go to a study cafe. 

How is a study cafe different than a regular cafe?

You pay for it monthly. There are still a lot of study cafes in Korea. 

Did you really study all that time? 

Sometimes we’d just end up chatting and yeah, you know, goofing around and just giggling. So not studying all the time, but I tried to. 

I was pretty—what can I say? A good student. Not only academically—if they said, “You shouldn’t do this,” then I wouldn’t. I didn’t drink or anything until college.

You went to college in Seoul, right? 

Yeah, Dongguk University. 

A lot of actors and entertainers go there. If you’ve seen the movie Oldboy—the main actor Choi Min-sik went there. But I wasn’t an actor. 

You mentioned you had a hard time in college?

I had kind of a life crisis in my 20s… I think I was just pushing myself too hard because, ah, this might be it—I never failed at anything before. 

So if everything I planned didn’t happen, I was so frustrated. And then at a certain point, I had to do too many things at the same time to fulfill my plan—to make it happen. 

So I think, you know, I couldn’t think straight. 

I went to therapy for many sessions, and my sister said, “Oh, you don’t have to do all this stuff. Why are you pushing yourself?” 

What were your plans? 

At first, I wanted to be a doctor. If you're pretty good at school, everyone says, “Oh, you should be a doctor or engineer.” That's where you can make money, right?

But I didn't know I wasn't that good enough. I had this unrealistic dream that I could probably get into medical school, but I didn't want to try one more year to pass the exam because that's such a waste of time and money. You have to go to expensive hagwons to get all the lessons.

Why do you have to go to a hagwon? Can’t you study on your own?

You can but to be to go to medical school, studying by yourself—it’s never going to be good enough unless you are very close to the right score. If you’re three points behind, you can try. But if you are thirty…

Actually, I have an ex-student—she is an excellent student.

She did everything well, but she failed to go to medical school last year. She wanted to be a doctor since she was 10. I taught her when she was 10, and we still somehow keep in touch with each other. So I know how her life goes.

We have this system in high school in Korea, so your school's record is scored from one to nine. If you are excellent—top four percent—you're one. And if you're within 11 percent four to eleven percent, you're two…  

Okay, so all the subjects have that kind of ranking, and for five subjects—the major subjects—she got an average of 1.2. So like perfect.

She just didn't do well on one test in Korean that kind of bump, you know made her not perfect. 

So she got into medical school, but she still has to take Suneung to prove that she is good enough to go to medical school.⁶

Do you know where she is? She's studying in Seoul. She's from Busan. And she has to pay probably four million won a month to be there. 

So she got into medical school but it’s conditional? 

Yeah, so with her school record, they said “Okay, if you get a certain score in Suneung, you're in,” but then she was a bit short. She couldn't get in.

So why is she in Seoul?

She's still trying to get in. She's going to hagwon to prepare for the Suneung. 

Is the Suneung for medical school specifically?

Suneung is the national university entrance exam.  

So you can apply to medical school from out of high school without it, but unless you’re perfect you have to take the Suneung.

But people just keep applying even if they don’t get the right score the first or second time?

Yeah again and again.

Through college, some of them apply 10 times.

So why does she need to pay to be in Seoul? What are they getting from the tutor that they can't get from a book?  

You could just do it on your own—if you are really dedicated and hard working you could, you know. Some people actually do because you save a lot of money.

But I guess she wants to be in a dormitory—just to force herself to study 24 hours.

She gets a community. 

Exactly, but it’s also, what’s the word—very good business for hagwon. There are only a few available in Seoul, and once they have really good students who all get into good medical schools, everyone wants to study there.  

So how did you end up a teacher? 

I think a lot of good students want to be a teacher because you know, we grew up with teachers, right? So that's just the biggest influence, and I didn't even know what else was out there.

I didn't really think about it, but I like teaching. I like telling kids off. And I get paid for that! [laughing]

Why didn’t you become a public school teacher? 

To be a public school English teacher in high school or middle school, you need to have an education degree first. Then you are eligible to apply for the teacher’s exam.

I had the degree, but the exam—I tried a couple a couple of times, and then I thought “Oh, this is just a waste of time,” because you don't know what kind of questions you will get.

What kind of questions are on the exam? 

I learned a few subjects for my course—for my degree. Those are a little related to the test, but it's so vague.

