by Brittany(Ruiyun)Liang
Episode5: The Reason For Loving Someone, The Reason For Not Loving Someone #Men and Women
This episode starts with Ye-Eun in the bathroom crying and thinking about breaking up with Du-Yeong. The girls are about to host a party because of all the “weird things” recently happened around them that they thought it is because of the ghost.
While all the girls except for Jin-Myeong are decorating the house, getting all the drinks ready, suddenly they get a message from Jin-Myeong saying Ji-won’s dad is going to visit Ji-Won. I find it really interesting and hilarious that they have to take down all the decorations such as the disco ball and the small balloons in penis shape and also hide all the alcohol. Jong-Yeol has to hide in a room with Eun-Jae instead of greeting Ji-Won’s dad with the other girls. This scene exposes the shame culture in South Korea where as girls should not have intimate behavior with boys in their traditional conservative view. Hosting party, inviting boys to girl’s house, dancing and drinking are somewhat considered as inappropriate behaviors. Virginity is very important for women in Korea and it is a shameful thing especially in elders’ perspective. Although there is an enormous generation gap in Korea, younger members in the family can also feel shame when they do something make their elders feel shame (Yang and Rosenblatt:368-69). As a shame culture driven and a collective society, “the Korean way of seeing individual and family as not very separate, Koreans feel shame when family members do something ‘wrong’ ”(Yang and Rosenblatt:367). Especially in traditional Korean society sex is a taboo, although in modern Korea where as young people are more open-minded, traditional mindset is still affecting the majority of Korean.
As viewers we can also see that Ji-Won’s dad does not live in Seoul, he comes to Seoul because Ji-Won studies and lives there. He expects his daughter to be studying really hard and will achieve a better life in Seoul. Lee says, “success in individual life was viewed as the highest honor for one’s family”(Lee:189). Ji-Won’s parents are giving her support financially and emotionally so that she can get higher education and also prove her ability. In Korean society, education is everything, which decides their children’s future, their children’s social status after graduation and parents will do anything in order to support their children’s education (Lee:191).
Overall, younger generations of Koreans are more liberal compare to elders. But because of the deep influence of shame culture, sometimes they have to do things just because of parents’ expectations.
Discussion Questions:
- In North America, parents can talk about sex to their children where as in Korea sex is a taboo that they feel shame talking about especially women. What do you think the society or younger generation can do to change this?
- What do you think about making children feel shame when they are not doing great at school or not being as successful as their parents expect them to be? Do you think it is a motivation for children to work harder or not?
Bibliographies:
- Yang Sungeun and Rosenblatt, C. Paul. “Shame in Korean Families.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32, no.3(2001): 361-75
- Lee Zuk-Nae. “Korean Culture and Sense of Shame.”Transcultural Psychiatry 36, no.2(1999):181-94
Age of Youth (Hello, My Twenties!) 
The society of younger generation in Korean are like younger generations in many other countries. They are more acceptable toward many sensitive topics in the modern society. The study shows Korean young people (20s) are the group most tolerant toward homosexual. This, also applied to the relationships toward young female and male. In order to change their situation of being shamed by their parents when boys and girls are getting closer, they should try to not afraid of talking about sex with their parents and confront the tradition view of sex as shame. Parents and older generation may be changed when they see the relations between girls and boys are positive and parents need to know that sex is not a horrible thing to talk about.
Regarding to the second discussion question, I think the way of making children feel shame when they do not meet parents or teachers expectation is a bad way. Myself grow up in Asian country and experienced the shame punishment , its only create high pressure and nightmare and many other children grew up in such way of education has similar experiences with me. Therefore, making children feel shame in order to educate them may effective in some children, but it creates more negative impacts that would influence children’s personality in their entire life.
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With regards to what @harrylinzebin said, it would help if the younger generation help ‘educate’ the older generation with sensitive topics of society. However, with the hierarchy system in Korea in place, if this were to happen, it would be seen as ‘disrespectful’ because they are talking back to their elders. Another thing that could help is utilizing media and celebrities to discuss controversial topics. Although celebrities are heavily controlled and scrutinized for everything, we saw in class when Hong Seok-cheon came out as gay, it was very controversial at the time. However, after a few years, there was growing tolerance towards the LGBT community. Seeing this pattern, if a celebrity (especially a well-respected one) were to come out and say “I discuss sex with my children” or something along the lines of it is important to educate children about sex, it would be very impactful and help society to become more open to it.
