Discussion by Alexandra de Guzman
EPISODE 4: “My dream is to be company employee #proof of poverty”
As we progress further into the series, we see more of why the drama is titled “Hello, my Twenties!” A sensitive age for many, the twenties is a time where adolescents are just entering into adulthood, with it’s turbulent journey of successes and failures. Our Belle Epoque housemates must adjust to the unpredictable road ahead, oftentimes without any guidance from others. Luckily for these girls, they have each other. And although it is too early to say, it seems their friendship with one another is the backbone of what will get them through this difficult and dubious stage of their lives.
This episode focuses on our eldest heroine of the housemates, Yun Jin-myeong. Throughout the episode, we are presented with the sight of Jin-myeong juggling her different jobs as a private tutor, convenience store clerk and restaurant waitress. As viewers, we are also briefly introduced to her back story, with her younger brother in the hospital and her mother attending to him. The episode is a constant back and forth of Jin-myeong’s emotions, a contrast to her usually stoic expressions from past episodes. Jin-myeong is seen with a full range of moods, from giddiness when she’s with Bak Jae-wan, her love interest, to a more contemplative Jin-myeong when she is drinking alone during her Sunday night ritual. The episode ends with our eldest dissolving into tears. She is seen crying by the balcony, repeatedly telling Ji-won that her fingernail fell off and the pain is unbearable. Ji-won comforts her, enveloping her in a hug. Standing at the back, we see Eun-jae and Ye-eun holding back tears as they watch their seonbae break down.
This episode exposes South Korea as a very patriarchal and male-dominated society. Throughout the episode, our housemates are tormented by their male counterparts without much repercussions, whether it be friendly banter or harassment. The youngest, Eun-jae, is teased by her seonbae, Yun Jong-yeol, during their department trip. Although, to us viewers, we understand that Jong-yeol was trying to get her attention, Eun-jae thinks he is doing his usual teasing towards her. He leaves in a huff and tells her to carry what she originally was holding as well as his things, because she isn’t reciprocating the feelings and understanding the situation. A much darker example in the episode is Ye-eun and her boyfriend, Go Du-yeong. While on their date, the two come across a petition for animal protection and sign it. The two arrive at their destination at the movie theatre, but Du-yeong’s expression is much less enthusiastic than previously seen. The scene cuts to the two arriving back to Belle Epoque. Ye-eun, still confused on what she did wrong, asks what she did to make him upset. He calls her a horrible person and accuses her of showing off that she goes to a better school than him, which Ye-eun denies. Du-yeong, dissatisfied with her response, forcefully pulls her out of the car and onto the ground. Another quite serious instance is Jin-myeong and her boss. Her boss uses his authority over her to humiliate her in front of all her coworkers, without any consequences for hurting her. Then, as a way to make amends, he treats her out for dinner and even promotes her to register duty. All instances, although some more serious than others, showcase the men manipulating the girls and avoiding taking responsibility.
This issue of gender inequality is a common occurrence in South Korea that dates to the early 1960s. Women were central to the rapid industrialization of Seoul throughout the 1960s to the 1980s as a way to surpass their northern counterparts (Barraclough 2009: 60). Women were the backbones of this process, having been given the jobs of cheap labor, yet they were marginalized in society. However, when the financial crisis of 1997-1998 hit, they were coerced out of the workforce as they were not seen as the primary “breadwinners” of the family (Cho 2004: 38). Men were given the job as breadwinners and providers of the family. This idea becomes even more deeply integrated into society with the institution of military service (Moon 2005: 44). This coupling of military and economic mobilization empowered men to be the family providers in the rapidly increasing industrialized state (Ibid., 55). Even with this concept being created years ago, this ideology of patrilineality and women as second class citizens is very much seen in today’s South Korean society, the drama being a fairly good example of some of the “minor” marginalization South Korean women must face in today’s society.
As we continue on the rest of the series, our Belle Epoque ladies must navigate through these tough times with the help of each other. I will leave you with these discussion questions:
Given the short history of South Korean women’s roles in society and how the girls of the drama reacted similarly to each other to their male counterparts, do you believe there are gender roles that are already ingrained into society? If not, do you believe there should be gender roles that are taught to follow?
Why do you think certain gender roles, such as girls are timid and boys are rowdy, still remain in society today?
Bibliography:
Barraclough, Ruth. “Slum romance in Korean factory girl literature.” In Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan, pp. 60-77. Routledge, 2009.
Cho, Uhn. “Gender inequality and patriarchal order reexamined.” Korea Journal 44, no. 1 (2004): 22-41.
https://www.ekoreajournal.net/issue/view_pop.htm?Idx=3286
Moon, Seungsook. “Ch. 2. Mobilized to be Martial and Productive.” In Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea, pp. 44-67. Duke University Press, 2005.
Age of Youth (Hello, My Twenties!) 
With regards to the first discussion question, I believe there are a vast amount of gender roles ingrained in society, especially in Korea. There are generic roles such as women should stay at home, take care of the kids and be the homemaker of the family. She must be able to cook, clean and satisfy the husband and kids needs. Whereas for men, especially the fathers of the family, are the breadwinner and head of the family and his word is the law.
Another gender role is your example in the second discussion question: females are timid and should be protected by males. As you pointed out, the episode shows this when Jong-yeol takes Eun-jae’s bag without asking, depict the gender norm of women as ‘weak’. Despite this, however, the episode subtly points out that women can be strong, independent and breadwinners. Looking at Jin-myung specifically, she is the breadwinner of the family (as seen in the beginning when she gives money to care for her brain-dead brother). Her tenacity to work multiple part-time jobs and being self-sufficient shows how women are not stereotypically weak and timid as our gender role suggests.