That's why there are so many hagwons for this test as well. I'm not kidding.

So I went to a hagwon once for a year, and I think, “You know, he's saying something that I never heard at school or university.”

And all the public servants they have to take tests as well. The test is not related to the work at all. It is about English.

I’ve read about how English scores are so important, but it seems like you don’t even need it to do most of the jobs where it’s required. Why are people still so focused on it? Japan doesn’t seem to care about English. 

In Japan, they can’t even pronounce McDonald’s. [laughing]

This is just my opinion, but in the past when we were under the American government, if you spoke English, you would get a really good job.

For example, after the Korean War, suddenly America was in charge of our country.

They would have been looking for someone who spoke English to communicate with, and those people would get the best jobs. 

I think since then this kind of stupid idea—that you have to learn English—has been in our culture.⁷

Has anyone said that students should spend less time on English? Because it takes up so much time and isn’t necessary for most people.  

I don't think so—even when you apply for any jobs in Seoul, they would say “Oh, we need a TOEIC score over 800.” It’s so fucked up, but I think it’s going to change. 

I’ve wondered if there is just a better way to learn English. The earlier you start them the less time they have to spend in middle and high school, right? 

People hire English-speaking nannies, but they’re expensive. Rich people send their kids to English schools.

But to be honest, I didn’t learn until I was twelve.  I didn’t really have many materials, but I managed to do it. Nowadays there are a lot of materials online, so if they actually want to learn they'll learn it.

It seems like once they get to middle and high school they’re spending so much time at hagwons that they’re sleeping through classes. So a lot of the time they’re in English class they’re not even paying attention. 

I think the school system is really fucked up because in the past, 80s or 90s, your high school record didn't even matter.

The universities had their own exams—you had to go to a university to take its entrance exam instead of Suneung. So you didn't have to really pay attention to high school subjects—you just studied for the exam. 

If you’re staying up to study at hagwons and then sleeping through school—why don't they just let you go to the hagwon and not go to school? 

Oh, you know that's happening as well. In high school, students actually drop out a lot. They pass a test to leave school early. That happened even when I was in school, but there was more of a stigma. 

When I was in university, there was one student who went to a specialized high school. It was really hard to get in, but she wasn't really doing well there because everyone was smart. So she dropped out and got accepted to my university with her Suneung score. 

Okay, you decided you wanted to be a teacher—what did you do after college? 

So I tried twice the national teaching exam and said, “Oh, fuck it. I'm getting old. I can't really do this anymore.”

And then I actually worked for an American company–I know it's so corny.

Why is it corny?

Because it’s a corn company. [laughing] That’s what I always say to people. 

But everyone was Korean—only the CEO and CFO were Americans. So they needed someone who spoke English. 

I worked there for six months, and I didn't like it. I was in HR–the employee education department. So my degree works there, but I wasn’t teaching anyone. I just organized their courses and programs and stuff. And I thought, “Oh, this job can be done by anyone.” And it wasn’t fun, and I had a really horrible boss.

So I just quit, and I came back to Busan at that time. I had back pain, so I tried to fix it for a couple of years just teaching English at a hagwon. 

Then I said, “Oh, I can’t do this for the rest of my life.” And at that time, I didn't like Korea.

Why didn't you like Korea?

Ageism, sexism—you know, the system was way worse then. 

I had a huge argument with my boss at the corn company because I said something correct, but you know, you're not supposed to argue.

And there was sexual harassment going on. They didn't do that to me because I'm strong, and they knew I would say something to them, but they were sexually harassing other people. The CEO tried to kiss one of the female employees when he was drunk. 

He was the American?

No, at that time the CEO was Korean and the CFO was American. An American wouldn't do that because they know the rules.

With all that stuff, I decided to go to Canada and got into a master’s course. I studied and went to Toronto to work a little bit, and life was pretty good. But I was just so isolated and lonely there.

Where were you working? 

It was an institute for special needs kids. I think it was funded by the government, or, the kids are funded by the government so they can pay. So if one lesson was 55 dollars per hour and the government covers like 80 percent of it. So parents only pay like 10 or 20 dollars. 

But I got paid like 17 dollars per hour at the time, which was the bare minimum. And it was so physically demanding—you you had to work with some physically disabled kids, and they’re all autistic. 

