Zebin Lin
“Hope, That Damn Hope #Suspicious Man”
Episode 8 is about struggles. Jeong Ye-Eun struggles on whether or not to break up with her terrible boyfriend. Yun Jin-Myeong struggles with the troubles caused by her boss in the restaurant. Kang Yi-Na struggles on her nightmare of killing someone’s daughter. In addition, Yu Eun-Jae is experiencing a relationship that she has never experienced before. It seems like Song Ji-Won is the only girl who has nothing to worry about. Most importantly, this episode has a theme of “suspicious man”, the lady who rents her house to these five girls spotted a suspicious man frequently wandering around the house and she warned the girls to be careful. Indeed, this episode shows the girls face threaten by men in school, work, and even at home. I argue that like many other countries in the world, Korean women have a disadvantageous situation in male-dominated Korean society and the threatens toward women such as sexual assault and violence are serious in Korean society.
Korean society should be more serious about punishing criminals who attack women. There are several scenes in the episode that Yi-Na is followed by a man who claims that Yi-Na killed his daughter. Despite whether Yi-Na truly killed the man’s daughter, it is surprising to see that a man who commits multiple assaults toward a young woman without arrest. Yi-Na and other women would be much safer if the assaulters are arrested when they commit the first crime. The number of attacks on women increases as the woman become less submit to the patriarchal system in modern Korean society, and the phenomenon of men’s hatred toward women because they are “untraditional” and the lost their gender privilege in the society is called misogyny (Jeong and Lee 2018: 708). The government should take action to stop this hatred toward women and punish those men who assault women on any occasion. Nevertheless, the workplace for women in Korea can sometimes be unbearable. “female workers were more likely to experience age discrimination, gender discrimination, and unwanted sexual attention at work” (Kim, Min, and Park 2013: 93). In the drama, Yun Jin-Myeong suffered from her boss’s harassment because she refused the sexual connotation from her boss. And she has to bear it without any accessible help. What even more shocking is that her coworkers watched all these harassments imposed on Jin-Myeong but no one offered help. There should be an effective law enforcement system where working women can rely on reporting the harassment they bear without fear.
In conclusion, Korean society is modern and getting more liberal nowadays. However, the safety of women in Korean society is never guaranteed. They faced life threaten and other forms of assault from school, work, and home. I believe that the response of the Korean government who took serious actions in protecting women and punishing criminals is the most effective way to improve Korean women’s disadvantageous situation in society.
Discussions
- In the episode Jin-Myeong was frequently assaulted by her boss, why do you think Jin-Myeong chose to bear it instead of against her boss? Do you think the assault of female coworkers occur often in Korean society? And most importantly, any suggestions can you offer to help Jin-Myeong and other women to deal with the harassments they might receive in their work?
- As a modern democratic society, what are the factors that make women in Korea to have such disadvantageous situation? What action can we take to defend women’s right in Korea?
Bibliography
Jeong, Euisol and Lee, Jieun. “We Take the Red Pill, we Confront the DickTrix: Online Feminist Activism and the Augmentation of Gendered Realities in South Korea.” Feminist Media Studies 18, no.4 (2018) : 705-717. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1447354
Min, Jin‐Young, Shin‐Goo Park, Seung‐Sup Kim, and Kyoung‐Bok Min. “Workplace Injustice and self‐reported Disease and Absenteeism in South Korea.” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 57, no.1 (2013): 87-96.
Age of Youth (Hello, My Twenties!) 
To answer your second question, I believe the fact that women being marketed as sexual objects or objects for sexual violence creates this idea that women can be assaulted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMS4VJKekW8&t=1s). As we see in many ads, parts of their bodies are used as backgrounds/canvases without a purpose, resulting in them in being sexualised. This problem is that we don’t even notice this because it’s so commonplace (Ibid.) Additionally, it doesn’t help that for many years, women were seen as ‘lower’ than men in Korea (and probably still seen this way to some extent). They were considered commodities owned by men, resulting in them being subjected to discrimination, abuse and assault. The fact that they had a lower social status means they aren’t allowed to talk back to them, which answers your first question as to why Jin-myeong didn’t stand up against her boss. The seniority of the boss causes Jin-myeong scared of being fired (especially her being tight on money) and her co-workers being mad at her because of favouritism causes her to lack the support to stand up for herself. I believe this scene is just a glimpse of what actually happens in Korea regarding harassment on women. As we heard in a lecture by Dr. Saeji, Korean phones have a shutter sound when a picture is taken because of how prominent upskirting is. This tells us how prominent and often women are being harassed in everyday life.
