안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and weekend reminder 🎉 I’m back from a break :D Today’s newsletter is about a dark history of abortion in South Korea, a long line from a teen romance K-Drama, and an easy gimbap recipe. Let’s start!
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😥 Dark History of Abortion in South Korea
I heard recent news about Roe v. Wade or abortion ban issue in the U.S. Roe v. Wade (1973) was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, according to Wikipedia. Recently, an initial draft majority opinion was leaked which indicates that the Supreme Court is preparing to overturn the historical decision meaning abortion can be banned in the country.
I was shocked to hear the news in 2022 even though I live in a country where abortion was punishable till 2020. It was only January 1st, 2021 when abortion is no longer punishable by law in South Korea. In the past, we had a law that punishes a woman who aborts the fetus with a maximum jail sentence of 1 year or maximum fine of about 1,700 USD. (We did have exceptions like rape or disease.) In 2019, the South Korean Supreme Court issued a 7-2 decision ruling that the abortion punishment law is unconstitutional. (But the court let the law live till 2020.) Though we still have no law that legalizes abortion yet, at least women are not punished for getting an abortion.
Was the Korean version of Roe v. Wade (2019) was a historical decision for Korean women’s liberty? It’s…. hard to tell. At the time of the ruling, it wasn’t much of a big news here. And there’s a reason or a very dark history of abortion in South Korea for this. The country has been and still is a patriarchy society so it was kind of natural for a baby boy to be preferred over a baby girl. Actually, the word, ‘preferred’ is an understatement. Daughter-in-laws were almost forced to have at least one boy. They were under a lot of social pressure so many of them illegally aborted baby girls who were ‘unworthy.’ Even though getting an abortion because of baby’s gender was illegal, it couldn’t stop them, a lot of maternity hospitals operated the procedure, and they rarely got punished for what they’ve done. The abortion punishment law was already useless in reality.
Abortion for having boys was especially popular during 80’s and 90’s in the country. According to a news article published in 1998, one maternity hospital had the newly-born baby’s gender ratio of 260 (boy): 100 (girl). Given the fact that the natural gender ratio is 105-107 (boy): 100 (girl), it’s a shocking number. There’s a saying that, “If you’re a girl who were born during 80’s or 90’s, you’re extremely lucky (to live).” Even though the Korean version of Roe v. Wade was a long-overdue but great decision for women’s liberty, it just reminded me of many girls who couldn’t even be born. After all, I’ve been living in a country where abortion is more about killing baby girls, rather than women’s liberty.
Now thing’s have changed and the social pressure of having a boy has gone. However, the aftermath is huge. Because of the unequal baby gender ratio in the past, Korean men are having a hard time finding their spouses. According to a statistics in 2020, there are 5 million single men aged between 20 to 39 while there are only 3.8 million single women of the same age group. And at the recent South Korean presidential election, the conservative candidate which majority of young men supported defeated the liberal candidate which majority of young women supported. Some say it was inevitable for the liberal candidate to lose, since young women are much less than young men in number.
🎤 Mic Drop- Take My Heart (2021)
Today’s line is from a teen romance K-Drama, Take My Heart (2021). It’s a rare drama that was made by EBS, a publicly funded educational-only program station. You can watch the series with Eng sub on YouTube (from ep 1 to ep 6). It covers how social media affects Korean teenagers’ school life and romantic relationships. So you can learn a ton of sentences about social media with this drama. I picked one of them in the first episode 👇
사진 올렸는데 좋아요 3개 띡 받는 것보다 30개 받으면 막 더 기분 좋지 않아?
The line means, “Don’t you feel great when you get 30 likes instead of just 3 likes for your pic?” What a long question! 😅 Because it’s ridiculously long, it’ll feel much more rewarding when you succeed to rap this line. Remember to use 개 (counter) for counting likes on social networks. So ‘three likes’ is 좋아요 세 개 and ‘thirty likes’ is 좋아요 삼십(서른)개.
Words in the line,
사진 올리다 V. To upload a picture
좋아요 받다 V. To get a like
띡 Slang. Just
기분 좋다 V. To feel great
👄 You can practice speaking the line on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other your favorite podcast platforms. Don’t forget to send me your speaking 👇 If you send it by 6pm Wednesday, May 18th ET, your voice will be on the next week’s podcast!
🌯 Ddangcho gimbap
🌸 Spring is the season of gimbap in South Korea. Families and couples go on a picnic with gimbap on sunny days. Gimbap is the food with rice, vegetables, and sausage are rolled in gim, dried seaweed. There are hundreds of kinds of them according to what you roll gim with. 땡초김밥 or Ddangcho gimbap is probably the easiest one to make among all the gimbaps which usually take a lot of time, preparations, and even (rolling) skills to make. 땡초 means ‘hot peppers’ in Korean so 땡초김밥 is a spicy gimbap with a lot of chopped hot peppers. Watch the cooking video above ☝ and try for your next picnic!
Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, ❤, share, or leave a comment. Don’t forget to send me your voice message and visit my virtual McDonald’s where you can practice how to order in Korean 🍔🍟🥤 This week’s challenge is to complain about slow service. It opens between 5:00 to 6:0 pm Sunday ET on Twitter (audio chat). See you next week :D 안녕!
안녕하세요 :) 지나가다가 우연히 글을 읽게 되었는데요, 한국 낙태 이슈를 너무 잘 정리하셨네요! 좋은 글 잘 읽었습니다! 😊