The place was specialized for autism, but with autism, you know, sometimes they are violent. They can become really violent when they’re frustrated. And since I'm tall and I look strong, I always got the hardest ones. 

The little cute one—I couldn’t have them because they would mimic my accent—because they're still learning how to speak English. So I always got with the most violent. 

Jonathan was really violent—I almost broke my nose. The reason why I remember his name is because we had a “code J.” Whenever I had an emergency I called “code J.” Like, someone come help me.

You know, when he was in the bathroom he would just smear his poop on me. He was probably nine or ten, and his mom was a school teacher—but, oh, she couldn’t handle it.

So he would stay with us four hours a day—probably more than four hours. His mom would pick him up around three. I didn’t mind because I felt really appreciated. His mom adored me.

Why did you leave? 

Just working with the kids was good, but it didn't pay much. So I decided to work with homeless clients. It was only a three dollars difference per hour, but nobody wants to work in that industry, so it's easy to get in.

And they adored me as well because, you know, I'm exotic. I’m Asian. 

You got a lot of compliments. 

No, they were just nicer to me—you know, they were violent drug addicts, but they thought I was fragile. They’d think, “Oh, I’m gonna break her if I hit her hard.” But the Canadians were getting whipped. [laughing]

What made you come back to Korea? 

My dad got sick—he got Alzheimer’s early, in his late 50s. 

I was very worried. You know, I was helping one client who had Alzheimer’s or dementia. He used to be a you know school teacher, and he had a great pension. Then he lost all his money on the street. He forgot where he put it. 

And I was thinking to myself, “My father is struggling, and my mom is struggling to take care of him. I’ve been here for seven years, so why do I just take a break and help them for a while?”

Then he passed away a year after I came back, and I thought that was just the perfect time to move back for good and support my mom. And ever since—because I have an English master's degree—I’ve been doing private tutoring here. 

And I realized, going through all the shit in Canada, living in Korea is not that bad. 

What do you think is better about Korea?

We have a great healthcare system.

I think Canada’s is great, but medicine is not covered. Seeing a doctor is covered, but to see a doctor you have to wait six weeks.

How does Korea make that work?

Well, there are so many people, and here we have enough doctors.

I saw that the doctors are protesting raising the cap on new doctors—don’t you think you’re going to need more doctors with the aging population?⁸ 

I don’t think so. We have enough doctors, just too many doctors in the big cities. The problem is small cities don’t have enough doctors.

You know, if a doctor graduates medical school here, and they have to serve in the army for two years, they usually go to small towns. That way they don’t really have to be in the army. Those are the public clinics. During Covid we always would get tested over there.

But how long can you pay for this? Aren’t you going to have too many old people and not enough young people paying into the system?⁹

So, you have to pay insurance based on how much money you have. If you're rich, you probably have to pay two million won for health insurance, and rich people, they're not going to die, or they're going to give their money to their kids.

So we can still tax them that way. We don't need new people. This is part of why I don’t think the low birth rate is a problem—this is just natural.

Can I ask a personal question? 

Of course. 

Did you ever think about getting married or having kids?

No, no kids. I was with kids a lot—that’s why I didn’t want any. 

I actually wanted to get married in my 30s. I was engaged with my ex, but then I realized—how can I say—marriage doesn’t work for me. I realized marriage doesn't work for me because it's hard to get everything I want from one guy.

He was sweet. We worked together for six years on and off, long distance. He was in England—he’s British—and I was in Canada. We met in Korea a year before I decided to go to Canada. 

I was in my 20s, and I wanted to see the world. So we broke up, but then we were back together online. He came to visit me, blah blah blah. It was good. 

But I realized we were very different about how we, how can I say, deal with life? He never really had to work hard. 

After that, I realized I didn't want to marry or have a baby or have a family.

That was just heartbreaking, not because I lost love but because I realized I was very delusional.

Why were you delusional? 

Because I thought he was this kind of person. But when we actually sat down at the table and talked about marriage, we had totally different ideas. 

I’m a saver. He was a spender. He looked at my bank account—I had a lot of money at that time because I was taking care of my mom's money—part of her money—and he wanted to spend that money. 

Like on a house? 

Yeah. 

Did he want a kid?

No. 