For the second question, the shame culture like @harrylinzebin mentioned creates a competitive environment for children to work under. Although it may work for some children, it can backfire on others. I’ve seen this first-hand with my personal experiences where the city I grew up in cultivates a highly-competitive and hostile education system. Although I was privileged enough to escape that system through other means, my relatives were not so lucky. Unlike them, I was raised on a mixture of shame and positive reinforcement. My relatives were raised mainly via shame and punishment. Although for me, the punishments motivated me more, the consistency of shame my relatives received backfired and made them perform worse because of the lack of support they felt. Thus, I believe the type of learning a child requires needs to be taken into account. Whether they strive better via punishment or positive reinforcement, it is best to have a good balance of both to ensure they understand what they are doing wrong and right as well as the execution of either is very important as well.
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Regarding the first discussion question, I believe the best way to desensitize an issue is to start a conversation and continue talking about it. Once a topic becomes a common subject amongst people, I feel the issue becomes less taboo, especially regarding something that is natural for humans like sex. Topics, such as intercourse, should not be avoided because it a natural thing humans do. Sex is a natural behaviour for humans and is part of the evolutionary process. It is helpful if those with a platform to discuss the topic use their influence to start the conversation. Also, human culture norms have made it so that sex is something that is shameful and scandalous. If monogamy still stays as the norm, then sex will continue being such a taboo topic. Again, society must showcase that having multiple sexual partners throughout life is normal for others and is not something that should be regarded as “unsure” or “disgraceful.”
For the second discussion question, I don’t think shaming one’s children is a great idea to get them to do better in school (or anything in general). Shaming would only be detrimental to the psyche in the long run. It is emotional abuse towards the child and can have devastating effects when they are older. Children are naive and are easily influenced especially at a young age. So, many will internalize information they are given as a child, which then are ingrained in them as adults. Shaming causes fear within them which will affect how they live in their adult life and causes them to have skewed ideas of what is healthy and what is not (for example, they may not know what is exactly is a healthy relationship or not).
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To address the first question, I think that social media plays a huge part in opening the minds of especially the more traditionally thinking Koreans when it comes to sex and other “taboo” subjects. The exposure from media in general can slowly be incorporated into the society and conversations rather than being hidden and not talked about. It will take time and for the current young generation to be open about taboo subjects in order for Korean society to be open about these topics as well. I definitely agree with Zebin in response to the second question on shame having a potentially negative impact on a child’s personality and life. Although I can see shame being a motivating factor in that you do not wish to bring shame to yourself nor your family, at the same time the fear of shame can cause one to become restricted and trapped. I think that rather than making children feel shame from not living up to their parents expectations, it would be more reasonable to have the kids feel themselves that they’ve disappointed their parents.
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With the increasing rate of LGBT Supporting in South Korea, I think the attitude towards sex in South Korea is gradually getting better. Besides, I think the media (such as TV series) plays an important role in connecting parents and children. On the one hand, through weekly family time series, children sit together with their parents, they communicate with each other about sex and the problem of “shame”; In addition, the gap of two generations was mentioned in the play, making both sides stand in the other’s shoes, thus creating a friendly environment to make children remove their concerns about “sex” and the shame about study, as well as making parents have better understanding for their kids. By the way, as Jasmine said, I think parents’ encouragement is essential for children’s education.
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1. Since shame culture is rooted in the whole society, it’s probably easier to teach the young generation to not feel shame for talking about sex. Since the recent generation, Korean getting more and more influence from Eastern countries and culture, I think they have gradually become more open-minded. I think we need to give proper sex education at school to let students know the importance of having a healthy relationship and having such discussion is not shameful as well. Although there may be a lot of older generation opposing the idea, I think it’s may the most effective of doing this. 2. I think this does depend on individual personality and the way someone handles such pressure. I personally don’t like the way when my parents compare my grade with others (but not in a way to make me feel shame), but there are a lot of Korean would be motivated since they may think they are the one that will make their family proud. It does depend on the way of parent’s expression, but to me, there are more negative effect mentally if my parents said they will be shameful for me not doing well in school.
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