Who is allowed to chase their dreams?

My Alba Work Story: At a crossroads, doing alba to survive

By Park Gyeong-ran

Published: Junuary 30, 2017

Translated by Marilyn Hook

※ Editor’s note: Ilda is recording the real experiences of young women doing alba [part-time, temporary, or side] work. The “My Alba Work Story” series receives funding from the Korea Press Foundation’s Press Promotion Fund.

Pay earned while being called a “rude little bitch”

The fan I finally decided to buy for summer. 
ⒸPark Gyeong-ran

My family – my mother, who worked in a restaurant, my middle-school-aged sister, and my elementary-school-aged self – weren’t rich. My sister and I had to do all of the housework, because our mother worked twelve hours a day. Sometimes she would get drunk and tell us about our father’s infidelity and their divorce. I felt sorry taking the 500 won (about 0.45 USD) she gave me each day as pocket money. So I turned to alba to earn my own money. I started when I was 12 years old, posting flyers for a fried chicken restaurant in our neighborhood.

I can’t remember exactly how much I earned, but I do remember that I wasn’t paid what I should have been. I posted the flyers around certain apartment complexes and houses. When, after four hours of that, I returned to the restaurant with swollen feet, the middle-aged male owner said, “I looked around and found that you didn’t post them right. I can’t give you all your pay.” Then he paid me immediately, before I could argue, and I left as if I was being chased. I worked for a few more days before I got caught – and chewed out – by my mom, and had to quit my first alba job.

To avoid getting caught by my mom again, I went a little outside of my neighborhood for my next alba job, at a snack stand. I agreed to work for 1,500 won per hour. Because I could earn so much more money there than distributing flyers, I worked really hard. The owner actually had three snack stands in the area, and I would sometimes go help out at whichever was busiest.

Getting compliments like “You’re a really good worker” and “You’re good with your hands” from the owner made me a pushover who worked even harder. But my hours got longer as time went on, so I eventually quit. The owner then tried to use the facts that I hadn’t worked the full three months I was supposed to and that I didn’t have a parental consent form as pretexts to only pay me 1,000 won per hour for the time I had worked. Feeling this was unfair, I argued with them. They called me a “rude little bitch” and insulted my parents, but I got the 1,500 won per hour as promised. It seems like this is when I realized that you have to be paid as much as you earn.

“Lose some weight”, “Put some effort into your appearance”

When I was in high school, my sister and I had to live alone in motels or rent rooms by the month in flophouses because of a situation my mother had. A neighborhood church helped with my school expenses, but we still couldn’t afford the monthly rent, tuition, and textbook costs. I ended up quitting high school just under two years before graduation. It seems like there wasn’t any type of work I didn’t try, after that. A parking lot attendant at a department store, a cashier, a worker at an Internet café, karaoke room business, plastic surgery clinic, dental clinic, factory...

As a teenage girl who had dropped out of high school, the only kinds of work I could do were those that anyone could do. Even after entering my twenties, I wasn’t able to find a proper job for a long time, because neither my education nor my career history was impressive enough. When I went for an interview, I was always asked why I quit high school. If I told them the whole story, would they believe me? I found myself thinking, ‘No luck this time either, then’ when I was asked that question.

I was occasionally asked whether I had a boyfriend, or whether I smoked, in job interviews. Suspicious of the motives behind such personal questions, I asked why they asked. “Women who have a boyfriend tend to be bad workers.” And when I told an interview that I did smoke, their expression soured and they said, “You can’t smoke during working hours.” And they even added that I should think about quitting smoking, because “it’s unpleasant to see a woman smoking”. I failed many interviews because of situations like this, and now I don’t say that I smoke.

It doesn’t stop at smoking. Femininity has been demanded of me at many types of jobs. When I was a cashier, my female boss said to me, “I don’t hire chubby girls. They’re lazy, you know, and I feel frustrated just looking at them... If I had interviewed you, you wouldn’t have been hired. So lose some weight.”