And he was broke—he used to make money, he was a model. Not like a skinny runway model, but a fitness model. 

He was actually a character in some online game and made a good amount of money. But then he wasted it all. 

So when he started trying to spend my money, I realized it wasn’t going to work. 

When you were younger, did you did you want kids? Or did you always not want kids?

When I was younger, I never really thought about how hard it could be to raise a kid.

Yeah, so I probably wanted one, but then when I became a teacher, I realized how difficult it would be to raise one. 

Do you like kids?

No. [laughing] They don't have manners. They’re not disciplined. They're not pleasure—they're work. You have to feed them. You have to bathe them. You have to educate them. You have to teach them everything. I like the well-behaved ones, but there aren’t many. 

Why do you think so many Korean women aren’t interested in marrying or having kids now? 

I think more women are waking up to how bad marriage is for them. You don’t even know…

My friend got pregnant before she married. The guy was a pharmacist—he probably made double what she does. 

They got married, but after the baby, she had to go back to work. He makes twice as much as her, but they still pay for everything fifty-fifty. 

She does all the housework, and she has Crohn’s disease. She needs to get surgery to remove part of her intestines, but he still doesn't help. He won’t pay more and he won’t do any housework.

He goes to work around 8 and comes back at 9, even though he owns his own pharmacy. It’s just so competitive to be a pharmacist. They have to be close to the hospital and work with the doctors to stay in business. He has this one doctor in the same building that he has to give a bribe every year.

A bribe for contracts? 

No, the doctor just tells patients to go to his pharmacy. If he doesn’t have that relationship then they might go to any pharmacy. 

He’s qualified. He has the right license, but it’s so competitive. He thinks his business can fail at any time, so he’s there all the time. 

But he won't even spend money on food. He’s cheap. He thinks by making her spend her own money he is making her more responsible. 

She wanted a divorce but couldn’t support a child alone—she needed his money. One day the child said, “You look sad. Are you just staying together for me?” 

If she got a divorce would he not have to pay anything? 

If she gets divorced she keeps the kid. Maybe the court says he has to pay this much, but there’s no way to force men to pay child support.¹⁰ Then there’s the social stigma, so moms have to be caregivers. People say “Oh, men would not raise them properly.” So it’s up to the mom to take care of a kid alone. 

My sister is a hairdresser—she owns the shop. She also can’t get divorced. She puts up with her husband even though he doesn’t support her enough. 

He has a building. He claims his mom is taking care of it. He says everything is being taken care of by his mom, but the building is in his name. But to be honest, I think he doesn't want to give more money to my sister because he doesn’t want my sister to spend his money. 

He’s only paying some taxes and food. Everything else my sisters pays—education, health, and braces—those are $5,000 USD for each kid. 

It’s been 14 years now. Really, by watching them suffer why would I? I cannot even afford myself. Sometimes I cannot even afford a dog. 

I have another friend. She was also a special education teacher in Canada. She wanted to get married to a rich man. Her family used to be rich but went bankrupt twice because of her father. 

The only thing she was looking for in marriage was money. So she went on blind dates. She goes out with lots of doctors and lawyers from rich families, and the first question, within an hour, they ask is “How much can you bring?” And “Can you buy us an apartment?” Then they ask where you live because they’re trying to find out if it’s a rich area. They say “Oh, it’s Gangnam area, so she has money.”

I think in the US men would feel less masculine if they expected women to pay for so much. 

Now men are as cheap as women. They think marriage is business. 

Why are Koreans so greedy? We don’t have a social safety net. We don’t have a good pension. 

If you make a bad decision when you're younger, that affects your retirement. You don't want to make the wrong decision. You’d rather die alone than have to support someone else for the rest of your life.

But sixty years ago Korea was poor, and women had lots of kids. Isn’t it much easier to support someone now than back then?

That's a good question. 

Oh! This is why I think the birth rate is so much lower than back then. At that time they had such low expectations for a good life. They used to work weekends. 

Right now, you don't have to work weekends if you have a good job. Now some people think four days a week is better than five days.

Yeah, so the quality of life is getting better and better. People want to enjoy it.

And they are getting smarter—they have to calculate what they’re losing when they have a baby.

You mentioned other reasons for not having kids? 

