-In this series, I discuss LGBT youths’ experiences around employment and labor in an effort to find similarities and differences between their experiences and those of so-called ‘average’ youth. Though similar in that they are in their 20s and 30s and living in this society dubbed “Hell Chosun”, they cannot be simply encompassed by the category of “youth”. With employment as the keyword, this series offers a look into the lives of young people in Korea, sexual minorities and otherwise. The common factors between their different experiences, I believe, will tell us about youth labor in this current era. —Heejeong, writing laborer

 

In Search of a Stable Workplace

 

To be honest about how I felt at my first meeting with Kangpyo, I was jealous. ‘Wow, a job like this still exists,’ I thought. While my research thus far had led me to non-permanent, part-time, short-term, and dispatch forms of work, Kangpyo spoke of lifelong employment. Kangpyo is a civil servant.

 

“There’s no competition [in my workplace],” he said.

 

To Kangpyo, the life of the character Jang Geurae in the TV drama Misaeng[Misaeng is a 2014 TV drama about the working lives of young people at a large trading company. It is well known for its portrayal of cutthroat competition. Jang Geurae is the protagonist of the show.] is just a fictional story.

 

“First of all, there’s no need to worry about getting fired. Though there are promotions, they usually depend on how long you’ve worked. That’s really great for me, because I don’t have great ambitions.”

 

Kangpyo spent two years as a gosisaeng [student preparing for the civil service exam] to become a government employee. We talked briefly about the sense of deprivation he felt as he lugged a heavy backpack between his home and the private academy where he took classes. Nevertheless, Kangpyo is a successful person in the eyes of his peers. But there is another side to the relief he feels about this stable workplace where he will not get fired.

 

Kangpyo was one of the interviewees who worried about being fired or suffering disadvantages at work if his sexual orientation was disclosed. He described himself as someone who “laughs because [he] cannot cry”. “I read that there’s a study that shows it’s harder to make a sad expression. Life is already difficult. I smile because I can’t cry.” Kangpyo is a man who loves men.

 

To be sure, our society is not the same as it was 15 years ago, when celebrity Hong Seokcheon came out as a gay man and was fired from the TV programs in which he was appearing. In 2017, Gallup Korea surveyed Koreans’ opinions on the question “Is it reasonable for a coworker to be fired because they were revealed to be homosexual?” Eighty percent of the respondents replied that this was “not reasonable”. This marked a 17% increase in 7 years. But when have people in this country been fired reasonably? The ease with which one can be fired must have increased by more than 17% in the past 7 years as well.

 

Nevertheless, Kangpyo has secured permanent employment. His workplace has documented regulations about the discharge and transfer of personnel. This fact allowed Kangpyo to feel some relief. But he still fears that he might get outed. “I’m worried. If anyone so much as looks at my phone…” He worries that he would be disadvantaged during performance reviews. If not that, he would still have to endure the gaze of his coworkers. Kangpyo said he is not confident that he’d be able to. He referred to his sexual identity as his “weakness”.

 

“I can’t do certain things because I’m afraid that my weaknesses will be revealed. Competition is scary for me in that sense, too. That’s why I looked for a more stable job. Civil service is a lifelong job even if you don’t compete to outdo your coworkers.”

 

The ‘Trap’ of a Stable Workplace

 

However, this stable workplace also threatens Kangpyo precisely because of its security.

 

“My coworkers feel that we’ll be working together for the rest of our lives. ‘This is the person you’ll be working with from now on.’ So they have a strong sense of belonging. They want to take care of their colleagues and get to know them.”

 

Usually, when you begin work as a dispatch laborer in a factory, people don’t even look at you for a few days. You are considered to be someone who will leave soon. Someone who might work for a few days, then disappear. People only start to actually look at and strike up conversations with you after a week. Kangpyo’s workplace is the polar opposite. It is a lifelong workplace, something that is quite rare in this day and age. There is a strong sense that one’s colleague today will be one’s colleague at retirement. Group membership is emphasized, and people try to share their everyday lives with each other. Here lies the problem. In Korea, the most popular topics when discussing personal life are romantic relationships and marriage (or family).

 

Even though he is in his mid-twenties, Kangpyo is being pressured to get married. So he created a fictional girlfriend. He also sometimes breaks up with this girlfriend. What worries him is marriage, which he cannot fabricate. “Nearly all the other people in my team are married.” It is ‘ordinary’ to have a baby’s photo on one’s desktop.