At the plastic surgery clinic, I would sometimes get an eye inflammation from wearing my contact lenses too much, and would have to wear glasses to work. The head of the clinic would always say something about this. Like, “Women should put effort into their appearance. If a clinic employee looks like that, will people want to get surgery here?” And this was even as she herself was a fortysomething, unattractive woman. As a young female employee, I had to put in my contact lenses even if my eyes hurt, and do my makeup, for work. I felt that this was unfair, but I couldn’t say anything about. This was work that anybody could do, and there were many other people who would do it. I could be replaced at any time.

My pet dog, Boo-boo. It was given to me as a gift when I was suffering from depression while taking care of my mom after she had a brain hemorrhage. 
ⒸPark Gyeong-ran

Taking care of my mom, being advised to work in an adult establishment

When I was 19 years old, my mom collapsed from a brain hemorrhage. The enormous medical bills and the tug-of-war with the insurance company were not something I was ready to deal with at that age. And we didn’t have enough money for a caregiver. As I watched my friends graduate from high school and go to college or get jobs, I feared that I was being left behind. I felt that I was becoming a failure through no fault of my own. So while I was taking care of her, I prepared to take the high school equivalency exam. While, of course, working early-morning shifts at a convenience store, because the 1.3 million won my sister brought home each month wasn’t enough for Mom’s hospital bills. 

It was then that a friend of mine who worked at an adult establishment suggested I do the same. She said, “Even with all your struggles, you’re only making 700,000 a month? You can make enough to pay your mom’s hospital bills in just a week at my job. Why are you making things hard for yourself?” and I saw her point. I wavered. I spent one night with my eyes clenched shut, considering it.

While looking after my mom, I acquired a sad habit. Since I spent all day with no one to talk to, I would ask questions to my unconscious mom and answer them myself. This conversation was mostly made up of complaints about my worries or my depression. So I “discussed” this situation - my friend’s suggestion to work in the adult establishment - with my mom too.

But as I watched my unconscious mother lying there, I felt pathetic. I would be able to pay for her treatment with the money I earned, but I wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye. She had it the hardest, with her illness. And she had raised me and my sister alone, not discriminating between restaurant work and day work. Thinking this, I held my mother and cried, there in the hospital room.  So I did the best I could with the way things were. In the end, the bills piled up and my mom was ejected from the hospital.

When I tell this story to people I know, they all say, “You made the right choice,” or, “It’s good that you didn’t try that work.” But is work in which you pour alcohol and sell your smile and body always wrong? It can’t possibly be right? At that time, I really needed money, and in the end, my mother was kicked out of the hospital because I didn’t have enough. Did I really make the right choice? I’m still not sure. I sometimes wonder if it would be better if that kind of establishment was legalized. I wonder if people don’t tire themselves out keeping it secret, and get more corrupt from having to live in the shadows.

Right around that time, I passed the high school equivalency exam. I thought that once I did that, I’d be able to get an office job. But in an era in which a bachelor’s degree is considered a basic requirement, I found that the work I was considered qualified for was exactly the same as before. I hadn’t decided what kind of field I wanted to work in. I just wanted a job where I worked five days a week, on weekdays. I applied to a few places and had a few interviews. But without experience or a computer-related certificate, I couldn’t get hired. The work I had done so far was physical, or required only a friendly smile and no special skills, and I didn’t know the basic computer skills needed to work in an office. I wasn’t able to become an office worker.

Finding something I want to do for the first time in my life

I seemed to have become a loser. Worried that I would fall behind others, I had taken the high school equivalency exam. But now it seemed like the world was laughing at me for having foolishly believed that made me equal to others.  I felt that I needed to develop myself. But I didn’t have a dream. I just felt a vague pressure to get some kind of certification or qualification. Even though I had always had a job, I didn’t even have money to pay for any kind of school because I only ever received minimum wage.        

Luckily, I was then able to get government support to go to school, and got a full-time job through a friend. It was during this time, when I was working, was appreciated for it, and was starting to gain some security, that I found work that I wanted to do.

