Indomitable Daughters-in-Law or Bulgurui Myeoneuri (2011) — the employment situation

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Continuing with this occasional series of articles offering more general thoughts on Indomitable Daughters-in-Law or Bulgurui Myeoneuri (2011), we come to the question of employment. South Korea went through a period when it ranked as the sweatshop of the world, churning out all the gizmos and must-haves the West desired for the equivalent of a few pennies. Now it’s consistently in the top-ranking positions for international measures of education, innovation, and general quality of life as measured in financial terms. There’s just one problem. With equal consistency, it comes out as being one of the worst places to live. South Koreans in general, and the young in particular, are desperately unhappy. There are more suicides than in any other developed country, the rate of self-inflicted death having tripled in the last fifteen years. The main reason for this unfortunate situation is the change in the employment environment. South Korea did not escape the effects of the international financial collapse in the late 1990s and, in an attempt to encourage inward investment, the Korean stock exchange rules were liberalised to allow foreign ownership of local companies. This produced a tectonic shift in the corporate landscape.

The traditional model is shown in Korean drama serials like Family’s Honor and Brilliant Legacy. Both the businesses are run by the founders. Ha Man Gi (Shin Goo) runs a major holiday resort and Jang Suk-Ja (Ban Hyo-Jung) has a central food processing business and a chain of restaurants. Both business have been built up with the unstinting help and loyalty of the staff who, for the most part, are treated like family and have jobs for life. In Family’s Honor, the resort comes under threat from modern-minded asset strippers who will break up the business, selling off the most profitable parts and throwing many out of work. In Brilliant Legacy, we have the succession problem. Grandma is old and her health is failing. There’s no-one within the family who seems competent and willing to take over management, so the business will probably run down and fail.

Shin Goo as Ha Man Gi in Family's Honor

Boys Over Flowers is also interested in the succession problem but from a different perspective. When the series begins, the massively successful Shin-hwa corporation is being run by the tyrannical mother with Joon-pyu (Lee Min Ho) showing no interest in the business. He’s just focused on spending the family’s money on living the high life. He sees only the monetary returns from the business. It has not occurred to him that the continuing flow of this money depends on people working for the business. Those who have seen the serial will know the mother intended to beat the South Korean stock exchange trap by marriage and merger. Shin-hwa has remained in family ownership so, if she can get Joon-pyu married to the heiress of a similar corporation, there will be enough synergy to see the new conglomerate prosper.

Ban Hyo-Jeong as Jang Suk-Ja in Brilliant Legacy

However, for the majority of South Korean businesses, the outcome of the stock exchange reforms was anything but benign. Once foreign money could come into the country, the banks switched to the personal credit market where they could make more money. Thus, the primary source of new capital was foreign investors who wanted to see immediate returns. This forced the majority of companies to change from long-term strategies for organic growth, to the short-termism that bedevils Western corporate performance. With labour laws changed to favour employers, the majority of employees were moved on to fixed-term contracts, or fired and rehired as independent contractors. No more iron rice bowls. Indeed, the majority of older workers were fired and dumped into long-term unemployment with no welfare state to act as a safety net.

Shin Ae Ra as Oh Young Shim in Indomitable Daughters-in-Law

So, when you watch the Queens Group in Indomitable Daughters-in-Law, the majority of the staff are shown as young. Not surprisingly, South Koreans responded to the threat of unemployment by elevating education to the highest priority. The young think the only way to protect themselves is to have a degree or higher qualification. Except, with fewer jobs, this is an increasingly small number of overqualified people chasing work opportunities. The backbiting shown among the women in the Queens Group is typical. Existing graduates fear the rise of the unqualified who get paid less. In reality, it doesn’t require a degree to answer the telephone or sell goods on a shopping channel, but those with degrees have to maintain the fiction that credentials are required and drive out anyone who threatens their positions. Oh Young Shim (Shin Ae Ra) is their worst nightmare because she’s naturally intelligent but never went to university. She could do all their jobs and they know it. That makes the reason for her employment all the more ironic. Had the Queens Group not run a traditional policy to help keep widows chaste, she would not have gained the opportunity. Had the company not run an open competition to find another shopping channel host, she would not have been recognised as talented. This is the danger of a meritocracy in a culture designed to limit real competition for jobs.

Korean drama must deal with local culture in a way acceptable to the majority of viewers. Commercial television depends on audience numbers to sell the advertising space. So it can hold up a mirror to local issues but not in a way that will upset the advertisers or reduce the entertainment level. The main difference in this serial so far is the role of Moon Shin Woo (Park Yoon Jae). In all the past Korean dramas I’ve mentioned, the young men wanting to marry the heroines have all been poor quality material. The point of the shows has been to show the women saving the men and demonstrating traditional values are better than modern materialism. But Moon Shin Woo has come equipped with greater empathy and already understands the need to relate more honestly to people on their merits. In that sense, this show is a little more daring.

