Summers behind Indifference and Jealousy

Bread Factory, Neat Handwriting, and Dolligo. These are the words that remind me of my grandma on my mother's side. She took care of her husband, who died of pneumoconiosis after working in mining, throughout her youth, while working at the bread factory to support her family.  

She always tells me how her handwriting is neat and beautiful, even though she only graduated from elementary school. Not only handwriting, every time my family visit her place, she brags about how popular she is in Dolligo. It is a sort of dance club for the elderly. Her kids, my mom and two of her brothers always showed reluctance about her going to Dolligo, but she emphasised it is an 'exercise'. Dol-li-da from Dolligo in Korean means to spin.

I used to be proud of my grandma. Because she seemed like a strong young woman. She looks way younger than her age. When my grandma picked me up after school instead of my mom, every teacher thought she was my mom. When a senior girl in school bullied me and my friend in an after-school class, she came, and suddenly that girl quit the class. With the Chungcheong-do dialect, she is the funniest person I've ever met in my life. She is fashionable, an amazing chef, and someone who loves to watch handsome guys on TV shows. I love the story of when my mom introduced my father to her for the first time, my grandma instantly said 'Passed'. P.S. He looked great when he was young.

But in my recent memory, I have never really liked my grandma, and I haven't respected her. After my grandfather died, things seemed to change a lot.

It was freedom for her. I was 9 years old. My mother and her brothers had partners and kids, their own families. She started to go to the beauty products community, Dolligo, and seeing some guys. She interacted a lot with people outside the hospital and the factory. I don't know what happened in the meantime, but after I graduated high school, where I had to stay in the dormitory for three years, she became darker and more often angry.

Several things happened. Unlike my old memory of her, a few sentences I remember from her are: "I used to be really pretty like you", "If I had gone to the school, I would have been a smart student", and more recently, she said, "Why do you study so long? Don't you feel pity for your parents?"

Ever since I came of age, I have never felt that she was encouraging me or supporting me. She seemed upset whenever I went abroad. Often, she would grab my hands and say, "Your fingers are really nice and pretty, mine are too wrinkled now.". These days, when she says that, it feels like she is jealous of me. I told this to my mom, and she said, "No way, she is always supporting and being proud of you."

I can't help being unsettled when I read a Korean director's interview; she won first prize in the student film category at the Festival De Cannes this year. 

There was a time in my childhood when I lived with my maternal grandmother. Back then, she felt like a rather unfamiliar presence to me. I often sensed that she looked at me not with love but with indifference or even jealousy. 

With that strange feeling in mind, I once received a college assignment to interview an elderly person, and for the first time, I sat down for a real conversation with my grandmother. When I asked, "How have you been?', she replied, "I have a boyfriend these days, but I haven't heard from him, so I'm upset and can't sleep at night."

That simple question opened the door to a five or six-hour conversation, during which she shared her love stories with me. 

It was then that I realised, "I had never seen my grandmother as a woman before."  - Heo Ga-young in Marie Claire Korea Interview

Director Heo also mentioned that, even though love and sexual desire are not privileges but human instincts, society doesn't properly acknowledge elderly women's desires. 

When my grandmother's generation was young, it was the time the Korean government pursued active development after the Korean War ended in a ceasefire. From the 1960s, industrialisation and urbanisation were in full swing, led by the state. High dedication from the working class was required, so the state encouraged them to work hard, calling them "Saneop Jeonsa (Industrial Soldiers)", and promoted them as diligent workers to foreign companies and investors. Women, without exception, were gradually incorporated into the labour force. This is how 'Yeogong Sedae (The generation of female factory workers)' appeared in Korea, especially in export-oriented manufacturing. 

Calling from the state, women's own desire to start working in the factory matched this demand. One example from fieldwork, according to Seung-kyung Kim, professor at Indiana University, showed that the majority of women at that time decided to work either for educational opportunities without family burden or for financial support for their families. This means that even though their motivation were diverse, they tended to come from patriarchal cultural norms. This socio-cultural environment reduced the young female workers to passive and obedient factory workers. It seems like a good selling point for manufacturing companies. 

Between class struggles and pressure for traditional roles, the desire to love and to be loved, and the will to cultivate and treat oneself with dignity were still there. Young female workers, usually in their late 10s to early 20s, became interested in fashion and cosmetics once they started to work. They also sought to have a boyfriend or marry a decent man. However, in the era of patriarchy and capitalism, women's hunger and thirst were often portrayed as audacious and overstepping desires in both the real world and the media. Only the spirit of sacrifice was praised for women. 

The universality of the nature of the group of female workers was formed along this path. It has often been oversimplified or described in an extreme way, while the specificity of each woman's voice and experience was often completely neglected. It is embedded in how society views women, even to this day. It is truly a sorrowful and tragic matter.

Amid the hardships of life, there remains in elderly women an unextinguished desire as a woman and a passion for living, even in elderly women. Only if you listened carefully could it become clear. It is beautiful, and more light should be shed on it.

As the director said about her grandma, I felt really strange when I saw and talked with my grandma before. But now, thanks to what she said, I also realised I have never really seen my grandma as a woman, as an individual who has her own desires. Cooking for her and listening to her will be the first thing I do, with all my heart, when I go back to Korea. 

Mom, Grandma, Me

- First picture from the article, Teenage Factory Girls Carrying on Jeon Tae-il's Dream, Hankookilbo Newspaper,

- Book from Seung-kyung Kim, 1997, Class Struggle or Family Struggle? : The Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea