Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time Podcast · Behind-the-scenes stories and research on growing up in Korean society.

🎧 Three Korean Books That Refuse the Supermom Myth

·39 min·2 clips

Hong Han-byeol argues that “every mother abandons her child” because separation is part of care.

The episode begins as both a book review and a thank-you letter. Jiwon says she has been writing about Korean warmth, meaning not only heated floors and hot soup but a wider cultural logic of care. Those essays brought in more comments than anything else she had published. Because the reactions came in across platforms, she now saves them by post and by theme so the conversation can be found again. That trail of reader response leads her into a three-book stack that quietly cuts through the myth of doing it all. The first book she centers is Kim Yoo Dam's The Caring Heart. She says it does not romanticize caregiving. It also does not punish caregivers for being tired, resentful, or lost. Instead, it looks straight at the people who keep things running. The episode lingers on the odd fact that successful care disappears once it works. When a child is fed, a house is running, a sick person is comfortable, and homework is done, the labor can look like nothing happened. Jiwon keeps returning to the same point in different words: someone made it look effortless. She notes that Words Without Borders published a translated story by Kim Yoo Dam in 2025, giving English readers a small entry point into her voice. After finishing The Caring Heart, she immediately searched for more of the author's work. That search brought her to an essay in Care and Work Vol. 2. The collection gathers women telling their own stories of raising children while continuing to work. Wanting the larger frame, she then found Volume 1. She slows down to explain the title, because care and work carry layered meanings in Korean. Care means caregiving and tending, while work can mean a job, but also making, craft, and artistic labor. She closes by thanking mothers, fathers, grandparents, teachers, caregivers, co-parents, neighbors, and friends who become family, then points ahead to a later episode on Korean postpartum care and what it reveals about what a society believes a mother's body deserves after giving life.

As heard by us

A quiet, humane defense of the work that makes care look effortless.

This episode reads like a quiet argument for care as work, not virtue theater. It starts with a book stack and moves into Korean warmth, the pushback it drew, and the idea that warmth is cultural practice as much as feeling. That framing gives the piece its shape.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a calm reset on care, work, and Korean warmth that feels grounded and human.

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