Flowers of Fire

Wow, what in the heck is going on in South Korea!!

This ties together a bunch of different news tidbits I had been seeing over the last few years. The pinching emoji drama (I remember thinking, “people are upset about THAT?! what in the world”). The cratering birth rate and the suggested “birth strike”. The high-pressure corporate work culture.

This book tied it together and educated me a LOT about the recent wave of feminism that took over South Korea in the last 5-7 years (from 2015 to 2022ish), and the attendant reactionary “men's rights”/MAGA-esque response of the last couple years. Much of the book is really depressing, angering, and inspiring. Aka, classic feminist lit, lolsob. I was very very upset by a lot of what I read - the ubiquitous spycams, wtfff - but I was also kinda amazed by some of the feminist pushback - the birth strike being the big one, but also the amazingly interesting “single women communes” that cultivate an alternative to traditional families in otherwise-alienating urban circumstances. Really amazing stuff.