Korean Male Farmers’ Patriarchal Perception: A Case Study of Apo Diary (1969–2000)

The Preference for Sons: Internalization of Confucian Patriarchy and Oppression of Women

Gwon had three children. Whenever his wife was pregnant, he desperately wanted the child to be a son. Waiting for the first birth, he wrote, “I feel so anxious, wishing my wife would give birth to a precious son. (04/19/1973).” However, the first was a daughter: “I feel weak unexpectedly having heard that it is a daughter (04/20/1973).” When he realized that the second child was a daughter again, Gwon was even more frustrated: “I am such an unlucky man. I don’t even want to talk to my wife (08/24/1974).” Finally, the third was a son.⁷

Gwon, who expressed his feelings differently depending on the sex of his child when it was born, also showed a preference for his son throughout the process of raising the children. For example, Gwon only sent gifts to his son’s homeroom teachers (03/16/1983; 06/02/1983; 06/29/1983; 10/21/1983; 01/08/1984) and continued his son’s milk program even when his economic situation was not good (10/16/1985). Gwon also paid more attention to his son’s education than his daughters’: “It is okay if my daughters are behind in their studies. I only hope that my son will be successful in his academic achievement (12/09/1985).” He sent his son to an abacus class (12/01/1987) and paid for one year of home-study materials (02/21/1991) in an effort to increase his son’s motivation to study.

What made Gwon so desperate to have a son and wish for his success? Gwon’s diary gives a clue regarding his notion of gender: “Some people say not to discriminate between sons and daughters. However, their differences are so obvious, like heaven and earth (12/09/1985).” In the 1970s and 1980s, Korean society retained a strong preference for sons. Many people still believed that only sons could carry on their family lines. It was also expected that sons would be the ones to perform ancestral rites. Originating in Joseon Dynasty Confucianism, these ideas influenced and implicitly shaped Gwon’s life.

In Apo Diary, Gwon describes his wife, Yun-sim Lee (hereafter Lee) as if her body were only useful in its capacity to produce a son. Deciding not to have another child for the time being after the birth of their second daughter, Gwon bought birth control pills for Lee but soon regretted it: “I heard that birth control pills would reduce breast milk. I should not have bought these pills (02/21/1975).” Later, when finding out that his wife was pregnant for the third time, Gwon bought abortion pills for her (11/04/1975).⁸ As they did not work, however, he went to see an obstetrician with his wife. The doctor said that it was too late to remove the baby by medication or surgery (12/01/1976). Fortunately, the third turned out to be a son.

As Gwon’s son was slow in learning how to talk and how to go to the toilet unaided, Gwon wondered if he should try to have another child, expecting a smarter son (03/20/1980; 04/07/1981; 02/12/1982; 10/13/1982). However, he thought it would be too difficult for him to support multiple sons (05/24/1977; 12/11/1979), so he decided to concentrate on his only son (12/26/1982). When his wife conceived for the fourth time, Gwon had her take abortion pills (01/18/1984). When the pills did not work, Gwon had her get both an abortion and tubal ligation (02/07/1984). It was the end of Gwon’s long journey to have a son. Thus, a husband’s aspiration for a son led to the control and repression of his wife’s body at the most physical level.⁹

Interestingly, while the preference for sons had its roots in feudal patriarchy, Gwon’s control over Lee’s reproduction followed the capitalist rule of population control. When the couple had three children, the Korean government had implemented a birth control policy, considering the rapidly growing population an obstacle to economic growth. This family planning facilitated by the government was based on a belief in Malthusianism, arguing that the reduction of population would lead to economic efficiency. In terms of educational investment, Gwon decided to focus on his only son as he was not sure if he could fully support multiple sons (12/26/1982). The motivation for this decision was the expectation that the investment would lead to his family’s upward class mobility. Thus, Gwon’s high expectations of his son and control of Lee’s reproduction worked with a feudal patriarchy stemming from Joseon Confucianism and a capitalism that pursued economic efficiency and upward class mobility.

“I Must Succeed”: Gwon’s Longing for Capitalist Success and Overexploitation of His Wife’s Labor

In early January of 1969, when Gwon began writing his diary, he wrote his resolution: “The rich around the world say that they were under 30 when they gained a foothold in their business. I will do it by the age of 35 (01/03/1969).” Over the course of the year, Gwon wrote the word “success” 29 times which, for him, meant financial abundance. After his military service, he pinned his hopes on the poultry business, but it was not successful and he had to dispose of all the chickens within two years (11/13/1970). While running his own business, he also worked on highway construction sites. At first, he felt ashamed of the job but put up with it in the name of achieving success: “If you do not want to suffer when you are old, you should get a foundation when you are young (07/04/1969).” Even after marriage, Gwon continued to work on the construction sites, which was one of his primary sources of income.

