~ Posted retroactively ~

22.01.20

The beginning of my interview series was…a bit lackluster, to put it gently. I had emailed quite a few individuals, based off both personal reference and recommendations from The Hive, but to my dismay no one replied…until someone did! One out of seven may not be the greatest of response rates, but a response is a response nonetheless. A series of emails later, and I had scheduled my first meeting in this series with Ms. Dana Suhyeon Cho

To be honest, I was rather nervous about this interview at first and put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure it went smoothly. Thankfully, Ms. Chung was such a kindhearted and down-to-earth individual that despite my awkwardness at the start, our conversation soon settled into a casual and comfortable rhythm. 

We talked extensively about women in the Korean workplace, and how times have changed. I think something that I came into this interview only vaguely understanding was how hard it is to be a woman in Korea sometimes. Living in the Wellesley bubble for the past two years and being in such a supportive and encouraging environment can sometimes distract us from the reality that not everyone is as lucky to be living in the same supportive environment as I am. Speaking with Ms. Cho really reminded me of that; as we discussed the evolution of women’s rights and general feminism in Korea over the decadees, I became increasingly grateful for the opportunities I have at Wellesley and at home in Maryland. 

Ms. Cho’s experiences as a woman working in a STEM field are particularly indicative of the environment here, I believe. Graduating from Wellesley in 2013 with an Economics major and Mathematics minor, Ms. Cho worked for eight years with Samsung SDS, a software oriented subsidiary of the Samsung Group. Having been hired as part of a special cohort of international (that is, non-Korean citizens) students, Ms. Cho maintained her position in Samsung SDS and gradually climbed the ranks before eventually departing from the company to work with her MIT friend running a startup company. 

Despite Samsung SDS being regarded as the #1 place to work for women in Korea–unlike many other companies I’ve seen, Samsung SDS offered childcare facilities in the building, extensive paid leave for mothers, and many more benefits–Ms. Cho certainly had a few observations on the matter. She recalled that in her time there only five of 90-some executives were women, and a vast majority of expat employees (apparently a rather prestigious position) were men. Women were actively skipped over in selection because of things like family, expected pregnancies, so on and so forth. In essence, the motherhood tax is still well and alive in Korean corporate work culture, to no one’s surprise. In Ms. Cho’s opinion, the operating motive for selection and promotion of employees is the question “how little of a problem will you be”–under that framework, women and the expectation of their future maternity leave(s) would pose a huge problem to employers. 

Of course, this isn’t to say that women lead horrid lifestyles in Korea, or that the U.S. is a beautiful and perfect society while Korea is some “backwards” (oh how I hate this word) country–nothing like that. Every country has its pros and cons, no exceptions there. However, I have become much more cognizant of the fact that it would be a struggle for me to be happy here, being raised as I was. The corporate work culture in general is certainly worth examining, but the corporate work culture for women in particular is quite different than anything I’m used to. It is certainly something to keep in mind as I consider potential careers abroad. 

I also happened to have struck gold with this first interview–as it so happens, Ms. Cho is actually the secretary of the Wellesley Seoul alumnae club, and has very generously offered to help put me in contact with other alumnae in the area! I’m excited to see who I get to speak with over the course of this project~

I’ll sign off here, for now. 다음에 볼게요~!