 

Kangpyo has a need to protect himself from his coworkers’ attention. Thus, he needs to hide himself. But whenever he does so, he feels alienated from himself. Will he have to ‘wear a mask’ all his life? He tries to justify this situation of not being able to disclose his sexual orientation. “Even though they are my coworkers, there is no need for them to know about what I do in bed.” But his expression quickly becomes one of resignation.

 

The Sense of Deprivation that Comes from Walking a Lonely Path

 

Those who feel happy because they have a stable job can still suffer from feeling a lack relative to their coworkers. Rights that are a matter of course to his coworkers do not apply to Kangpyo. One of the forms of discrimination that can be easily shown through numbers is that related to benefits. Kangpyo is excluded from various benefits that center around the ‘normal family’ (such as family benefits and expenses for events related to one’s partner’s family). The pension is also a significant sum, since Kangpyo is a government employee. “When I die, I’ll have to ‘give’ all my remaining pension to the government. So patriotic, aren’t I?” This will be the case as long as Kangpyo does not have a partner recognized by the law. If Kangpyo works for 20 years, the pension amount that would normally be given to his surviving spouse and children will amount to about 100 million won [90,500 USD]. If same-sex marriage is not legalized, Kangpyo will be an inadvertent patriot.

 

However, a greater sense of deprivation stems from something other than the discrimination we see through numbers: the idea that one’s life is going a route different from what is ‘normal’. Yeongjin, who is a teacher, described the lives of his colleagues as “lives you can picture”. A life one feels one has seen before somewhere. Standardized like the homes stacked on top of each other in apartment complexes, but providing a sense of relief because they are similar. Yeongjin says that his life has deviated from this picture.

 

“I think I’m just going to go my own way. But I felt very lonely until I decided this.”

 

Even at a single glance, Yeongjin looks like a person who would have been a hardworking student. How conflicted must he have felt when he decided to take the path that is not societally accepted? Yeongjin has traveled far from the life where one ‘ordinarily’ gets married and has children. He says that most of his coworkers get married before they are 30.

 

“I heard that just 3 people out of 100 don’t get married. Then those 3 people become strange anomalies.”

 

▲ Campaign image from Pride at Work Canada, a nonprofit organization comprised of LGBT workers and those who advocate for their labor rights ©Pride at Work Canada

 

Non-permanent Dispatch Workers who are LGBT

 

On the other hand, there are LGBT workers who don’t even have to worry about such things. Though a teacher like Yeongjin, B tells a different story about marriage. At “I, Sexual Minority Laborer”, an event held by the Labor Rights Team of Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea in December 2011, he said: “Many of my coworkers aren’t married even though they’re in their 30s.” B is a teacher hired on a short-term basis. People around B say, “You should date,” but no one actually introduces him to a potential partner of the opposite sex. The reasons are obvious. As a short-term teacher, B cannot fit into the picture of life drawn by permanent jobholders.

 

That picture is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It looks like something we’ve seen somewhere before, but it cannot be called “our” life. It may be the lives of our parents—of middle class individuals, in an era economically better off. There are only a handful of people who can continue that type of life. Who could think about getting married in their 20s? It’s already difficult enough to find employment and pay back your school loans.

 

In that sense, B has as many differences as similarities with Kangpyo and Yeongjin, although their gender (male) and sexual orientation (homosexual) are the same. Perhaps, in terms of working conditions, B has more in common with Jimin. Jimin is a transgender man who is a non-permanent dispatch worker.

 

The flexibilization of labor has made non-permanent, contract, dispatch work the ‘average’ form of employment. Fields where dispatch employment is permitted continue to grow, and office jobs are no exception. A significant number of people in their 20s, like Jimin, become dispatch workers. In his first workplace, Jimin worked for a program supporting a government agency. But his employment itself had nothing to do with the government agency. He was just an employee from a dispatch company who assisted with administrative work. He has changed jobs three times since then, and no matter the type of work, he has been hired on a one-year contract with a salary below 20 million won. There were also other similarities between these jobs, such as the fact that he did not get overtime pay or the benefits given to permanent employees.

 

As a dispatched ‘female employee’, Jimin barely has any personal conversations with his coworkers. There aren’t many people he can even call a coworker. His position is the only one for which a dispatch worker was assigned, so he is somewhat isolated. Therefore, he does not feel as much pressure as Kangpyo to ‘disclose what he does in bed’.

