(2017) Romance, comedy, drama; 16 one-hour episodes
Starring: Jung So-min, Lee Min-ki
Synopsis
Desperate for housing, Yoon Ji-ho signs a marriage contract with Nam Se-hee who sees her as the perfect tenant to help pay off his mortgage early. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. Se-hee is socially awkward, reticent, serious, and expressionless. Additionally, he’s under serious pressure from his parents to get married. Ji-ho is an assistant screenwriter who struggles under the company’s hierarchy and harassment. She’s serious, too, but open, caring, and engaging with friends and society. Getting married—persuading the mutual in-laws—is difficult enough, but will their landlord/tenant relationship survive societal expectations of marriage, or will their relationship change?
What It’s About Is Not What It’s About
Because This Is My First Life is categorized as a romantic comedy, and it is, but it’s so much more. As we’ve come to expect with Dragon Studios productions, the script was tight and well-written with dynamic characters. Lee Min-ki and Jung So-min led a talented and cohesive ensemble cast with stellar performances from the leads right on down the cast roll; the story was engaging, intriguing, wonderfully complex, deep, and layered with meaning, themes, and messages.
But the story is more than a romantic comedy: It dares to explore women’s changing roles in Korean society. Ji-ho and Se-hee redefine what marriage can be, free from Korea’s traditional roles for men and women, while Ho-rang and Won-seok explore the choice of wanting a traditional marriage and lifestyle within Korea’s almost crushing financial realities. Soo-ji is more secretive, even with her best friends, but while she takes charge of her own sexuality and relationships, she has to put up with almost constant, blatant, sexual harassment at work in order to keep her job and climb the corporate ladder. She finds an unlikely ally in Sang-goo, who is, perhaps, the ideal man from a feminist perspective, taking people as people, judging them on their actions and qualifications, supporting Soo-ji without being authoritative or patronizing, and more than capable of meeting Soo-ji as an equal.
Women’s Changing Roles in South Korean Society
Many of the struggles presented in this drama are reminiscent of what American women faced—and still do, to some extent—in the 70s and 80s: Blatant sexual harassment; physical and/or verbal abuse for rejecting a man’s advances; unequal pay for equal work (that’s still a problem); and challenging society’s expectations that defined relationships, sexuality, marriage, children, acceptable careers for women, and traditional gender roles.
Still, I only thought about Because This Is My First Life as a wonderful, romantic, and humorous story with some interesting themes until I saw an OpEd in The New York Times discussing South Korea’s negative population growth rate—more deaths than births—which will have an enormous impact on Korean culture, society, and their economy. That essay stated that 65 percent of South Korean women don’t want children and, thus, are avoiding marriage—a marriage strike. Why? That question led me to South Korea’s feminist movement.
Korean society is a bit of a paradox: its economy is the tenth largest in the world with some of the biggest tech companies in the world and it boasts some of the fastest internet connection speeds internationally. Culturally, South Korea has some of the most globally popular entertainment in film, television, and music. Yet, for all its economic strength, technological advances, and cultural influence, South Korea has an appalling track record with women’s rights.
A Little Context
South Korea is conservative (take America’s conservativism, put it on steroids, and slap on expectations of filial and spousal obedience). It’s also entrenched in patriarchy and hierarchy.
Traditionally, men are kings of their family, the breadwinners who are rewarded with respect, obedience, and children—sons, in particular. Yet this centuries-old tradition has pushed women into inferior positions in the family and society.1
Korean women face traditional expectations of a daughter-in-law’s duties and obligations to take care of her husband’s parents, including preparations for holidays and memorial rites (preparing all the food and all the washing up). Daughters-in-law can become the scapegoat in South Korean families being blamed for not having children, not having sons, knowing too much or too little, making more money than their husbands, having a job, not having a job, not taking care of the house or the husband, or the mediocre grades of their children.
Additionally, women are expected to achieve and maintain impossible beauty standards and keep current with the latest fashion. (Korea does the most plastic surgery per year in the world and its cosmetics industry in becoming one of the most lucrative internationally.) And, if that’s not enough, women are confronted with the traditional mindset that views unmarried women as pitiful, and “living well” means having a husband and children.