Like other rural young people, Gwon had also left for a city, dreaming of success. He moved to Incheon with a friend’s introduction and started domestic iron business (02/27/1971). Unfortunately, the business did not last long, and Gwon soon returned home (03/09/1971). After that, Gwon continued to dream of urban life until half a year after he got married (11/25/1972).

In 1972, Gwon married Lee, who was then 29. Gwon met with six prospective brides when looking for a wife, and Lee was the last woman he met. He chose Lee out of the six women because she was from a rural area and had farming experience. Gwon believed, “A married couple should pave the way for life together (05/05/1972).” What he meant by paving the way for life was financial success. At first, Gwon was not happy that Lee was a Christian: “Christians go to church three days a week. I am concerned that her religious activities may get in the way of our work (05/05/1972).” As a result of his pressure, Lee finally stopped going to church. Gwon wanted his wife to spend as much time as possible with him working in the field.

The Gwon family farm relied primarily on his and his wife’s labor. Among the diverse crops that he planted, the primary sources of income were rice and fruit (peaches and plums). When Gwon went to work at a construction site, his wife typically worked alone. Gwon himself worked alone when she was absent to work for other jobs, went to market, to her children’s school, or visited her family. The diaries on these days were full of Gwon’s complaints, even though he admitted that his wife was a diligent worker and seemed to recognize how vital her labor was to him. Sometimes his neighbors worried that Gwon made his wife work too much (06/09/1989; 08/20/1990; 02/17/1993; 04/30/1993; 06/19/1993; 01/14/1994). One day in the diary, Gwon complained that neighbors seemed to believe that only his wife worked hard (09/27/1987).

A specific pattern of labor division was evident in Gwon’s description of the couple’s joint work. Mirroring the usual gendered labor division in the community, Gwon was usually responsible for rice farming, while his wife was responsible for vegetable farming. More specifically, Gwon would operate farm equipment (04/06/1990; 04/27/1990; 05/02/1990; 10/14/1995), choose crops to cultivate (03/11/1987; 11/26/1996), and join training programs for farmers (01/31/1981; 02/01/1983; 02/24/1983; 01/16/1984; 11/17/1992); Lee would bring vegetables to the market to sell (09/07/1987; 10/16/1987; 09/01/1991; 09/08/1993; 09/28/1993; 12/21/1993) and make rice cake, sesame oil, or polished rice (12/09/1997; 09/22/1999; 10/13/2000). When they worked together, Gwon would prune, plow ridges, and manure the garden (07/16/1992; 09/11/1993; 10/14/1995; 03/11/1996; 05/05/1996; 08/15/1996; 12/14/1996; 05/28/1997; 02/03/1998; 04/30/1998), while his wife would pick fruit, weed, remove harmful insects, and thin out crops (07/16/1992; 07/14/1993; 09/11/1993; 10/14/1995; 08/15/1996; 05/28/1997; 02/25/1999; 05/27/1999). They usually worked together when they needed to take immediate action like picking shoots from grapes or weeding (12/14/1996; 02/13/1997; 02/17/1997; 04/16/1999; 05/28/1999).

While there was a specific pattern of labor division in farming, the description in Gwon’s diary does not show a strict classification depending on gender. For example, Gwon taught Lee to operate a cultivator in the field, which was considered to be a male farmer’s job; Lee was the only woman in the neighborhood who could drive a cultivator (11/23/1983; 12/09/1983; 12/13/1983). Lee also had better skills than Gwon in using a sickle, so she often harvested hemp (06/25/1984; 08/26/1984; 07/17/1985; 07/14/1987; 09/05/1987; 09/14/1987; 09/16/1987; 09/11/1989). Furthermore, Lee was solely responsible for the harvesting of grapes as Gwon was color blind and thus could not pick ripe fruits (08/08/1994; 08/15/1996; 09/12/1996; 05/18/1997; 10/16/1997; 08/07/2000).

Gwon continued to expand his farm size using his own and leased land. The farming area was 4.2 hectares in 1992 (10/31/1992) but increased to 5.2 hectares in 1995 (05/25/1995). Sometimes Gwon recruited a day laborer, but it was primarily he and his wife who handled the work. As the farming scale and labor intensity increased, Gwon often expressed his worries regarding his wife’s health in his diary.

However, we cannot necessarily draw the conclusion that it was only Gwon who unilaterally exploited his wife’s labor. Smallholders at the time relied on family labor and family strategy to make agricultural profits. Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, it was common in rural areas to support children’s move to cities through investing in their education. Although a female spouse’s labor was crucial in maintaining family farming, a husband and a wife did not develop an equal partnership, but rather the wife’s contribution strengthened the husband’s patriarchal status.

