Are you enjoying your long-awaited golden holiday? Rest is sweet, but many people already sigh when they think about going to work after the holidays. Accumulated work, personal relationships, business partners… . Some people may even go to work during the holidays. I am also scheduled to work on duty for one day during the holidays.
I have been in charge of the labor field since last year. When I cover the labor field, I sometimes think, ‘What is it about work that makes it so difficult for us?’ When talking to someone about topics such as ‘work’ or ‘going to work’, I have much more experience hearing sighs than happy smiles. If you think about it, we just signed a ‘contract’ to provide our labor and receive wages, but why do we always live a difficult life as if our body and mind are somehow weighed down? I was taught that ‘labor is sacred,’ but why is my reality like this?
It may be difficult to find a simple answer, but I think we can share some things to think about. As we celebrate the holidays, I would like to introduce some new labor-related books that I have recently read with great interest. These are books that soothe the concerns of everyone who works, point out why our labor is like this and how it is changing, and make us think about ‘us’ beyond ‘me’. We selected new books released in the second half of this year.
#1 ‘Veteran’s body’
Hee-jeong (writing) and Choi Hyeong-rak (photo) | Hankyoreh Publishing
There are people whose work becomes attached to their body and whose body resembles their work. These are ‘veterans’ who have consistently worked at one job throughout their lives. For them, work is something inseparable from themselves, pride, self-esteem, sometimes pain, and ultimately, it becomes synonymous with ‘life.’ ‘Veteran’s Body’ is a collection of interviews with 12 craftsmen who have experienced the finer points of their lives in the workplace.
Some people nod their heads when asked, ‘Do you think you are a veteran?’ while others throw up their hands. However, their eyes light up like children when they talk about their work. Chef Ha Young-sook, who enjoys just thinking about what kind of dish she will cook when looking at seasonal ingredients; fisherman Park Myeong-sun and Yeom Sun-ae, a couple who are always sure to find the location of invisible rocks in the sea by ‘feeling’ the location of rocks in the sea and lowering their nets; and countless newspapers and books throughout their 90s. I even took pictures of Kwon Yong-guk, a typesetter born in 1934. The pride of the craftsmen, who are calm but firmer than anyone else, can be read as the attitude of a seeker of enlightenment.
Veterans do not always have the ‘joy of work’. After her company went bankrupt due to the IMF crisis , Cho Yoon-ju of Seshinsa took on “women’s jobs” such as cleaning and nursing, and illustrator Jeon Po-rong, who used to draw while skipping meals, stopped drawing what society calls a “pretty body” after the “Gangnam Station murder case.” I couldn’t do it, so I put down the pastel. Kim Young-tak, a rope baller who climbs the outer wall of a high-rise building and travels through the sky, worries about ‘stepping on someone else’s screen by mistake and biting them.’
But veterans don’t fall down either. I rise again using my pride as a craftsman and solidarity with others as two legs. Kim Se-mo, a 32-year-old craftsman who lived with the mindset that “the only thing I can trust is my skills,” now says, “A veteran is someone who works with the mindset that we work, not me.” Actress Hwang Eun-hoo, who suffered from the same problem as illustrator Jeon Po-rong, is now honing her body into a ‘good ground for showing vitality in any role.’ Heejeong’s sentences, which respect other people’s labor without objectifying or romanticizing it, are warm, and Choi Hyeong-rak’s sensuous photographs are pleasing to the eye.
Novelists have come together to address in earnest the ‘problem of making a living’ in our society. It was a proposal by author Jang Kang-myeong, who is familiar to the public through his novel ‘Bleach’ and several broadcast appearances. 11 writers who sympathized with the problem that “Korean novels that realistically depict the problems of ordinary people making a living are rare” formed a group under the name of ‘Salary Realism’. We also set up these rules. “I have a critical awareness of the problems of making a living in Korean society.” “We deal with the contemporary scene” “We write realistically with great insight”… .
Novelists have meticulously captured with keen eyes the labor of스포츠토토 every corner of our society. Female food factory workers (Eui-kyung Kim’s ‘Instant Glue’), construction site managers who commit design misconduct to make a living (Seong-soon Lim’s ‘Laying the Foundation’), and employees of travel agencies forced into restructuring due to COVID-19 (Kang-myeong Jang’s ‘Poison in the Soy Sauce’) )until. The 11 short stories are very realistic stories of ‘me’ and ‘you’ today.
We reacted sensitively to changing times. The labor market, which is increasingly fragmented and melting under the name of ‘platform’, is clearly reflected. The Salary Realism group says, “Non-regular work, self-employment, platform work, freelance work, as well as housework and job-search learning are the labor of our time.” A young man who does delivery work and loading and unloading (Joo Won-gyu’s ‘Caste Age’), a young female workbook teacher who hurries from apartment to apartment, and another woman who looks at him and remembers her past experience of doing the same job (Seo Yu-mi’s ‘Night Bench’). The story shows where our labor is headed today.
Through stories, we connect with other people’s situations. The power of stories is to think of ‘you’ and ‘us’ beyond ‘me’. Today’s increasingly fragmented society often makes us forget the faces of those in ‘different positions’. If we go through the 11 short stories, wouldn’t we be able to recollect the feelings we had forgotten?
