[Book review] What it means to be a young woman working in Korea

Nonetheless from the movie “Subsequent Sohee.” (courtesy Twin Plus Companions)

The minimal wage for 2027 has been set at 10,700 gained per hour, scuttling the hopes of labor unions that had referred to as for the wage to be raised to 11,450 per hour.

Ladies’s labor unions round Korea joined collectively on July 15 to publish a press release in response to the brand new minimal wage tips. 

“Nearly all of low-wage employees are ladies,” they wrote. “We’re overcome with deep rage and a robust sense of betrayal.”
 
Out of all working ladies in Korea, it’s these of their teenagers and 20s who’re essentially the most underprivileged. As dwelling prices soar and earnings polarization deepens, these younger ladies have few choices for enhancing their circumstances.
 
Younger ladies within the workforce go by many names: part-timer, pupil employee, beginner, intern, temp, you there, hey, little woman, bitch.
 
And these younger ladies are working in all kinds of locations, from warehouses to bakeries, kindergartens, broadcasters, hairdressers, nail salons, name facilities, video manufacturing studios, comfort shops, cafes, colleges and extra.
 
Throughout Korea’s industrialization, there have been the “manufacturing unit ladies” (yeogong). Right this moment, ladies in a various array of fields have taken their place. Jeon Su-gyeong, a author and activist with Solidarity for Employees’ Well being, launched into a search to grasp the circumstances of Korea’s Twenty first-century ladies employees. 
 
If conventional manufacturing unit ladies slaved away at their stitching machines whereas imbibing unlawful stimulants often called “timing,” younger feminine employees immediately work evening shifts at their part-time jobs whereas gulping down high-caffeine vitality drinks.
 
Younger ladies are criticized for utilizing their unemployment advantages to purchase designer purses, and accused of being unemployment queens — having the time of their lives by abusing these advantages — however in lots of instances, precise ladies might hardly even dream of receiving such advantages.

Members of the Korean Ladies Employees Affiliation and the Korean Ladies’s Commerce Union maintain a press convention exterior the Sejong Middle for the Performing Arts on Might 26, 2026, to name out systemic wage discrimination in opposition to ladies in irregular positions. (Son Ji-min/Hankyoreh)

 
Daughters from working-class households usually bear major accountability for family chores and caregiving. On the similar time, many tackle no matter bodily demanding work they’ll discover — ready tables at barbecue eating places, washing dishes in restaurant kitchens, or working in a single day shifts as short-term warehouse employees — all whereas persevering with to look after a number of members of their households.
 
Quite a lot of the younger ladies that Jeon met with labored a number of part-time jobs so as to save up for his or her training. Since they have been sleep-deprived whereas partaking largely in bodily labor, most of them had begun experiencing persistent ache from a younger age.
 
Three primary elements precipitated their immiseration: poverty, sickness and the patriarchy. These hardships have been aggravated by the hierarchical methods of age and sexism. As they turned more and more alienated each bodily and psychologically, they felt their our bodies and spirits breaking down.

The labor market was aggressive and hostile from the very begin. Faculties informed them that ladies “didn’t must study explicit abilities,” and as a substitute solely needed to care about their look.
 
Monetary establishments employed highschool graduates to mission a picture of openness and equal alternative, whereas lecturers carried the misogynistic attitudes pervasive in company tradition again into the classroom. Not one grownup stepped as much as console these younger ladies, or to encourage them.
 
“Aren’t you right here since you’ve nowhere else to go?” stated somebody to a younger lady who went to work at a name heart.
 
Many younger ladies work in small companies with fewer than 5 staff and small unbiased outlets, the place they work as short-term employees, contract laborers, fixed-term employees or day laborers.   
 
Lots of the younger ladies that Jeon met have been paid very low wages. Only a few have been everlasting staff. Some opened up about how they thought of ending all of it from a bridge over the Han River after they ran out of cash and have been decreased to solely ingesting water.
 
Within the office, age indicated the place they stood within the hierarchy, and the younger ladies Jeon spoke to have been on the very backside. They have been poor, lacked any type of affect, and had no connections, however needed to act “like a mom” to the lads within the office.
 
The traditions of patriarchy, which deem ladies solely helpful inasmuch as they’ll do issues for males, have been prevalent of their locations of labor. They have been those who have been anticipated to unwrap their seniors’ lunches every time it was time to eat and needed to plough by means of the work that the older fixed-term employees pushed onto their desks.