 

The Alba [part-timer] Life of Sexual Minorities

 

At work, Jimin barely speaks other than to talk about work. Yeongjin is satisfied by being able to spend all day in a classroom. Kangpyo feels pressured by his coworkers’ care and invasiveness. Some describe such situations as a severing of relationships, while some liken it to being on an island, and others as loneliness in a crowd. In spaces where the language of heterosexuality or the gender binary dominates, these individuals have stopped speaking. This is in effect a consequence of discrimination.

 

In addition, there are alba workers, who labor in precarious conditions and a workplace where distancing oneself from the employer, coworkers, or customers is impossible. The bottom of the bottom. Stuck between customers who scream, “You don’t know how to respect your elders!” or “Call your manager!” and an employer who shamelessly says, “I’m hiring based on looks”, it is hard for alba workers to find a way to respond even when exposed to sexual harassment or violence.

 

“Some customers call me ‘uncle’, but I’m not a man.” (Nice, 20s, transgender woman, alba worker)

 

Working at a café, Nice was harassed by customers and an employer who had no concern for sexual identity. They would talk rough to her because they saw her as male, and bump their bodies into hers, saying that that kind of thing doesn’t matter between men. ‘Men should do the hard work, men should clean up the dirty stuff’. Even when lifting water bottles and throwing out the trash, Nice had to reflect on her sexual identity.

 

As we know, it is not easy to work as a woman either.

 

“The employer talks rough to male employees. He’ll say ‘I’ll kill you,’ as a joke. He’s more polite to women, but he’ll also touch them or try to give them shoulder massages.”

 

Alba workers cannot talk about the discrimination and discomfort they experience at the workplace. They cannot go to a private area at work like Yeongjin, or distance themselves like Jimin. They cannot try, like Kangpyo, to be understanding of the coworkers they will work with until retirement. The only escape route they have is quitting. Then, the employers will mutter, “Kids these days don’t have any perseverance.”

 

The Yoke of Making a Living through Alba Work

 

Unfortunately, alba work is not a life experience restricted to youth or students. It is a long-term job through which many people earn their living and is only disguised as part-time due to issues with paying minimum wage and severance. High barriers to entry for ‘ordinary workplaces’ that want ‘ordinary people’ as employees especially compel transgender workers to turn to part-time jobs to make ends meet.

 

Transgender people do not get hired if their appearance does not match their perceived sex. If their gender expression does not match the categorization on their government-issued ID, they are not even given the chance to interview. Corporations and the government act as though they are conceding when they say “come back after you’ve had your reassignment surgery”. Our society does not recognize people who have not completed(?) their sex reassignment through medical procedures as transgender. “Aren’t you still a man if you haven’t had the surgery?” many people say. It is the same when transgender people are looking for jobs. Therefore, sex reassignment surgery is sometimes perceived not as a choice but a necessary condition for living.

 

However, the cost of transitioning (getting reassignment surgery and hormone treatments) is high. For a trans woman, transition costs 15,150,000 won on average, and 20,570,000 won on average for trans men (“Korean Transgender Individuals’ Experiences of and Obstacles in Medical Transition”, Kim Seung-seob et al., March 2018). In addition to these costs, one must add living expenses during the recovery period, and costs for travel and lodging if the surgery takes place abroad.

 

All of this becomes the burden of the individual. Trans people in Korea cannot even seek assistance from health insurance, the way that those in other OECD countries can. From their early 20s, many trans people in Korea hop from one part-time job to another to save money for their surgery. Until they have saved up enough money, they cannot correct their documents, and without correct documents, trans people are excluded from stable employment that pays more than a minimal amount. It becomes a vicious cycle. Even if a transgender individual has received reassignment surgery, the costs of transition are entirely borne by the individual, becoming personal debt. This parallels the way that many young people take on school loans because they cannot even enter the job market if they are not college graduates. Transgender people start out with debts of about 10 to 20 million won, the way many college students graduate with debt because of school loans. Neither a degree nor sex reassignment is worth much once you are out in society. They are simply the cost of entry.

 

Other LGBT individuals cannot be free from part-time work, either, even if their gender expression and the sex on their official documents are the same. They might get disowned by their families for who they are (when they come out). Some run away from home, seek independence, or escape intrafamilial violence. Forced to take sole responsibility for their own livelihood, they enter the hamster wheel of alba jobs.