Indomitable Daughters-in-Law or Bulgurui Myeoneuri (2011) — the status of widows

Personal Preference aka Personal Taste (Korean drama)

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This is yet another example of a wonderful set-up completely thrown away. Let’s start with a little background. After the success of Boys Over Flowers, the South Korean broadcast network went into a huddle. In Lee Min Ho, they had a star. What they now needed was a new program that would reinforce his reputation and carry everyone on to yet greater heights of profitability. So, as is always the case, they hunted around for suitable material. Someone lighted on the novel Personal Preference by Lee Sae In and, with screenwriter Park Hye Kyung at the helm, a 16-episode serial was born.

The first three episodes are a triumph, managing to capture two very different Western traditions with unexpected accuracy (not, of course, that they were attempting to do this — as a Korean drama, they were producing something Korean). The first of these is farce. Done well, this is a complete form of entertainment representing an irresistible combination of tragedy and comedy, swinging wildly from one situation to the next until we arrive at a delicious conclusion. So when we first meet Park Kae In, played by Son Ye Jin, she is a broad caricature of female insecurity. While potentially talented as a designer, she lives in the shadow of her distinguished father and never feels she can deliver anything to satisfy his (or anyone else’s) taste. For most of the time, she hides away in her father’s house, living on the money stashed away by the family. When out, she affects a very eccentric style of dress, rarely caring what impression she creates. As to the commercial world, she has little experience in trying to match her design aesthetics to market expectations and is not a success.

At the beginning of the serial, she has made an effort to produce furniture but, because of her complete inability to recognise danger, finds herself the victim of her business partner who raises money by a mortgage on her father’s home and then loses it all. Worse, she is in a relationship with a extravagantly smarmy architect and believes he is about to propose marriage. Unfortunately, he is actually trying to dump her. He has fallen for the woman who is a tenant in Park Kae In’s house but, whenever he tries to tell Park Kae In, he loses his nerve. This communication failure brings them all to the day of the real marriage ceremony and, of course, the innocent Park Kae In goes along to the impressive Registrar’s offices, and discovers the terrible truth. Distraught, she is hurried away from the ceremony and put in a quiet side room. Unfortunately, this is a central control room equipped with a public address system. So her discussion of betrayal is accidentally broadcast throughout the building with the wording sufficiently ambiguous that all the couples intending to marry believe her words apply to them. When the dust settles, no one gets married and Park Kei In is likely to lose her father’s house.

The second theme comes from English restoration comedy which was, by any standards, wonderfully bawdy as a reaction against the surrounding Puritanism. One of the best-loved stock characters was the predatory rake, out to bed as many women as possible. To avoid suspicion by husbands, some rakes pretended to be gay. Thus, if unlucky enough to be caught in a situation that would normally be considered compromising, all suspicion would naturally be diverted. The plays would then chart the slow disintegration of the deception and its consequences.

Lee Min Ho is cast as Jeon Jin Ho, a talented architect in competition with our smarmy two-timer for high-profile jobs. By a series of coincidences that continue the potentially farcical nature of the series, he is caught in a situation that might suggest he is gay. At first this is irrelevant. But, when he enters the race to win the next big contract to design an extension to a major museum, he discovers the need to copy the architectural style of Park Kei In’s father. To do so, he needs access to the house. Unknown to him, this is highly convenient because Park Kei In needs a replacement tenant to help pay off this unexpected mortgage. At first, she is completely against the idea of a man as tenant but, when told Jeon Jin Ho is gay, this removes all barriers. Not unnaturally, Jeon Jin Ho is delighted to gain access to the house but shocked to discover that he is thought gay. It gets worse when the drunken Park Kei In broadcasts her mistaken belief to all-comers at a local bar/restaurant where, by the inevitable coincidences on which farce depends, the man responsible for commissioning the museum contract happens to be dining.

Except everything dies after this wonderful start. What could have continued as a frothy, fast-moving farce develops into a wooden romantic drama with endless bickering between the different couples both principal and secondary. Although it does get slightly more interesting again when the missing father reappears, the overall pacing is leaden and the ending cannot come quickly enough. This is not, I hasten to say, the fault of Lee Min Ho or Son Ye Jin. They do their best. I think the network executives lost their nerve. Instead of building on the growing misunderstandings about Jeon Jin Ho’s sexuality, he is to do the “natural” thing for stars like Lee Min Ho, namely fall in love with Park Kei In. Perhaps the same spirit of Elizabethan Puritanism still inhibits Korea. It cannot be good for Lee Min Ho’s image to play the role of someone actually gay or even someone pretending to be gay. He must behave as straight throughout and get the girl. Only then will his fans be happy. So, after the first three episodes, this is only for you if you want a traditional Korean drama with a cute boy falling in love with slightly wacky girl and finding fulfillment both architectural and romantic.

