Symnopsis: Episode 14: Geu-rae once again remembers that he is the only intern among his peers. He asks Oh if he can become a permanent employee. Episode 15: Geu-rae continues to work diligently despite learning he can’t become a permanent employee. He goes to town with Baek-gi on an assignment from Oh.

In the workplace, it seems very important to remain calm, and focused on tasks at hand to be professional, but that can be difficult when you have circumstances that affect your personal life. In South Korea, unless you experience tragedy such as a death in the family, it is believed that you should not let your personal life affect your performance in the workplace. When you show weakness by letting your work slack, it can be seen as affecting the efficiency of work and affect your coworker’s performance as well.

In the drama, Misaeng, we can see the character Young-yi is working diligently, to overcome the discrimination she receives from her superiors in the workplace. She seems to be managing, until we see her struggle with the responsibility of filial piety. Her mother and father calls her, begging her for money lost due to gambling, and expect her to bail them out of their debt. Young-yi is a strong and self-made woman, but we can see her visibly shaken when angrily telling off her parents, refusing to allow them to keep using her when she thought she had finally recovered after suffering in the past, paying off her father’s pervious debts. We can see that when she thought she could live her life freely, that she is tied down and held back by her parents being a burden.

The responsibility of honouring one’s parents weighs heavy on many Korean’s hearts and minds. Filial Piety is a deep-rooted Confucian tradition that carries on in Korea that three quarters of Koreans still agree with and follow. All grown children in Korea are expected to have the responsibility and obligation for their aged parents’ well-being because of the reciprocal dependence of successive generations (Lee 2015). This is changing slowly as the traditional family structure is changing into nuclear households and the rising costs of housing and education, and less elderly are relying on their children to care for them long term.

Young-yi may think she can ignore her parents’ pleas of help for financial assistance, and attempts to keep working on her project and tasks assigned to her by her resource team, butgambling can affect entire families. We can see Young-yi have substantial stress and unable to focus on her professional life as this pressure of bailing out her parents from being kicked out of their home weighs heavily on her shoulders. Her sense of filial piety is so strong she struggles to do basic tasks in the office which gets her in trouble with Manager Ma and her coworkers.

Questions:

1. What do you think Ahn Young-yi should do with her parent’s pleas for another bail out? What would you do in her situation?
2. Do you think Filial Piety should continue in Korea? To what extent should Filial Piety apply to situations?

Photos are screenshots from the drama, no copyright infringement is intended.

Works Cited:

Lee, Da-Young. “77% of South Koreans See Need for ‘Filial Duty Contracts’.” Korean Herald, 2015. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20151230001116

Kim, Won-seok, dir. Misaeng. Number 3 Pictures, 2014. https://www.netflix.com/watch/80165296?tctx=0%2C0%2C2ccd12e1-70d7-46d9-8aae-7ac139b241fa-124328052%2C%2C.

Symnopsis: Geu-rae and Seok-yool stumble in their presentation speech but still impress in their engagement of ideas. A week later, Geu-rae waits for results.

The job market seems to be divided into 3 main categories: blue collar or physically labor intensive jobs, white collar or office jobs, and service jobs. In western nations, it seems that if you are making a good income, the job title does not seem to affect people’s self-esteem. However, in South Korea, there are strong societal perceptions on the occupation with people favoring white collar jobs (Kim et al. 2016, 227). A study found that there is an association between occupational classification and depression in Korea; where “blue collar and sales and service worker groups exhibit higher depression scores than their white collar counterparts, implying the importance of addressing these groups” (Kim et al. 2016, 227).White collar jobs seem to gain high status, as these jobs usually require degrees of higher education, and “in many economically advanced western societies, higher education has been transformed from an elite system to a mass system” (Kim and Choi 2015, 436-437). Even though decent jobs are not guaranteed with a higher education, due to the issue of educational inflation, this societal belief of status classification still exists (Kim and Choi 2015, 457).

In the drama, Misaeng, we can see the character, Seok-yool, struggle growing up under a blue collar supported family. Seok-yool’s father struggled working a low paying, labor intensive job, and as his coworkers threatened to strike, he could not get involved as big companies threaten to fire these men with families to support. Although he loved his father and is seen throughout the episode: preaching blue collar jobs by appreciating hard work and perseverance; there are flashbacks of him growing up, being mocked by his peers around him for having a father who doesn’t work in an office setting. This shows why some people in Korea feel ashamed for not being ‘accomplished’ in life by working service or blue collar jobs instead of working a white collar job. Seok-yool aims to make his father proud by following Korean society’s expectations of young men like himself, by rising in status by getting a white collar job while still appreciating and representing the blue collar workers.

the argument of which job is more important is found, when Geu-rae tries to sell his product to Seok-yool in the internship test: a slipper. Both ends of the industry are crucial to the other existing. Blue collar workers produce the good for the white collar workers to go sell, providing both a job. The drama sends a message to the audience; that office workers and blue collar workers are both needed to running Korea’s economy, and people must change their perceptions of occupational status stratification.

Questions:

How can we change Korea’s perceptions around white collar and blue collar jobs?

How can Korea get large companies to provide fair wages and enforce safety in labour intensive, factory jobs without the needs for strike and threats of job cuts?

Photos are screenshots from the drama, no copyright infringement is intended.

Works Cited:

Kim et al. “The impact of occupation according to income on depressive symptoms in South Korean individuals: Findings from the Korean Welfare Panel Study.”International Journal of Social Psychiatry 62, no. 3 (January 2016): 227-234.

Kim, Doo Hwan and Yool Choi. “The Irony of the Unchecked Growth of Higher Education in South Korea: Crystallization of Class Cleavages and Intensifying Status Competition.” Development and Society 44, no. 3 (2015): 435-463.

Kim, Won-seok, dir. Misaeng. Number 3 Pictures, 2014. https://www.netflix.com/watch/80165296?tctx=0%2C0%2C2ccd12e1-70d7-46d9-8aae-7ac139b241fa-124328052%2C%2C.