Gwon tried to share farming work with Lee as much as he could, but he thought that housework and child rearing were entirely her responsibility. One day, Gwon returned home after work and found that dinner was not ready yet. When he complained about that, Lee argued she also had no time to set the table in time because of much work. Gwon was very upset with her reaction (06/14/1986). Gwon often described how much his wife struggled with caring for their eldest daughter, who cried a lot when she was a baby (08/07/1973; 10/17/1973; 11/11/1973) but he did not think he had to help his wife. When Gwon took care of his children while his wife had a meeting with her friends, he felt like he “wasted a day meaninglessly (02/16/1975).” He thought that it was natural for “women to spend their whole lives in nurturing their children (01/14/1976; 01/09/1980).”

Gwon’s wife contributed to the household economy by devoting herself entirely to farming and housework. However, it was her husband who completely controlled all the family finances, a common feature of Korean rural communities (Kim, 1994). Lee seemed to have received the money she needed from her husband whenever she went to the beauty salon, traveled with her friends, visited her family, or went to see a doctor. Lee also seemed to voluntarily agree to her husband’s financial control, regarding her family as a single economic unit. In addition, she was much thriftier than her husband, which made him happy. The thriftier Lee was, the more she felt that her family’s situation was improving, and the more she enjoyed her husband’s recognition. In this process, Lee naturally internalized the economic dependence on her husband.

After the industrialization of Korea, the urban middle class developed the dichotomous ideas of gender roles in a family, with a husband responsible for the family’s financial well-being and a wife dedicated to housework, but it was challenging to apply this idea to rural society. As in the case of Gwon’s wife, women in rural communities had to play a dual role as production workers and reproductive workers. However, these women did not have the economic status granted to the labor force and lived a life dependent on their husbands. As Ueno (1994) points out, in the compromise of patriarchy and capitalism, modern women have been forced to play the role of workers and housewives. Hartmann (1981) also indicates that women’s labor is controlled not only by capitalists but also by husbands or fathers, which reflects the interaction between patriarchy and capitalism. Gwon’s diary proves that the modernization of Korea’s capitalism and small-farming society is based entirely on patriarchy.

Sons as Breadwinners and Daughters as Housewives: Idealized Modern Capitalist Gender Roles Based on Patriarchal Familism

Gwon had a great zeal for education, noting in his diary that he was more passionate about his children’s education than other parents (04/22/1987). Devoting himself to the education of all three children (09/11/1987), he wished to overcome his regret (han in Korean) regarding his own lack of education through them (10/22/1988). One day when he came back home from a training program for farmers, he reiterated his resolution: “There is no future for rural communities and farmers. Life as a farmer should end in my generation (01/31/1986).”

Despite Gwon’s high expectations for his son, his performance at school was not impressive, and he entered a vocational high school. However, thanks to Gwon’s steadfast support, his son was ultimately able to gain admission to a two-year college (02/22/1995).

Gwon showed interest in his daughters’ education as well.¹⁰ He was deeply disappointed when his eldest daughter gave up applying for a top high school due to her low grades (12/07/1988; 12/27/1988; 12/31/1988). After that, she failed to gain admission to college two years in a row. Gwon described the day of the second failure as “the bitterest day (02/23/1993).” She was eventually able to enter a two-year college on her third attempt: “Today, my old worries and pain have been resolved (02/22/1994).”

Of his three children, it was his youngest daughter who showed the best performance at school. She was always one of the top students in elementary school (12/08/1986; 10/30/1987). However, her grades started to drop in junior high school, which made Gwon feel as if he had lost one of the greatest joys in his life (09/29/1988). One day, the daughter’s teacher told her that her grades were not good enough to apply for the top high school and she came back home disappointed. Gwon felt heartbroken to see her crying (11/04/1989). When she failed to gain admission to any of the four-year colleges, he wrote that he was beyond despair (02/04/1993). Finally, she entered a technical college (02/21/1993) and Gwon could not have been happier when she was awarded a scholarship (08/11/1993; 01/28/1994; 04/20/1994; 08/13/1994; 09/09/1994; 10/03/1994).

Using the educational capital, Gwon expected his son to become a more capable breadwinner but his daughters to become better housewives. His different expectations of the children suggest how Gwon perceived gender roles. He believed his son needed to graduate from college for a successful marriage and social life (08/21/1994; 10/30/1994). As Gwon’s son was not interested in study, however, he constantly worried that his son would end up in manual labor (03/26/1990; 08/02/1990; 10/21/1990; 07/18/1992; 07/23/1994): “The less you study, the more you will struggle with physical labor requiring a lot of sweat and bone-grinding pains (10/21/1990).” If his son only graduated high school and became a manual worker, he would have a harder life as the head of a family in the future; Gwon knew that from his own life experience.