Regardless of being in knowledgeable setting, their youth made them targets they usually have been usually sexually harassed by high-ranking males who, after interacting with them for extended durations, thought they have been fish in a barrel. Firms would go on to secretly promote the perpetrators.

 Even after they confronted unfair circumstances, they may not converse up. After they requested their seniors to purchase knowledge entry software program after being worn down by guide labor, their seniors stated, “Your month-to-month wage is cheaper than that program, which is why we’re utilizing you and never that.”
 
Feminine migrant employees labored till their arms turned disfigured, and defined the ten years of their prime that they spent in Korean workplaces with very fundamental phrases comparable to “greenhouse,” “It was scorching,” “I couldn’t sleep,” “I couldn’t eat.”
 
If these employees spoke up about sexism, they have been ostracized, and their office accidents weren’t legally acknowledged. In the event that they piped up, they have been publicly made an instance of for not being compliant. “That one must be taught a lesson.” 
Younger ladies’s labor went largely unrecognized, permitting exploitation to flourish and authorized loopholes to be broadly abused. Even public establishments needed to keep away from paying severance pay, so employees noticed their contracts set to 364 days, in the future wanting a full 12 months.
 
When ladies left, they have been barred from receiving severance pay, however firms generally processed the departures of male staff as layoffs in order that they may obtain unemployment advantages.
 
Stigmatizing ladies as “overly delicate,” cover-ups, bullying, and humiliation have been additionally prevalent ways utilized by the corporate administration to crush resistance and silence staff.
 
“Discrimination occurs after folks measurement up the state of affairs to see who’s essentially the most vocal and whose voices could be quashed. When that identification is made, it impacts the weakest folks,” Jeon writes.

“No One Noticed Me,” Jeon Su-gyeong, Press Arles, 17,000 gained

 
In “No One Noticed Me,” Jeon weaves collectively the experiences of 20 younger working ladies. “Violence throughout the office is a systemic drawback that’s born from cultural elements in our society and the innate core of firms,” she writes.
 
Within the feminine employees working at ice cream shops immediately, who twist their wrists again and again to scoop 1000’s of ice cream cones, she sees the manufacturing unit ladies working in stitching factories within the Seventies to earn cash for his or her older brother’s tuition charges.
 
Feminine employees of the Twenty first century additionally expertise a barrage of criticism and self-loathing. They’re informed that they really feel this fashion as a result of they didn’t handle their psychological well being, as a result of they weren’t giving themselves time to replicate, as a result of they have been weak, which leads them in charge themselves.
 
These younger ladies don’t interact in self-help as a result of they wish to develop into higher at their jobs, however as a survival talent.
 
Jeon’s e-book calls on us to pay extra consideration not solely to sexual harassment within the office, however to feminine employees who work laborious but go unpaid, in addition to to class points.

“Sihwa, Shining at Final,” Gong Gye-jin, Gyoyudang, 18,800 gained

 “Sihwa, Shining at Final,” a e-book that tells the tales of employees on the very backside of the meals chain, was additionally printed across the similar time as Jeon’s e-book.
 
Gong Gye-jin, the chairperson of the Sihwa Labor Coverage Institute and a dwelling legend within the historical past of the wrestle for employees’ rights at small factories within the Sihwa Industrial Advanced, is the creator.
 
It’s straightforward to establish the plight of feminine employees immediately even on this e-book, which incorporates anecdotes about employees at small factories that Gong met on the Sihwa Industrial Advanced over the course of 25 years, as evinced by accounts from manufacturing unit administration suggesting that feminine employees are simply replaceable, and that there’s “no want to boost their wages whereas we adhere to this method.”
 
For 25 years, Gong acted as a marketing consultant to employees who questioned if they need to go away or persevere and finally organized them into teams. There is no such thing as a cause for employees to quietly work their approach out of a job or just endure all the things whereas they work.
 
Very similar to islands that may be remoted by a smattering of rain, employees on the backside of the barrel can develop into simply disconnected. Nonetheless, the creator reaches out, saying that they’ll work collectively to discover a answer, and that they need to converse up, as they can’t be blamed for all the things.
 
It’s because, within the phrases of Jeon, “To the susceptible, storytelling in itself will help them acquire energy.”
 
By Lee You-jin, senior employees author

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