Introduction to Special Section: Portrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture

In recent years, approaches to the study of motherhood in Korea have diversified, in line with both an evolving gender equality movement in South Korea and an increasingly globalized field of gender studies. Anthropologists and gender studies scholars of South Korea have analyzed changes in motherhood ideology (Taek-rim Yoon, for example), along with changing expectations and norms for engagement with children's education (particularly Nancy Abelmann on "the education mother" and So Jin Park on "education management mothers"). The spread of South Korean culture abroad has also led to more analyses of representations of mothers in film, television, and literature, and scholars increasingly examine mothers' use of social media and online communities. This special section of Korean Studies grew out of an organized panel at the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) conference in La Rochelle, France, in 2021, also called "Portrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture." In the intervening years since the conference panel, new scholars joined the special section and others had to defer or depart. It is our hope that this special section will lead to continued academic discussion of South Korean motherhood, mothers, mothering, and parenting. We wish to thank Soo Hyun Jackelen, who was part of the initial conference panel, for her significant contributions to the planning of the project.

The contributors to this special section approach Korean studies from different disciplinary backgrounds, and it follows that each author also engages differently with South Korean motherhood, with the commonality that all are examining motherhood through "popular and practiced culture." An underlying motivation of the special section is to illuminate mothering and motherhood through the South Korean context and, in turn, to illuminate aspects of South Korean society and culture to which a focus on mothering and motherhood will bring new perspective. While the Korean Wave of popular culture has meant that there is a wealth of new scholarship on various themes, tropes, and social issues as seen through the lens of K-pop and Korean television, this special section emerged out of our collective commitment to making connections between popular culture and practiced culture to better understand historical and contemporary South Korean motherhood. Considered together, the articles in this special section examine the spaces between media or written texts and their consumers, furthering an understanding of South Korean motherhood beyond popular culture or practiced culture. In the space between audiovisual and written text, and between popular culture portrayals and lived mothering practice, might be found a kind of public culture of South Korean mothering and motherhood.

Recasting the portrayal of mothers in various kinds of texts as "public culture" rather than strictly popular or practiced culture accomplishes a few things. First, it acknowledges that public opinion and discourse in contemporary society is as shaped by popular texts—including television series, films, creative digital media, and religious scripture—as by traditional official public discourse such as news media. Second, it asserts that mothering is a matter for the public sphere. Decades of global feminist scholarship has already contended that the binary between the public sphere and the private sphere of the home is a false one, highlighting the invisible labor carried out (primarily) by mothers that indirectly supports wider economic systems. In South Korea, mothering has become a true case of the personal becoming political, as successive news headlines sound a general alarm about new all-time-low birthrates (announced not just yearly, but quarterly or monthly). Women increasingly opt out of motherhood for both social and economic reasons, triggering concerns over the sustainability of the South Korean nation itself. Portrayals of mothers, motherhood, and mothering in popular and practiced culture engage with these deep issues of social change and national identity, whether or not they directly address the birthrate crisis.

The special section begins with Ji-yoon An's exploration and contextualizing of Kore-eda Hirokazu's 2022 film Broker within South Korean film history. An explores the young, single, unwed mother character of the film—whose role is somehow less fleshed out than that of...