[Book review] What it means to be a young woman working in Korea

all > National[Book review] What it means to be a young woman working in KoreaPosted on : 2026-07-26 10:53 KST Modified on : 2026-07-26 10:53 KSTFacebook 페이스북Twitter 트위터Add as preferred source on GooglePoverty, illness, agism, sexism and patriarchy — all systemic issues continue to plague women working in Korea today Still from the film “Next Sohee.” (courtesy Twin Plus Partners) The minimum wage for 2027 has been set at 10,700 won per hour, scuttling the hopes of labor unions that had called for the wage to be raised to 11,450 per hour.Women’s labor unions around Korea joined together on July 15 to publish a statement in response to the new minimum wage guidelines.

“The majority of low-wage workers are women,” they wrote. “We are overcome with deep rage and a strong sense of betrayal.” Out of all working women in Korea, it is those in their teens and 20s who are the most underprivileged.

As living costs soar and income polarization deepens, these young women have few options for improving their circumstances. Young women in the workforce go by many names: part-timer, student worker, newbie, intern, temp, you there, hey, little lady, bitch. And these young women are working in all sorts of places, from warehouses to bakeries, kindergartens, broadcasters, hairdressers, nail salons, call centers, video production studios, convenience stores, cafes, schools and more.

During Korea’s industrialization, there were the “factory girls” (yeogong). Today, women in a diverse array of fields have taken their place. Jeon Su-gyeong, a writer and activist with Solidarity for Workers’ Health, embarked on a search to understand the circumstances of Korea’s 21st-century women workers.

If traditional factory girls slaved away at their sewing machines while imbibing illegal stimulants known as “timing,” young female workers today work night shifts at their part-time jobs while gulping down high-caffeine energy drinks. Young women are criticized for using their unemployment benefits to buy designer handbags, and accused of being unemployment queens — having the time of their lives by abusing those benefits — but in many cases, actual women could hardly even dream of receiving such benefits. Members of the Korean Women Workers Association and the Korean Women’s Trade Union hold a press conference outside the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts on May 26, 2026, to call out systemic wage discrimination against women in irregular positions.

(Son Ji-min/Hankyoreh) Daughters from working-class families often bear primary responsibility for household chores and caregiving. At the same time, many take on whatever physically demanding work they can find — waiting tables at barbecue restaurants, washing dishes in restaurant kitchens, or working overnight shifts as temporary warehouse workers — all while continuing to care for multiple members of their families. A lot of the young women that Jeon met with worked several part-time jobs in order to save up for their education.

Since they were sleep-deprived while engaging mostly in physical labor, most of them had begun experiencing chronic pain from a young age. Three main factors caused their immiseration: poverty, illness and the patriarchy. Those hardships were aggravated by the hierarchical systems of age and sexism.

As they became increasingly alienated both physically and psychologically, they felt their bodies and spirits breaking down.The labor market was aggressive and hostile from the very start. Schools told them that girls “did not need to learn particular skills,” and instead only had to care about their appearance.

Financial institutions employed high school graduates to project an image of openness and equal opportunity, while teachers carried the misogynistic attitudes pervasive in corporate culture back into the classroom. Not one adult stepped up to console these young women, or to encourage them. “Aren’t you here because you’ve nowhere else to go?”

said someone to a young woman who went to work at a call center. Many young women work in small businesses with fewer than five employees and small independent shops, where they work as temporary workers, contract laborers, fixed-term workers or day laborers. Many of the young women that Jeon met were paid very low wages.

Very few were permanent employees. Some opened up about how they thought about ending it all from a bridge over the Han River after they ran out of money and were reduced to only drinking water. In the workplace, age indicated where they stood in the hierarchy, and the young women Jeon spoke to were at the very bottom.

They were poor, lacked any kind of influence, and had no connections, but had to act “like a mother” to the men in the workplace. The traditions of patriarchy, which deem women only useful inasmuch as they can do things for men, were prevalent in their places of work. They were the ones who were expected to unwrap their seniors’ lunches whenever it was time to eat and had to plough through th