Yeah, if you have a disabled kid there’s no support.¹¹ Walk around Busan and there are stairs everywhere. 

I met a friend with a wheelchair a while back. We went to Seomyeon. From the subway station to ground level, there are only a few elevators he can use. Some of them weren’t available and we had to call someone to help him out. It took 30 minutes. He was good with the wheelchair, but just to get in any shop there’s one or two steps.

There’s actually a movie called Marathon that raised a lot of awareness about this.

And you know, there’s a four percent chance of having an autistic kid—down syndrome is a certain percentage. It adds up. When rich people have a disabled kid, they just move abroad. 

I’d rather just have a dog. 

Do a lot of women think about that? 

It’s probably just me. My friend with Crohn’s disease—I warned her that her kid might have a disease, but she didn’t care.

Is the kid okay?

Yeah. 

One of my other fears. You know there was a rich family here that sent their kid to America. He was supposed to study but didn't—this was the 90s. He wanted to keep partying, so he killed his parents. 

You could have that kind of baby.  It happened in the US I think. 

Like the Menedez brothers? 

I think so. 

Then you have to worry about how they turn out. If they decide not to work you have to take care of them. It happened in Japan 

Otakus.¹²

Yes. That happened in Korea too. My brother's friend’s two sons are like that. They’re in their late 20s but they won’t move out or get a job. They’re peeing in their room. They’re playing computer games all the time.

Why are they peeing in their room? [laughing] 

You know, they’re mentally ill. They do not want to go downstairs. They pee in a bottle instead. 

It’s like Forest Gump. Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know which one you’re going to get.

So if Korea had better divorce laws, special education, and such, would you still not have kids?

If I was in my 30s? I would. 

For example, if I knew that my baby was going to be supported by my partner, and I knew I didn’t have to spend extra on special education if my baby is special needs, then I would. 

If people felt more secure, then I think people would love to have kids. But people are in survival mode. You can’t have a baby when you're in survival mode.

What do parents think about not having grandkids? Are they upset?

My mom understands. She says, “Look, back in the 80s. Everyone could get a good job. You choose the company you work for. Just go to a college and your good. But that doesn’t work anymore.” 

Let me tell you how hard to get a good job. To get a job at Samsung, you have to graduate from a good university, have good grades, get the right internship, have a TOEIC score over 900, have experience in competition.

What kind of competition?

There are competitions for different fields. There are marketing competitions for example. The companies use them to find good people. You prove that you’re good at the job. 

And then you have to pass their exam. Samsung has their own exam. 

Like an IQ test, right?

Yeah. 

Why do you think these jobs are so hard to get now? 

After IMF, the economy went bad. The smaller businesses went bankrupt because they were borrowing too much. Now a Samsung worker makes triple what someone at a small business makes.

When you are in your 20s and 30s, you should be able to open your own business, but you can’t. It’s hard to get loans from banks these days. Before ‘97 it was easy.

What was the crisis like? Do you remember anything? 

I was in middle school at the time. I remember on the news they were saying this company went bankrupt and then that company went bankrupt. Suddenly these rich people had nothing. They lived in an expensive apartment and next moment they lived in a studio.

But you know, for us, we didn’t really have much money to begin with, so we weren’t that affected. 

How do you think the birth rate issue plays out?

We’re going to be like this for a few decades. And then the government or some companies like Samsung—they will start to hire more foreign people. More work visas. 

I don’t think the birth rate for Koreans will ever go up. Korean women won't have children. Korean women know how it works. If the birth rate goes, up it’s going to be foreign workers.

You know my ex—he was Moroccan—he used to work for a shipyard. Even though he didn't have any status. They were willing to hire him because no Korean would work in a shipyard. It’s too dangerous. You can die doing it. But the government still doesn’t give people status.

I never thought about there being illegal immigrants in Korea. I always thought the government was strict about that kind of thing. 

Oh, the government is stupid. 

You know, the other week we had a ceremony for my dad’s—death day? So my cousins came over and stayed with us until after midnight. Because midnight is when you’re supposed to do the ceremony. 

After the ceremony, it was very late—I asked my cousins if they needed to stay with us. They have a strawberry farm outside the city. But they said no, they needed to get back to their farm early in the morning because they had Vietnamese workers coming. 

They don’t have status, but my cousins pay them 100,000 won a day to work. It’s a good deal. 