Boys Over Flowers

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In the quite pleasing film, She’s Out of My League, where Kirk and Molly debate whether a 5 can rise more than two ranks towards a perfect 10, or in the reality TV show, Beauty and the Geek, we confront the eternal question of the mismatched couple. For better or worse, human society seems to be hard-wired with expectations as to what makes a perfect couple. Many across all cultures are disturbed by pairs that fail to conform to the prevailing orthodoxy. In this, there are many perceived provocations based on racial, age, class, intelligence, religious, wealth and aesthetic criteria. The most interesting time when prejudices are most tested is when the couple are young. What may seem a natural evolution of their emotions can represent a direct threat to the expectations of their parents whose reactions can either drive the couple apart or drive them away, e.g. as in films about race from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner onward.

One of the more interesting discussions of these issues began in the shojo manga series called Hana Yori Dango, becoming the top-selling manga in Japan. It has subsequently been through different incarnations as both live-action and anime films, an anime series and now a Korean TV adaptation called Boys Over Flowers. It deals with the increasingly complex relationships between a group of teens in a top school. The social pecking order is dominated by four boys from the wealthiest families in the country. Although different in personality and interests, they share the reality of privilege, knowing that nothing will be denied them both as boys and when they grow into adults and take their place as leaders of business, the arts and society in general. Calling themselves F4, they have never experienced anything less than complete deference. This serene progress towards social dominance is shattered when a girl from a lower middle class family is admitted into the school on a swimming scholarship. Jan-di neither knows nor cares anything for reputation and, when she is bullied by F4, she physically knocks the leader of F4, Joon-pyu, off his feet. As the ultimate spoiled rich kid, raised by a nanny and servants rather than his parents, this comes as a rude awakening to Joon-pyu. Inevitably, his outrage provokes an increasingly vicious campaign of harassment but, when Jan-di fails to surrender, he becomes more interested in her as a person.

One of the reasons for Jan-di’s survival is the covert support offered by another member of  F4. Ji-hoo is the grandson of the former President of Korea and his family have strong links to the arts and medicine. This produces the necessary triangle of affection in which Ji-hoo will be the steady friend hoping for more, while the erratic Joon-pyu proves the more sexually attractive foil. The first sequence in the twenty-five episode serial charts the change in Joon-pyu’s world view. It’s a delight, mixing some drama with some genuinely funny sequences as his naive attempts to switch from aggression to courtship receive short shrift from Jan-di. She sees little beyond the spoiled brat who covets what he cannot have. More importantly, she is interested in maximising the opportunities her attendance at the school offers. She now has the chance to go on to university and a relatively high-flying career. Something that would have been denied the daughter of a family whose income depends on operating a laundrette.

Potentially, this might have produced a stable stand-off but, as is always the way in TV dramas, Joon-pyu’s mother appears on the scene, With her husband in a coma, she has been running Shin-hwa, one of Korea’s largest corporations. Her primary objective is to marry off her son to the daughter of another major corporation, producing a merger of family ownerships through the marriage. His entanglement with Jan-di is a direct threat to this plan so she directly intervenes to break up the relationship. Declaring war on Jan-di, she first tries to buy her off and, when this fails, she buys up the city block in which the family’s laundrette is based and evicts the family. With no source of income, they leave their daughter behind and disappear into the countryside to find another way of making a living. What becomes immediately apparent is that Joon-pyu is incapable of standing up to his mother. His character proves unexpectedly weak and, within a short space of time, he finds himself engaged to the heiress. This drives Jan-di closer to Ji-hoon.

Had the story retained some cohesion around this basic plot, it would have been a greater success. The mother is wonderfully malevolent and represents the mountain Joon-pyu must climb to become a responsible adult. But it fell into a basic trap. Feeling more drama was required, there are a number of different subplots in which Jan-di is threatened and injured so badly she can no longer swim. Similarly, Joon-pyu is injured in an attempted murder attempt and, while in hospital suffering temporary amnesia, is almost seduced by an opportunist patient. Further and more worryingly, Jan-di’s constancy becomes steadily less credible as the serial unwinds. Although Joon-pyu is eventually able to redeem himself, his vacillations would have driven even a saint away.

Thus, this is definitely worth watching for the first half and then dip in and out of it to see how the various elements are worked out. Looking at the performances, Koo Hye Sun as Jan-di is wonderful, picking up prizes and awards for both her own role and for the chemistry with Lee Min Ho as Joon-pyu. It’s perhaps a surprising outcome given that Koo Hye Sun is more than three years older than Lee Min Ho yet played a girl younger than him on-screen. Almost without exception, all the supporting cast are outstanding, even though some roles are woefully underwritten. Lee Hye Young as the outraged and manipulative mother is consistently watchable, while Ahn Suk Hwan and Im Ye Jin as Jan-di’s parents are salt-of-the earth self-employed, naively ambitious but ultimately virtuous lower middle class.

You can download the main OST theme here.