But let’s be real. South Korean women are not the meek, suffer-in-silence, objects as often depicted in Korean film. Just as western women have traditionally been depicted as “the little woman,” Korean women are more than their traditional roles and stereotypes. Yet the disparity between gender roles, equal pay, job opportunities and hiring practices, and personal safety continue to be one of the worst among advanced nations.
Women in the Workplace
The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has ranked South Korea at the bottom of the list for the largest gender pay gap every year for the last three decades and has remained at the bottom of the Economist’s glass-ceiling index since it was launched in 2013. The Economist has even labeled South Korea’s glass ceiling “bullet proof.” And they’re not even close to equal pay: women are paid just $0.69 for every dollar their male counterparts earn. (In the U.S., on average, women earn $0.84 for every dollar a man makes.)
Yet even while more women than men are now matriculating into universities, hiring practices are skewed in favor of men. Some companies, for example, were taken to court for excluding female candidates who graduated from women’s colleges. Other companies have fabricated documents to give higher interview scores to male candidates to maintain a set a target gender ratio of men to woman—in some cases 4:1 and 7:3 in others. These practices are in violation of Korea’s Equal Employment Opportunity and Work-Family Balance Assistance Act, but the fines amount to little more than a slap on the wrist.
Domestic Violence and Tech-Based Sexual Abuse
South Korea is one of the most advanced technological countries in the world, but it comes at a cost: digital sex crimes have become an epidemic. Men have planted spycams in women’s locker rooms, public bathrooms, workplaces, motels, stores, and subways to film women without their consent and distribute those videos online. One young woman discovered a site where men uploaded such surreptitious videos and discovered that some brothers had even uploaded videos of their sisters. Yet prosecution of digital sex crimes have been low and punishments lenient.
Such objectification and disrespect has also led to violence: women constitute more than half of Korea’s murder victims, which is one of the highest gender ratios in the world. In 2019, 90 percent of violent crime victims were women, an increase from 71 percent in 2000. And, a 2017 survey conducted by Human Rights Watch found that nearly 80 percent of South Korean male respondents admitted to violent acts against an intimate partner. The situation is so pervasive that women now refer to ending a relationship where they walk away from unharmed as a "safe breakup."
Tech-savvy, young, and educated men have been the drivers of misogyny and online hate speech, blaming women and feminism for their economic and social difficulties in a society distressed with high youth unemployment, skyrocketing housing prices, and growing economic inequality.2
Many men refuse to acknowledge that South Korea is a country with entrenched patriarchy with toxic gender relations. Indeed, these young men have been such a driving force in the backlash against feminism and gender equality that their grievances have been picked up by political candidates.
The 4Bs: Dating, Sex, Marriage, and Birth
In a society with alarmingly frequent incidents of workplace sexual harassment, rape, murder, and domestic abuse, some Korean women have simply found Korean men beyond redemption.
In addition to South Korea’s “marriage strike” is a small, but growing movement among Korean women, known as the 4B. 4B is shorthand for Korean words that all start with bi-, meaning “no.” Biyeonae is saying no to dating; bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual, sexual relationships; bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage; and bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth.
There are also women who decide not to get married because of the traditional expectations of a daughter-in-law’s duties and obligations, which can be suffocating, demoralizing, and abusive.
Korea’s birth rate cannot be blamed solely on feminism: people are getting married and having children later, which can affect fertility rates; the cost of housing is skyrocketing; education is expensive; the expenses of raising children are costly; and job opportunities are limited with fierce competition. Faced with this reality, it can be financially reckless to have children. However, research indicates that low birth rates in developed countries reflect backward attitudes regarding female gender roles.
Politics
It's not surprising that the backlash against feminism has entered politics. Leading up to South Korea’s 2022 presidential election, then-candidate Yoon Suk-yeol capitalized on men’s anti-feminist anger, calling for the abolishment of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which protects women’s rights and combats domestic violence, and accused its officials of treating men like “potential sex criminals.” Yoon blamed feminism for Korea’s low birth rate and stated that feminism prevents healthy relationships between men and women.3 Yoon has also claimed that systemic gender discrimination doesn’t exist—contrary to research and economic and social indicators.
Yoon narrowly won the election and took office in 2022, his Presidential term is five-years. As President, he has removed the term “gender equality” from school textbooks, cancelled funding for programs fighting everyday sexism, and is trying to dismantle the gender equality ministry, which has also been pivotal in normalizing parental leave for fathers and helping women achieve seniority in the workplace.