Gwon bought his son an apartment and a car to help him find a suitable spouse (09/02/1997; 10/07/1999). He believed that his children’s generation would find their spouses through love rather than matchmakers (01/17/2000) but expected that if his son had a house and a car, he would be able to find a better-off spouse more easily, following a common belief in modern Korean capitalist society. Thus, Gwon defined his son’s gender role as the breadwinner of his future family and consistently projected his aspiration for success through intervention in his son’s life.

In contrast, Gwon assumed that his daughters’ roles would be as full-time housewives; his support for their college education was not to avoid manual labor: “I only hope that my daughters will get a college diploma to find a good spouse in the future (11/09/1991).” In the diary, Gwon often expressed the conviction that, for women, graduating from college is the best way to live a comfortable life by meeting a successful man (02/25/1992; 03/16/1992; 02/23/1993).

While working at a construction site in Gumi, Gwon’s diary clearly shows his idea of daughters’ gender roles

Working as a day laborer at the apartment complex at Gumi City Hall, I observed public officials’ wives and found how comfortable a life they had. The wives only washed their children’s clothes and rested from 10 in the morning. Later, they took their children to the playground […] or looked at us working on the porch. They did not do anything, working only three hours a day and enjoying a break for the rest of the day. It is completely understandable why young girls do not want to be married to a rural bachelor. If they get married in the countryside, they will have to work hard all day. Only byeongsin (idiots) will move to the countryside by marriage. I am afraid that, soon, the rural area will become a gathering place of byeongsin (12/06/1979).

Gwon wanted his daughters to have a comfortable life like the public officers’ wives, which he considered ideal for women. Gwon wished his son would graduate college to avoid manual labor, but it was not the case for his daughters because he did not conceive of his daughters as working women. Gwon’s two daughters got jobs after college, but this was only a temporary experience before marriage. Calling women married to rural men “idiots” seems to imply that Gwon never imagined his daughters in that situation.

Gwon encouraged his daughters to graduate from college in order to marry a successful man and live as full-time housewives. In the process of choosing a college or career, Gwon did not care about his daughters’ social activities or their self-actualization. When his younger daughter had a hard time because of some issues at her workplace, Gwon wrote, “If she had a boyfriend, I would have her quit the job and only focus on preparing for marriage (02/19/2000).” Indeed, Gwon made her have nine meetings with a matchmaker to find a spouse from late 1999 to 2000. One day, the daughter was concerned about a job interview as she thought her major was not a good fit for the job. Gwon, however, was pleased that the company looked like the right place for his daughter to find a future husband (10/29/1994).

Gwon’s interventions in his children’s education and careers demonstrates two characteristics: First, it reflected a belief in modern capitalist gender roles. Second, the capitalist family that Gwon was pursuing was based on the patriarchal family with direct linearity, which was different from the Western idea of a nuclear family.

Industrialization brought about the change from family-centered production to capitalist production, which fixed gender division by assigning women to housework to make them dependent on their wage-worker husbands. Women were also supposed to maintain the emotional stability of their family members (Cho, O. R., 1986). Gwon internalized these fixed gender roles while making every effort to get his children into the marriage market.

With modernization, children’s education and social success emerged as the crucial issues for urban middle-class families. This trend led to the development of a market reproduction family, which was connected to the reproduction of inequalities. Gwon’s case shows how a market reproduction family is represented as a family that produces academic capital in the case of Korea, a market reproduction family was represented as a family that produces academic capital (Lee, 2007). Gwon’s desire for success, projected through his children, reflected the capitalist family strategy for upward class mobility with successful education and marriage.

Further, the capitalist family that Gwon was pursuing was based on a patriarchal family with direct linearity, different from the Western idea of a nuclear family. Since the modernization of Korea, the practice of patrilocal residence (newlyweds reside with a groom’s parents) has decreased, while neolocal residence (newlyweds live independently) has increased. However, a groom’s parents usually prepare a new place for their son and daughter-in-law, which reflects the remaining tradition of patrilocal residence (Kim, 2005). When Gwon bought his son an apartment and a car, it reflected his intention to maintain the interdependent and patriarchal relationship with his son and his son’s future family. Gwon also expected that his son would take care of him and his wife in old age.¹¹

Thus, Gwon’s understanding of his children’s gender roles was based on the typical patriarchal gender perception in modern capitalism. However, it was not modeled on the contemporary Western nuclear family, but rather lay in the Korean idea of the patriarchal family.