Romance is a bonus book, 13
To put it bluntly, Dan Yi is totally fucked. And while it would be nice to think that her plight in this show was purely manufactured for the sake of drama, I’m pretty sure it has roots in real life. There’s a reason Korea always scores so low on gender equity--women who live there are faced with an impossible decision between traditional lifestyles and the working world.
As a young woman, Dan Yi got married and left her job to fill the traditional role of household manager and stay at home mom. We don’t really know why she chose to do this, but we do know that it would have been hard--or maybe even impossible--for her to keep working after getting pregnant. Working mothers aren’t the norm in Korea, and the ones that do exist suffer both professionally and personally.
After years as a stay at home mom, changes in Dan Yi’s personal circumstances make it essential for her to find a job. And instead of being rewarded for putting her working life on hold to raise a child, she’s punished every step of the way. No company will hire her, no matter what she’s willing to do: Potential employers won’t give her jobs that call for experience, because she’s been out of the workforce for so long that they assume she’s no longer at the cutting edge of thought and technology. Entry-level jobs are also closed to her, because Korea’s age-based hierarchy would make her younger colleagues uncomfortable when giving her menial tasks.
And even now that Dan Yi is happily and successfully back in the workplace, she isn’t really safe--her contract could be terminated at any time. To add insult to injury, it’s actually another woman who calls for her to be fired when her original resume is found.
It’s a good thing Dan Yi is a Kdrama heroine, which means she has a handsome, supportive man just waiting to house, feed, and clothe her. But in the real world, there are no guarantees a woman would have someone like that in her life. Instead, she’d probably end up having to return to her family home (if such a thing even existed), or immediately find a new man to marry.
This is a sweet, funny, drama, but at its core is a serious problem in Korean society. Women have two choices: become a wife and mother and live at the mercy of their breadwinning husband, or become a career woman and sacrifice having a family.