Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Wuertz’s novel Everything Belongs to Us transports us to Seoul in 1978. The author talks about the process behind her historical research and how it shaped the narrative.

Everything Belongs to Us is the story of two childhood friends, Jisun and Namin, coming of age in Seoul, South Korea in 1978.  It is a time of rapid economic growth and its attendant troubles – severe inequality, class struggle and labor protests.  In this context, a university education is a rare privilege that can mean the difference between a cushy job versus toiling in an unsafe factory for little pay. 

This historical context is fertile ground to explore how class shapes the main characters’ motivations and opportunities.   Jisun grew up in a wealthy home, but her childhood was far from ideal.  She blames her controlling, cold-hearted father for the untimely death of her mother.  In defiance of him, she has dropped out of school to join the protest movements seeking labor reforms.  By comparison, Namin grew up poor.  Though she also has a conflicted relationship with her family, a desire to pull them all out of poverty has given her a fierce ambition to graduate from university at the top of her class.  Both women end up entangled with male suitors who seem unsure what they want from women or from life, perhaps mirroring the uncertainty in the broader culture (and belying the petty egoism of some insecure men).

Question 1 This book provided an amazing window into what it must have been like to live in Seoul in 1978.  Can you talk a little bit about the process behind your historical research and how it ended up shaping the narrative?

YGW: For research, I read books about South Korea written by journalists, sociologists, academics. I read memoirs by foreign missionaries for the character of Peter. I read as many accounts of labor activists as available. In order to get a sense of the social fabric of the time, I watched Korean films made in the 70s, listened to music, dug up photo archives. I wanted to see and feel the popular culture that Jisun, Namin and Sunam may have been exposed to at the time. My favorite part of the research was interviewing family members who were college students at that time to get at the information you don’t get in history books. The fashion of the time. Where they may have gone for dates, what they did on the weekends with friends, what they ate. How it felt to have their campus closed by the government. Why they chose to protest or why they abstained.

Question 2 This story portrays two female protagonists who are imperfect but each strong in their own way.  My sense is that contemporary gender politics in Korea are complicated - the #metoo movement has taken off but there is also a significant backlash, with slogans like “feminism is a mental illness” gaining popularity in some circles.  How are Namin and Jisun’s experiences as women in the 1970s relevant for contemporary society in South Korea and the US?

YGW: The labor movement in South Korea during the 1960s and 70s was largely led by women factory workers protesting against unjust and inhumane working conditions. The “economic miracle” that raised the country from poverty to wealth in just one or two generations was less of a miracle and more the result of millions of women and men who worked 12-14 hour days six or seven days a week. Workers and activists at the time were conscious of feminism and attempted to organize along those principles but were argued down by union leaders (men) who claimed that feminism would divide the cause for labor reform. The fight for women’s rights was sacrificed for the “larger” cause of labor reform and democracy. A bitter irony, given that women were at the frontlines of both causes. Contemporary South Korea has among the worst records of gender inequality among highly developed countries, which the novel “Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982,” by Cho Nam-Joo explores. Attitudes are changing there, as they are over much of the world, the US included (as we also have a long way to go), but the most difficult and complex aspects of activism is internalizing/supporting the intersectionality of identities. My hope for digging into Namin’s and Jisun’s struggles was to highlight the nuances of their identities, which informed their political attitudes as I think it does for all of us.

Question 3 I understand you are working on a new project – can you tell us a bit about that?

YGW: I’m currently working on a YA project about a multi-generational family with two teenage cousins born/raised on opposite sides of the world. Geopolitics x classic American HS pool party politics. Fun times.