KORE2034

Gender, Sexuality,
and Family in Korea

2022-23 Sem 1
Week 8 / Oct 24,
2022 1
 1) start thinking about your final paper
research topic à overview the syllabus
2) Midterm return next week!

Announcements Today’s class…

1. Quiz
2. Recap from last week
3. The Housemaid movie
4. Myungji Yang’s chapter
Quiz – 1 min
Review and This Week’s Topic
-So far in this semester, we’ve examined different images of
women in Korea: “wise mother good wife” ideology, exploitation
of women in the Japanese colonial era in “comfort women”
system, and prostitutes/sex workers in the Camp towns in the
post-colonial South Korea
à images of modern women // colonized women // precarious
women’s labor in the US imperialism and patriarchal militarized
system.
This Week: the rise of middle-class and how women and
housewives were at the center of the rise of the middle class in
postwar South Korea (60s-90s).
Movie, The Housemaid (1960):
• Middle-class family
• Women’s work at home
(sewing machine)
• Factory girls
• Middle-class house: 2 stories
Western house, piano, TV,
bed, decorations (Western
dolls, etc)
• Threat to the middle-class
house:
Myungji Yang’s book chapter:
• Middle-class housewives &
the rise of real estate
speculative market in the 70s-
90s South Korea
• Housewives as the “pokpuin”
(Mrs./Madam Speculator):
derogatory term
 • 1960, very well-known Korean movie by Dir. Kim Ki-young,
also very rare in the 1960s, for its artistic achievement.
• The housemaid actress became the national enemy, she
could not be casted in other movies.
• (“Kill that bitch!”)
The • the fear of middle class
• Directed by Kim Ki-young
Housemaid • One of the most important films in SK cinema

하녀, 1960 • Story within the story: inspired by a real-life event, in the
news
• Social mobility, class, and gender
• The housemaid à lower status in the factory
• Ms. Kwak
• Ms. Cho
• Mr. Kim & Ms. Kim
• From our quiz:
Ms. Cho in factory
The house
 • 4:15 factory girl workers
• 4:33 cleaning maid appears
• 19:00 maid who smokes
Some scenes
• 22.41 Housemaid is introduced
• 32:30 애, 담배.
• Ideal house 35:00 & TV 53:36
• 57:47
• à Family and material: from Abelmann’s
chapter, material desire is only for woman
• Last scene: a man wants to return to the primitive
times when he sees a beautiful woman.
Myungji Yang.
“Shrewd Entrepreneurs or Immoral Speculators?
Desires, Speculation, and Middle-Class Housewives in
South Korea, 1978–1996,” pp. 37-61.

- a book chapter from an edited book, Gender and Class in Contemporary

South Korea (2019).
- Yang, Myungji. From Miracle to Mirage: The Making and Unmaking of the
Korean Middle Class, 1960-2015. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2018.
Chapter order

Introduction
1) The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Urban Space
2) Speculative Urbanism and the Real Estate Boom in Korea
3) “My Home” Aspirations and Gaming in the Real Estate Market
4) The Social Gaze toward Pokpuin: Shrewd Entrepreneurs or Wicked
Speculators?
Conclusion
Gangnam > Gangnam-gu
> Gangnam station
Introduction
- The author argues for the importance and significance of the middle-class housewives’
investment strategies in real estate market: “self-enterprising middle-class housewives”
- what is middle class in South Korea? “The conventional story of social mobility in Korea
goes like this:
a son of a poor peasant family works hard, goes to a college in Seoul, gets a decent
white-collar job in the public sector or in a large conglomerate, and enjoys the
stable and rapidly increasing income and extensive benefits provided by his
employer, which allow him to experience upward mobility. In this story, merit
(derived from hard work and good education) is the key to moving up the social
ladder. Many scholars argue that, with explosive economic growth and an
expansive job market, Koreans benefited from almost lifetime job security and real
wage increases that allowed many families to enjoy improved living standards and
comfortable middle-class lifestyles (38).
à post Korean War, when scholars discuss South Korea in the 1970s-90s as rapid
economic development. The logic is…with this fast economic development, the
middle-class rose with the economy.

à the Author challenges 2 aspects of this idea: 1) the breadwinner model ignores
the contribution of women to household finances through informal economic
activities; 2) the conventional focus on wage income or salaries in the household
economy overlooks the importance of property values as a vehicle of increasing
family wealth. à in the case of SK, the “apartment prices” have drastically
increased.
- btw 1963 and 2007, land prices in Seoul have risen by 1,176 times.
à therefore, the real-estate wealth for the middle-class is extremely important
factor in South Korea btw 70s and 90s.
à real estate market, who were the big players? The author points to middle-class
housewives. à class and social mobility have been gendered in Korea.
How and Why?

1) The Intersection of Gender, Class, and Urban Space

- lack of formal employment opportunity for women, particularly for married
women à lower-class women/urban poor generally seek informal means of
earning money: domestic work, street vending, collecting garbage, piecework at
home, etc.
- spatial dimensions of class power: “lifestyles and the locations of residences
become class markers.” (42) à housewives knew the importance of
location/space for social status.
2) Speculative Urbanism and the Real Estate Boom in Korea
- p 45 Table 3.1

3) “My Home” Aspirations and Gaming in the Real Estate Market

- in the era of inflation and real estate booms, owning home became an
important task.
- It was the task of housewives to gather information, attend apartment
lotteries, and participate in real estate dealings (husbands are at offices).
- Apartment lottery system: deposit significant money up front before
the apartment is built, the target constituency of the apartment lottery
was mostly white-collar workers, teachers, civil servants, or
professionals who made stable income à middle-class.
- usually housewives in charge of managing the cycle of buying and
selling apartments (flipping).
4) The Social Gaze toward Pokpuin: Shrewd Entrepreneurs or Wicked
Speculators?
- derogatory term: Pokpuin: Mrs. Speculator // Madam Speculator for real estate.
- negative representation of housewives involved in real estate speculation
à why?
- Ppl who had not engaged in real estate speculation felt outraged about what they
regarded as an illegitimate means of acquiring wealth.
- contrast to the ideal images of frugal housewives who manage husbands’ salaries
wisely and save money à Not Wise Mother Good Wife.
- women’s desire (for wealth) threatens masculinity, “sweet home” image of family
life.
- against Confucian condemnations of materialism.
- popular images in news and movies: housewives with young and handsome real
estate agents à portrayed as deviant and abnormal.
- What does these negative images hide: the author argues, Chaebols
(conglomerates) speculate on lands price and gained wealth under the protection
of authoritarian governments and do not get any criticism. Blames all the real
estate skyrocketing prices to individual’s unethical behavior.
Conclusion

- Housewives actually contributed to the rise of middle-class through

real estate speculations, but they are unacknowledged in statistics: not
wage/salary income.
- Pokpuin: women’s actions as investors and entrepreneurs were
perceived as transgressive and met with harsh criticism.
- Symptom of women’s desires for financial gain and social mobility à
with limited employment opportunities for women, women found ways
to bring their families upward in social and financial status in rapidly
changing society.
Group Work