Are people changing their attitudes toward immigrants?

It’s going to change slowly. You know, Koreans are very friendly.  I have a cute story. 

I invited my Indian-Canadian friend to my mom’s apartment. My mom didn't want to say hello to her at first because she wasn't exposed to Indian people. She thought it was a bit scary. But after they met she said, “If I have more friends like her, then I will get used to it.”

Did your mom know you had a Moroccan boyfriend?

No! She doesn’t know about my love life. 

Would your mom have cared? 

She doesn’t have much knowledge about Muslims. She would care if he did something bad, but when it comes to religion she doesn’t know what Muslim means. 

Your other friends?

My Korean friends didn’t care. You know, they don’t know much about Muslims. 

But my Canadian friend, and my British friend, they were like “You went out with a Muslim guy? Oh my gosh!”  I said, “Why?” They said like, “They’re very unique… in their own way.” They tried to put it in a politically correct way. [laughing]

My Canadian friend—she’s Chinese—you know, she’d always say, “Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to finding a tenant, I’m so racist.”

You talked about issues with Korean men. Do you feel like there’s a lot of violence against women in Korea? 

What kind of violence? Like domestic? 

I guess any kind. I listened to something about how there have been some public attacks on women. There was one story saying there was a convenience store clerk who had short hair and a guy attacked her. 

Why? 

Because he thought she was a feminist or something. But you don’t know about this? 

No, when did it happen? 

It sounded like it was pretty recent, but it’s interesting, I kind of assumed it was a big story in Korea. Maybe not. 

For me, I told you when I was younger, my parents used to fight a lot—I saw things flying around. [laughing]

And oh, I don’t want to say this because it would make my dad look really bad—but I think he hit my mom once hard enough to, what do you call it? That little… eardrum? [gesturing toward her ear]

He burst her eardrum? 

Yeah. 

Oh, wow. 

And you know, at that time, she wouldn’t be able to call the police, because they wouldn’t come. 

The story I listened to—they also talked about the 4B movement. Do you know what that is? 

No. 

It’s like feminists, they say, what is it? No sex… 

No, I don’t know. 

They won’t date or have sex. 

I love men! [laughing] What’s wrong with that? 

Just find the right one. 

That’s funny because, you know some Western media is pretty liberal, so I think maybe they kind of amplify the scene a bit.¹³ It’s interesting because the story makes it sound like it’s a big thing in Korea. But then you don’t even—

I don’t even know.

That’s funny.¹⁴

Can you define feminism? I want to know whether I’m a feminist or not. 

Oh, I don’t even know. I guess there are the feminists who protest and deliberately cut their hair very short, but then it can mean something else. 

This is how I understand it. In our whole history, guys always had the power. 

Maybe really far back, when they were hunter-gatherers, things were oriented toward the mother. 

But nowadays, your family name comes from your father, right? But back then, I guess you don’t know who’s the father of the child. So it’s a very female-oriented society. 

But somehow for many centuries, many thousands of years, it became very male-oriented. So some feminists think to make it balanced, we have to go extreme. To fight for our rights. 

That’s why I think they’re showing those women because otherwise, people wouldn’t know. 

You agree that men aren’t doing their share? That’s a kind of feminism. 

Yes, but I don’t know if that’s a particular feminism. I just think if you’re a father you have to do half of the work. 

But back then, they didn’t do shit. 

Do you think there are a lot of men who are anti-feminist? 

Yeah, I think that’s totally true in Korea.

Yoon was popular with them, right? 

Yes, that’s why he got elected—because of dumb, young—not even young—males who thought they could get some power. 

There’s actually survey data, and in Korea, I think men and women are more divided politically than anywhere else. 

Yeah. I think so. 

What do you think causes that?

Interesting question. 

I think because of the army. 

The conscription. 

Yeah. They think a woman has to serve as well to be equal. 

So you think that’s the biggest grievance? 

Yes, because even my nephew—he’s only 13 or 14—he said, “I don’t want to go to the army. What if there’s a war? Then I would die.” With that kind of mindset, he’s in such fear. And then they want to point to something else to blame. So they say, “Why don’t women go to the army?” 

I understand. 

Do you think women should be conscripted?

Yes. 

Really? Just like men?