I believe in order to help women who have dealt with harassment in their workplace, it is important to stand up for themselves and have the numbers to support that. These women are not alone and need good social support of people who believe them. It is also important for them to advocate for change to have measures to deal with these kinds of cases. A lot of the times people are scared to lose their jobs and face as a result but if there are measures to help protect them, it would allow them to become more vocal. One more thing is educating people about workplace harassment and the consequences of them. Because a lot of the times, the harassers are not punished for their actions whereas the person harassed are defamed. Thus, if there was a way to help prevent the harassers from harassing other people, it would help protect current victims but also prevent future victims.
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To answer the first question, I believe Jin-myeong is choosing to tolerate the assault from her boss because she doesn’t think anyone will do anything about it. In the episode itself, as @harrylinzebin mentioned, her coworkers had seen all the harassment directed towards Jin-myeong by her boss, yet none of her coworkers went to defend her against him. Although, they probably have reasons why, such as they also don’t want to get on their boss’s bad side because they know nothing good will come out of it (essentially, they will be in the same position as Jin-myeong).
I believe this is often the case for most sexual harassment in the workplace where females tend to put up with it because they think it is unlikely that the issue will be resolved if the matter were to be brought up. This frequently happens often in the South Korean workplace, as seen in the findings in the report by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in which 78.4% of the 500 respondents say they “put up with it” (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/738499.html). Less than 1% of the cases resulted in any action within or outside the company (Ibid.).
In order to prevent these occurrences from happening again, I agree with @jasminekan13 that it is important for these women to stand up for themselves, but it is also essential to have them know that they are supported. If these women know that support will be given when they decide to speak up, more stories will follow and showcase how often these issues arise and that action must be done to prevent further victims. It’s important that these survivors of such incidents won’t be ostracized for speaking up and provided with the protection they need in order to be vocal about their stories.
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To answer the first question, as @alexldg said she tolerate because she does not believe anyone will do anything about it. Besides that in such a workplace where Jin-Myeong is isolated by other coworkers because they think she is a trouble maker. The collectivistic society is also one of the reasons to blame, women do not want to cause any troubles, especially the one with lower social status and job positions. In Korea, men are usually sitting on a higher job position, women can not afford to lose their jobs.
If they want to define women’s right they have to stand up for themselves for sure just like @jasminekan13 and @alexldg have said. They know the best what they’ve been suffering and what they’ve been through. If there is only one person stand up for women of the whole society will never be enough, they should all work together and stand up for themselves. In Korea, a patriarchal society they probably choose to be indifferent toworads women harassment because they’ve been always taking advantages on women which made it become imperceptible. It is really important for them to speak up so the society cannot ignore.
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Through the drama and what we discussed in class, it is obviously seen that women have a lower status than men in Korean family and society. In this episode, we can see Yun Jin-Myeong suffered from her boss’s harassment. One of the reasons is that the man who harassed Jin-Myeong is Jin-Myeong’s boss. He owned higher status and greater power than Jin-Myeong. Let’s think about it, if Jin-Myeong is in a high position, I believe her subordinates would not dare to offend her easily. So I think there is one way to prevent women from being harassed is that improving their social status, such as providing more high-level occupations for women and increasing the proportion of women numbers in the whole numbers of leadership positions.
In addition, the episode shows that when Jin-Myeong is harassed by her boss, her colleagues do not choose to help her, because they fear that meddling will cost them lose their jobs. So I think reducing the sense of hierarchy among Koreans would also have an effect to protect women.
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I guess she chose to bear it because she thought that changeling her boss might hurt her career and ability to earn a salary. Im not sure how often assault happens in Korean work places, there is probably more of a tolerance for some inappropriate comments by bosses towards their female employees compared to Canada because Korea is a more traditional patriarchal culture.
Some factors that disadvantage women in the work place are probably due to Korea’s more patriarchal views of society. Education is probably the most effective way to change views on these issues and help women the most on these issues.
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