 

Employment Gaps within the LGBT Community

 

There is a huge gap between the life of a non-permanent, part-time worker in their 20s and that of a permanent worker in the same age range. The sense of distance is not simply created by the form of employment. Often the differences begin from the environments that they grew up in. Families are “a tool through which not only wealth but also cultural capital, social networks, health, outer appearance, and personality is passed down” (A Film to Watch Alone, Jeong Hee-jin, Gyoyangin, 2018).

 

To become a permanent employee in this day and age, one must have cultural/economic capital. Evidence for this abounds, from a study that shows that acceptance rates to Seoul National University are correlated with the price of the apartment the student lives in (Real Estate Class Society, Son Nak-gu, Humanitas, 2008) to research statistics that demonstrate that 34% of college graduates’ fathers also hold college degrees and 47% are permanent workers (“Economically Active Population Survey”, Youth Population Supplement, May 2017). The popular saying [summarizing necessary elements for a student’s success], ‘Grandfather’s wealth, mother’s ability to acquire information, and father’s disinterest’, does not only apply to education.

 

Perhaps this is why people now call permanent employment a new ‘status’ in neoliberal society. Hierarchy attempts to justify itself. If bloodlines—noble blood—were the justification for the aristocracy in the past, the justification for permanent worker status in the present is the fantasy of self-management and achievement in competition.

 

However, achievement is a league that is only open to a select few whose lives are devoid of anxiety-inducing factors. Disability, illness, the economic circumstances of one’s family—these are just a few of the countless things we can think of that operate as hurdles on this playing field. Sexual orientation is also included here. As a student, one is vulnerable to outing, bullying, and violence within the school or from teachers. “There’s so much energy spent in pretending not to be what you are.” It is difficult to focus on work or studies. Then when you enter society, you are excluded from interview opportunities. Even when one is hired, there is a higher rate of changing jobs. Considering that corporations now do not even hire applicants who apply for two years in a row, one can imagine what a change in jobs may entail.

 

LGBT individuals who have become permanent workers can be said to have ‘overcome’ such hurdles. But even willpower and effort are influenced by one’s ability to ‘pass’ (change one’s outer appearance and behavior to be perceived as a member of a certain social group). Whether one can disguise oneself as a so-called ‘normal’ body. Let’s make a simple comparison. Maneul is genderqueer (a person who has a gender identity beyond the male-or-female gender binary) and Yeongjin is a gay man. Maneul, a student majoring in education, is unsure about whether they can fulfill the teaching experience requirement for graduation and employment. Will a school accept a teacher-in-training who looks ‘neither like a woman nor a man’? On the other hand, Yeongjin, who did not disclose his sexual orientation, was able to become a teacher.

 

In fact, the 2014 report on “The South Korean LGBTI Community’s Social Needs” (by the Korean gay men’s human rights group Chingusai) shows that transgender individuals had lower levels of education and income as well as more precarious employment situations in comparison to other respondents (as referenced in “Trans Women’s Labor and Complex Gender Practice” by Kim Soo-yeong, hosted by SOGI Law and Policy Research Association, June 2017). Certain bodies are disadvantaged in accessing social achievements. Society tells us to use our individual abilities to achieve, but achievement is not a matter of willpower. Even within sexual minority populations, there is a hierarchy depending on the ‘normality’ of one’s body and social/material resources.

 

The Expansion of Precarity

 

Precarity has always accompanied the lives of LGBT people. How can one hope for stability in the future when one cannot find a stable job today? In addition, one may have to live in that tomorrow on one’s own. In our society, stability is rooted in family formation. For those who are excluded from the heterosexuality and (legal) marriage that comprise this ‘normal family’, retirement is something that they have to take responsibility for alone.

 

“I don’t have much to complain about right now. Even though I don’t make much. Maybe it’s because I don’t think I will live for very long. If I think about living on my own like this in old age, it makes me more anxious. Maybe it’s easier for me to not think about living for very long.” - Jiyeon, 20s, asexual (experiencing very low or no sexual attraction), currently working in manufacturing

 

But for better or worse, LGBT individuals are not the only ones facing such precarity in their lives. The horizons of precarity are expanding. Even conservative estimates by the government say that the wage gap between permanent and contract workers has doubled in the past 10 years. There are fewer ‘good jobs’, more contract work, and the social security net is lacking. The cost of raising one person from birth to marriage is incredibly high. It is not something that individuals can afford on their own.