Yeah, so that way we can shut them up. You know, we can say, “We did the same thing, just like you, so don’t complain—don’t fucking complain and blame it on us.”

If we actually serve in the army, then we are totally equal, right? They cannot talk shit about how we’re not going to the army. 

So what if we produce a baby for the country, then we probably have to get $1,000,000 for the country, because we’re making a human being—we can say, “You guys aren’t doing that.”

Wait, what is this?

So back then, I think women would just stay home, and all the men would go to the army. And then probably to persuade men to understand why women don’t have to go, they’d say “Oh, women stay home to take care of babies.”

So that way of thinking is set in their mind because they are kind of brainwashed. 

But now with the birth rate, they say, “Oh, you guys don’t do anything.” That’s why we have a wage difference between men and women. Funny isn’t it? If you finish your military service you get paid more than women.

But that gap gets bigger and bigger. And then once a woman gets a job after university, even if they work as hard as men, they get married, and once they have a baby they need to quit the job because there’s no maternal leave or anything.

And then after raising their kids for five to ten years, when they want to come back to their career, they can’t because they have like a ten-year experience gap.

So conscription is bad for women, and also it’s bad for men—if their wife is staying home, then they have to support the whole family. There’s a lot of pressure on them.

What a mom needs is a part-time job because they need time for their kids as well. But there are no quality part-time positions, even if you are very qualified.

Do you think they should get rid of conscription? Or is it too risky?

Too risky. 

Do you think about North Korea at all?

All the time. 

What do you think right now?

Anything can happen in a second, that’s what I’m thinking. Because Kim Jong-un met with Putin. 

He’s giving Putin military equipment. 

Yeah, so if something happens Putin might join. 

Do you think South Korea should build its own nuclear weapons?

I think they already have. 

Well, you’re under—they call it the nuclear umbrella, right? If something happened the US would use its weapons to defend South Korea.

Yeah. 

But do you think South Korea should make nuclear weapons itself? Because some people think with Trump the US might back off. 

This is what I heard from YouTube. There is this comedian who has a show about any topic. If he wants to talk about something he just invites an expert. 

And there was this expert about nuclear stuff—he studied it and has a doctorate. So the comedian asked him “Do you think we have on?” And he said, “I’m not going to answer that.” Because he thinks we have it. 

And, OK let me change the question—if we have to make one, how long will it take? 

It’s only 6 months, or even less. 

Yeah. Like even within 4 months. 

But if North Korea did something you couldn’t wait. 

So the expert said, they need uranium, but we already have a lot of it from nuclear power. So maybe they’re in the process or something. 

Well, there’s an international agreement. If you break it you get in lots of trouble.

Yeah, but we are capable. And unfortunately, Korea is relying on America in a lot of ways. 

So it would be nice if we had our own nuclear bomb, but if it’s not allowed then we can’t really have it. 

What do you think will happen with North Korea in the long run? Over the next few decades?

I think we just become a different country—we’re already different—but just completely different. 

They already said they don’t want to reunify. 

Yeah. 

But they still want to fight. 

They’re blaming us, but I think it could just be their politics 

They just blame other people as a distraction.

Yeah, this is what we are doing as well. This president is trying to scare the Korean people and say we are against North Korea. 

He wants to draw attention to North Korea and away from his bad governing. 

So you think he’s doing the same thing as North Korea?

Yeah. Politically, they are using each other. But if something really happened it would be a problem for them. So they are just using each other like in a game. 

So if you were with North Koreans, would you think they’re different than regular Koreans? Not part of your group?

At an individual level, I think some are good, some are bad. But culture wise it would be like talking to an extreme Muslim. Because they think like “Oh, this is wrong.”

But we still speak the same language. If they are willing to live in harmony with us, and the two leaders decide to do that, it could work. At a certain point, we were trying to do that, but it won’t happen because they’re dictators, they won’t give up power. 

How do you feel about Kim Dae-jung?

You know, I like what he tried to do, but I always thought he was kind of stupid. 

Not about North Korea, but you know, he had these people who tried to kill him, and he just forgave them all.¹⁵ If that were me I would have had them killed. 

You wouldn’t have won the Nobel. 

Oh, I don’t need it. [laughing]

Are you religious at all?

No.