Interestingly, how people perform gender roles can be seen through the contrast of Jin-myung’s manager and Jae-wan. How they cared for her is very different. Jae-wan supports her while allowing her to be self-sufficient, such as giving her food or drinks during her break, whereas, her manager supported her by removing her from waitressing to working at the cashier, hindering her from doing her job properly and demeaning her in the process. Thus, through the episode, we can see how gender roles exist because of how people perceive it and perform it. I personally do not believe there should be concrete gender roles that should be taught but having the general knowledge of our limitations due to our sex and supporting each other through that knowledge can allow us to surpass the gendered labels we strive to tackle.
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I haven’t thought about the way people perform gender roles and I definitely agree with your comment on the difference in how Jin-myeong’s manager and Jae-wan chooses to support her. It is interesting that they are both trying to help her and succeeding in that; however, the public views the two characters differently due to the methods used.
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In my opinion, I think there are gender roles that are already ingrained in society especially Asian countries even though I do not believe there should be gender roles that are taught to follow. In this episode, we see Jin-Myeong gets ‘help’ from her manager; Eun-Jae’s seonbae helps her carry the baggage and also Yi-Na uses her body to achieve a ‘better life’ she wants. In all of these cases, males are always at a higher level than females either ages, job position or social status. Not just in this particular drama but in many other Korean dramas, usually the male character is smart, rich, young and falls in love with a ‘normal’ or poor girl that does not necessarily have to be pretty. I think these dramas are some sort of promoting a ‘dream life’ that girl should always look for a man that can support her life in many different ways. Male should always make more money, take the responsibilities to buy a house, take care of wife, kids and parents. There is another scene where Ji-Myeong is at the hospital with her brother there, and her mom is there too. We as audiences can see that the reason why Ji-Myeong is working so hard to earn money is all for her brother. When her mom sees her she does not ask how is she doing, and seems like the mom does not have an interest in caring her at all. As a patriarchal society, within family parents care about son more than daughters.
Regards to the second discussion question, I think the reason why certain gender roles still remain in society is that that’s what we’ve been seeing when we were young. We see our dads are working so hard to keep the family going and we see moms are the one who would spend more time with their kids at home. We as a kid were influenced by these. However, we can also see that society is trying to change these gender role, as Jasmine mentioned that Ji-Myeong is strong and independent. I do not support the idea of certain gender roles should be taught but as a whole society, it will take a really long time and will be difficult to change this.
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This episode tells me more about the character Yoon Jin-Myeong, I know that the person she wished to be dead is her brother in the hospital, which raised my question that why should she sacrifice so many of her time for an endless tragedy? Nevertheless, episode 4 mentioned many details regarding the difference between the role of woman and man in the society. Compare to the term “gender inequality” Alexandra brought out in her comment, I agree with her in some extent but I think these details are more about different roles women and men play in Korean society. Like many other countries, I think there is a sense of male chauvinism in Korean society, which male think they should do the heavy jobs like serve in the military and earn for family and women instead should be a good wife and serving the men. For example, in one scene, the girl Yoo Eun-Jae is carrying two heavy bags on the road and a man showed up help her out with two bags and said girl should not do this heavy work. Another scene shows the girl Jung Ye-Eun’s boyfriend is furious about Jung Ye-Eun showing off her college which is better than her boyfriends. I can see from this scene that Korean man want be better than woman in every aspect.
Also, I found it quite surprising that in the 4th episode, the girl Kang Yi-Na defended her roommate Jung Ye-Eun from being abuse by her furious boyfriend. I learned that Kang Yi-Na is actually a very strong, caring, and independent figure despite some of her controversial behaviour.
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Like Jasmine, I agree that society has traditionally led us to thinking the men go out to work while women stay at home. I do believe that unfortunately gender roles have been ingrained into society although this is changing, maybe more so in North American culture with husbands also being able to go on leave to take care of newborn children. As Alexandra discusses, South Korean society is seen to be male-dominate in the drama with the men being a very integral part of the girls’ lives. Ji-won is constantly looking for a boyfriend, Ye-eun is hung up on her boyfriend, I-na depends on her boyfriends for her livelihood, Eun-jae receives help and friendship (although she does not necessarily admit this) from her seonbae and Jin-myeong ends up owing her manager at the end of the episode. This shows quite a bit of dependence on the males in the drama and reinforces the patriarchal male-dominant standards of Korean society. In response to the second discussion question, I think that one of the main reasons the “traditionally” established gender roles of the strong male and weak female remains today is because of social media and the values that older generations pass down onto us. However, I do think that social media has the ability to change this as well and it has been doing so gradually. As we can see in I-na’s strong-headedness in paving her own path and standing her ground as well as Jin-myeong’s determination to succeed through hard work.
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I think in South Korea, there are gender roles that are already ingrained into society. For example, as we discussed last class, in terms of family relations, the father’s family is one of his own, while the mother’s family is an outsider. As well as in the traditional marriage relationship, The husband side buys the house while the wife side buys furniture. Until now, South Korea’s military service policy required that adult men have to serve in the military for two years. These are certain gender roles in Korean society. But we also see that Korean society is now trying to downplay gender stereotypes. We can see Ye-eun is in a better university than her boyfriend；When Ye-eun is bullied by her boyfriend, Yi-na dares to fight for her；Jin-myung can be self-reliant by working and Eun-jae can choose which boy will help her.
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Great discussion and very well done analysis of gender inequality!
I would like to say something about what Duyeong does to Ye-eun. This kind of violence hasn’t been spotlighted back then because of gender inequality which made women hard to report the cases. Now, there are a lot more cases reported. Again, please keep your eyes to the gender and sex work lectures!
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