I first got my own business cards when helping Working School conduct a youth survey. 
ⒸPark Gyeong-ran

Two years ago, I helped “Working School”, a social cooperative, conduct a survey of “survival-type alba youth”. Survival-type alba youth are those who are doing alba, not “full-time” work, and yet working more than 40 hours a week and using the money they earn to support themselves. I was surprised to find out that I had started doing alba at the youngest age of anyone surveyed. Through the survey project, I was able to meet other youth like me and discuss our shared experiences and feelings.

The survey team wasn’t just a chance for peers to meet, but also invited labor lawyers to give lectures or training on labor issues. That’s how I first found out about the job of labor lawyer. Based on my labor experiences to that point and the problems that I had personally faced, I wanted to become a labor lawyer, a person who helped laborers like me.

So, last year, I quit my job and recklessly took on the challenge. I enrolled at Korea National Open University, got a computer skills certificate [from another school], etc. I was nervous and worried about this new beginning. I hadn’t done any studying since the high school equivalency exam, so I was worried about whether I could do what was required, and there was more to do than I expected, which flustered me. I was scared, but since I never expected it to be easy, I was able to stay calm.

But just when I was feeling proud of taking steps toward my dream, I ran into more difficulties. I was receiving a living stipend from the government to attend the computer certification school, and a condition of that stipend was that I wasn’t allowed to work. I think this is a big problem. The living stipend for attending schools like that is 2-300,000 won per month, assuming your attendance is satisfactory. But giving that amount of money and telling people like me not to work is like telling us not to bother with the program in the first place. It seems like a system in which only those who are already in a stable situation, receiving support from their parents, can receive government support.

When I finished my computer class and was trying to decide whether to study more or try to get a permanent job, I did day-by-day alba. But even that offered the four major types of insurance, and so the government official told me to quit that work if I wanted to keep attending the school. I decided that I’d better get a job, because I couldn’t live off of the stipend.

Last year I quit my job and started studying at Korea National Open University. 
ⒸPark Gyeong-ran

A house without gas... getting hit with the hammer of reality

Now I [attend a test-prep school to] prepare for the labor lawyer exam and do day-by-day alba at a distribution center. I usually move and arrange loads and pack boxes. My workdays are quite long. I get up and go at 5:30 a.m., and don’t get back home until around 8:30 p.m. I walk around 25,000 steps a day. Each workday is so hard that I’m sore for the next two days. I only work two-or-three times a week, and the loss of my fixed income has started to ravage my home life.

One day, the gas was shut off. While I was out all day, my unwell mother was stuck in our cold house, unable to even fry an egg. I had been unable to pay the gas bill. I told some friends about this problem and borrowed money from them, did alba and washed my sweaty body with cold water. Then I burst into tears. I felt regret. I thought, ‘What have I done? Is a dream an unattainable luxury for someone like me? Is it something that only people whose parents give them financial support can have? Should I have just kept earning money?’

I felt like I had been smacked in the back of the head with the hammer of reality that I had been ignoring. I felt ashamed and cried some more. My head and heart were filled with the impulse to give up.

When, at 26 years old, I had quit my job and made plans to find work I liked, people gave me a lot of advice and a lot of pushback. Their words were full of fear: “It’s too late to start that kind of thing now.” “Can someone in your situation quit her job?” I had loudly replied that they shouldn’t worry, since I was going to do alba anyway after quitting.

But in reality, even that has been hard. As I get older each year, it’s harder to get hired for alba. They prefer people younger than 26 - because it’s easier to push them around, I assume.

Even now, I’m worried and conflicted. I’m not sure whether I can really do it, whether I can really reach my goal. I’d been told that “it’s better to try and fail than to give up without trying” and I agreed, but now I’m not sure. How many people are ignoring reality to chase their dreams? I can’t tell if I’m the only weak one.

I used to comfort myself by telling myself that I was still growing up, but now I don’t know what will happen. I thought that things would get better when I became an adult, but my life is still unstable and precarious.

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=7922&section=sc2