But you went to a Buddhist university. Do you like any Buddhist ideas?

There’s a quote from Buddha that I like: “Life is the sea of pain. Detach yourself from everything and remember everything changes.”

1. A common Korean saying. Literally “hurry hurry.” In hangul: 빨리 빨리.

2. “IMF” is how many Koreans refer to the fallout from the Asian Financial Crisis, which forced South Korea to accept a $60 billion bailout from the institution. It is perhaps telling that the crisis is framed in terms of the loan that stabilized the economy and not the crisis itself. Many Koreans at the time seemed to find the humiliation of needing international aid more remarkable than the recession that preceded it. As you might expect, the loan was repaid at a breakneck pace.

3. Hagwons are private academies that most Korean students attend after school. It would be a mistake to think of them as mere tutors because, as Yeong-eun shows, their lessons go way beyond what is taught in school. Due to their cost and seemingly round-the-clock hours of operation, there has been much controversy about their role in Korean education.

4. Into the early 20th century, hanja would have been common knowledge for educated Koreans, as much writing was done in a mixed script consisting of Chinese characters and the native Korean alphabet hangul. But after achieving independence from Japan, South Korea largely abandoned Chinese characters, and hanja have been optional coursework for South Korean students since the 1970s. North Korea, in a move that can only be described as on-brand, formally abolished hanja altogether upon gaining independence from Japan in 1949.

5. She is referring to the mental abacus technique. You can train yourself to visualize an abacus and do rapid calculations.

6. Two key facts: this test is eight hours and offered just once a year.

7. Obviously, Japan was also under American occupation following World War II, but the eventual leaders of the hegemonic Liberal Democratic Party were notably the same ultra-nationalists who fueled Imperial Japan. By contrast, the early South Korean government was largely composed of Japanese collaborators—the more extreme Korean nationalists opted to join the Japanese resistance hero Kim Il-sung in the north. I don’t think it would be crazy to suggest that the cosmopolitanism (rootless, dare we say?) of South Korea’s early elite may indeed account for some of this infatuation with English and Western education more generally. South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, received both his bachelor’s and PhD in the US, while the autocratic development hero Park Chung-hee was trainined in Japanese military academies. Japan simply does not have this tradition of cosmopolitan governance in recent history.

8. Korea actually has some of the lowest doctor per capita numbers in the OECD, but perhaps this is offset by better health in the general population and the reluctance of Koreans to seek help.

9. “[T]he accumulated deficit of Korea’s health insurance will top 563 trillion won ($408 billion) in 18 years.”

10. This seems to be a real problem. “83 percent of all single parents in South Korea never received any child support payments from non-custodial parents in 2012.”

11. There are special needs students at the school I teach at, but I cannot attest to the quality of the support they receive. The Bong Joon-ho movie Mother seems to suggest Korean society is not so accommodating toward the disabled. South Korea wouldn’t be the only half of the Korean peninsula to struggle in this regard either: In Under the Loving Care of the Fartherly Leader, a North Korean defector testifies that the government once conducted a mass removal of the handicapped from Pyongyang.

12. I meant NEETs. Otakus just really like anime.

13. There is also, to be fair, a generational divide here, but it does look like the 4B movement is quite small, with only several thousand members.

14. Part of my surprise is due to the fact that Yeong-eun wears no makeup and has short hair.

15. Kim Dae-jung was sentenced to death in 1980 by Chun Doo-hwan, the autocratic military general who succeeded Park Chung-hee after his assassination in 1979. Kim was accused of iniciting an uprising in the southwestern city of Gwangju, long a hotbed for dissent, but was ultimately only sent into exile in the US thanks to pressure from the incoming Reagan administration (Pope John Paul II also protested, given Kim’s Catholicism). Kim was rehabilitated following South Korea’s transition to democracy in the late 1980s, and remarkably, went on to win the presidency in 1997. Upon his election, he advised the outgoing administration to grant clemency to Chun Doo-hwan—the very man who had ordered his death—and who by now had been imprisoned. Besides his very Christian display of forgiveness, Kim is perhaps best known for his efforts at rapprochement with North Korea, dubbed the Sunshine Policy. Kim’s meeting with Kim Jong-il in 2000 (and presumably his desicion not to exact revenge on old foes) helped secure him the Nobel Peace Prize.