Since 2015, South Korea’s feminism has gained some hard-won rights, but the backlash, combined with a conservative political party bent on exploiting young men’s anti-feminist anger, is a serious threat to women’s rights and equality.
Something Worth Saying is Something Worth Hearing
South Korea remains a country entrenched in authoritarian and hierarchical paradigms and traditions, where violence toward women is high, and gender discrimination is deeply engrained. But women are changing Korean society.
Because This Is My First Life explores what relationships and marriage can be, outside Korea’s constricting traditions and gender violence; that respect for and support of one’s partner, girlfriend, and wife are fundamental to a healthy relationship. It also provides young men with models for behavior and attitudes that do not emasculate them but enhances their attractiveness. What woman doesn’t want her boyfriend to support her, listen to her, and be in her corner while letting her call the shots?
Ji-ho, Soo-ji, and Ho-rang each illustrate that the kind of marriage or relationship they want is a choice, and their relationships are as unique as the characters in them. So, whether a South Korean woman embraces the 4B, or Ji-ho’s refusal to accept the traditional duties of a daughter-in-law, or Soo-ji’s acceptance of a committed relationship but not marriage, or Ho-rang’s desire for a traditional marriage, what’s important is women’s freedom for self determination.
Ji-ho, Soo-ji, and Ho-rang each experience sexual harassment at work to one degree or another. Without government support for anti-discrimination laws to curb sexual harassment and gender discrimination, this toxic trait will continue just as will feminists’ determination to gain better living standards for women—free of discrimination, violence, and abuse.
Se-hee, Sang-goo, and Won-seok represent the ideal men women want to fall in love with—caring, tender, open-minded, yet humanly flawed in a non-toxic way. At the core of this ideal, are men who respect women for their intelligence, determination, choices, and desires and not simply as the servants of men's egos, the house, and the bedroom.
Because This Is My First Life is an engaging romantic comedy, but it has something to say. Something we should all listen to.
©2024 Caitlyn Frost. All rights reserved.
Endnotes
2Moon, Katharine H.S. (December 9, 2022) South Korea’s Misogyny Problem. East Asia Forum. Retrieved August 10, 2024, from https://eastasiaforum.org/2022/12/09/south-koreas-misogyny-problem/
3Gunia, Amy. (March 10, 2022) How South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol Capitalized on Anti-Feminist Backlash to Win the Presidency. Time Magazine. Retrieved August 15, 2024, from https://time.com/6156537/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-sexism/
Sources
Hassan, Tirana. (2023). Human Rights Watch World Report 2023 South Korea. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/south-korea
Jung, Hawon. Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights Worldwide. Ben Bella Books, Inc., 2023.
Jung, Hawon. (January 27, 2023) Women in South Korea Are on Strike Against Being “Baby Making Machines.” The New York Times. Retrieved December 9, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html
Koo, Se-woong. (June 13, 2016). South Korea’s Misogyny. The New York Times. Retrieved December 9, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/opinion/south-koreas-misogyny.html
Koo, Se-woong. (April 15, 2022) The Truth About Korean Men. Korean Exposé. Retrieved August 13, 2024, from https://koreaexpose.com/korean-men-and-masculinity-viewed-from-inside-korea/
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Lee, Michelle Ye Hee. (February 21, 2024) South Korea, a Nation of Rigid Gender Norms, Meets Its Changemakers. The Washington Post. Retrieved August 5, 2024, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/21/south-korea-women-gender-equality-gap/
Moon, Katharine H.S. (December 9, 2022) South Korea’s Misogyny Problem. East Asia Forum. Retrieved August 10, 2024, from https://eastasiaforum.org/2022/12/09/south-koreas-misogyny-problem/
Rich, Timothy S., White, Serena, and Coyle, Josie. (October 27, 2023) How Do South Koreans View Gender Discrimination? The Diplomat. Retrieved August 4, 2024, from https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/how-do-south-koreans-view-gender-discrimination/
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Sussman, Anna Louie. (March 8 2023) A World Without Men: The Women of South Korea’s 4B Movement Aren’t Fighting the Patriarchy—They’re Leaving it Behind Entirely. New York Magazine. Retrieved August 5, 2024, from https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/south-korea-s-hurdles-with-gender-equality
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