 

The direct expression of this impossibility was ‘NPo’.[NPo is an acronym for giving up (pogi) on N number of what were previously considered social rites of passage or necessities. The current ‘youth’ generation in South Korea is often dubbed the NPo Generation, meaning it has given up on things such as a romantic relationship, marriage, childbirth, employment, home ownership, hope, hobbies, or interpersonal relationships.] (Though some women’s choice not to marry is more ‘resistance’ than ‘giving up’) marriage is just one of the things that this generation is giving up on. And yet, marriage is said to be so sacred that it cannot be ‘permitted’ for same-sex couples. In this neoliberal age, the non-permanent working class’s experience of precarity and giving up continues to expand globally, beyond differences of sexuality or gender identity.

 

Citizenship that One Must Buy

 

Even if one chooses not to marry or gives up on getting married, what is left is once again precarity. We were taught that the family is the basic unit that composes society. If we take out the romantic elements of the family, all that is left is the duty to carry out, within the family unit, all the caretaking work necessary to maintain a life. This includes care in old age, which is considered the realm of filial piety. And if one doesn’t have a family? Caretaking must be bought.

 

And if one cannot afford to buy care? Precarity in old age leads to a solitary death. Even if one gives up marriage because of the high costs, the costs of care await as another impossible burden. There is no way out.

 

Care is not the only issue. Everything is to be paid for by the individual—including employment. On top of school loans, one might incur debt for language study abroad, work at unpaid internships, and shoulder other costs to fit job specifications that are stricter than ever before—all on one’s own. We have come to call such qualifications we so painstakingly buy ‘skills’.

 

Skills are not the ultimate goal of these purchases. They are only the requirements for citizenship. What we have bought is citizenship. God-given rights are just ideals written in the laws. Today, one must prove one’s skillfulness (usefulness) in order to gain citizenship. Only then can we gain rights. (Laboring is also a right.)

 

Transgender people, as well as other sexual minorities, go through two or three more procedures than others in order to gain citizenship. Sex reassignment, the ability to pass. These add to the total cost. A transgender individual must pay over 10 million won in order to receive surgery. This allows them to access to job interviews and then to gain rights as laboring citizens.

 

Citizenship in the neoliberal age is gained through the payment of costs. The greatest achievement in capitalist society is buying power. The standard of exclusion from this society is also money. “Exile begins [from those] who do not have purchasing power” (Analyzing Korean Men, Eom Ki-ho et al., Gyoyangin, 2017). Lower class citizens who cannot buy job qualifications or their gender are driven to precarious work at the bottom of the ladder, deprived of their rights.

 

The Battle between Costs and the Ability to Pay Them

 

The costs people in their 20s and 30s must meet to gain citizenship or membership are too high. People sacrifice their youth. They flock to exams that are comparatively less expensive. (The pass rate for the 2017 Civil Service Exams was one in 46.5.) We all know about the unfairness of the world. Some say they would rather choose a numbers game where scores can be confirmed down to the decimals over a subjective entry interview process.

 

The decimals are becoming a symbol of ‘fairness’. Competition is so fierce that one must cling to the clarity of a few numbers after the decimal point for a sense of relief. Kangpyo said, “The pie has run out already.” Job searchers are fiercely competing for a pie with only a few pieces left (because someone has taken the others).

 

Competition is cutthroat. This is a matter of course in a society where all gains and achievements are up to the individual. In the end, the competition is about what kind of individual is better at buying. Even the time to be used for job searching is on the to-buy list of capitalism. (“Time is money,” goes the phrase so representative of the modern age.) Lack of purchasing power is quickly dubbed “incompetence”. The consequences of an inability to pay the cost has become the individual’s responsibility. We are all precarious, so we forget that there are elements that make some individuals especially vulnerable to precarity. Poverty and discrimination are issues affecting you and me.

 

A life that can only be continued when we can purchase everything. To think this is the ‘average,’ ‘ordinary’ life that one can ‘picture’, the life many social minorities so desperately want—this also makes me feel uneasy.

(※The names of some individuals in the article have been changed.) [Translated by Hoyoung Moon]

 

*original article: https://ildaro.com/8203 Published May 16, 2018

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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