Yun Gil Ho and the term "Undocumented"

A small note on the term "Undocumented"

I feel that to really appreciate the standpoint and complexity of the  characters Yun Gil Ho, Min Seo Jin, Kim Jae Hui, it helps to understand the complexity of this term Undocumented.

In many regions, the term Undocumented, usually suggests a migrant who is living in a region without a visa, aka an illegal immigrant.  This is not necessarily so in South Korea. Whether a child is born of a single mother, poverty stricken parents, immigrants, even North Korean defectors, registration of births is not straightforward.

South Korea has somewhat socially complex, family registration laws.  It is only since 2008, that females have been legally able to register their child's birth. https://www.international-divorce.com/family-registration-law-korea.htm. I.e. Before 2008, if you were born to a single mother, and your father did not acknowledge your birth, your birth could not legally be registered - therefore you're Undocumented.

And it is only THIS year, 2024, that the SK government has been forced to legislate to close a loophole, that allowed thousands of children to remain unregistered (otherwise known as "Ghost Babies") https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=378919. Parents must register births and could, until this year 2024, choose not to. Hospitals etc., played no part in the registration of births.  

The stigma surrounding children of single mothers, orphans, adoptees, abandoned children, continues to be significant in South Korea. Patriarchal family systems are still absolutely the minimum expectation in society. The law may have changed in 2008, but human societies can be slow to change. If you are in this undocumented category, you are automatically an underclass, in a very class based society. I.e. as an underclass, you're not even included in the class strata!  You don't even qualify as lower-class.  Yun Gil Ho, Min Seo Jin, Kim Jae Hui, ALL originate from this category. 

Thank you for this. It is definitely important context for this story.

I ask one favor, as an English speaker: please refer to "women" and not "females". If English is not your first language, the difference may not be understood, if not. So, I'll explain for those that may come along.

 "Female" is a scientific sex term and it dehumanizes women to reduce them to that. It is currently being used by right-wing men who want to claim "your body, my choice." When someone calls people "females", it is a signifier that they are against women's rights and do not see women as human beings of equal status. They are trying to establish their dominance over women.

So, please, please, don't let this oppressive terminology leak out and be normalized. Thank you.

Thanks a lot for sharing this information, Toot! This is indeed important to understand what's going on in the story. I really thought it's about illegal immigrants. It's really crazy that "ghost children" still exist and that SK solved this problem only this year. Well, better late than never.

Please feel free to use the term "female" as you wish. Intelligent women understand what you mean and are able to interpret words in contexts. I know that because I'm a woman myself. The dehumanisation of women happens when we get called "menstruating people" while males still get called man/males instead of "sperm producing people", or when people deny our biology and biological differences in general. Child birth is not an ideological problem but a biological one affecting females only. In many places, babies and children get killed because they are female, not because they claim to be female. For thousands of years, females were denied rights because they are female, not because they claimed to be female. These facts do not change if we swap "female" with "woman". People we might not like, do not own words, so them using "females" does not change anything unless we want to give them the power to own words.

@Toot, that's exactly why I defended your use of the term "female" because I believe that those well-meaning ... people are way too eager to portray themselves as good followers of their preferred ideology than to solve actual problems.

This "undocumented" subject is important to me because I feel for all those innocent children and do not care if they are female or male. Sadly, many self-proclaimed feminists do distinguish and are eager to deny that boys/men are suffering too. Or they claim that females suffer way more, and therefore males do not deserve any compassion cause "patriarchy". I believe that's one of the reasons why progress is so slow. Those poor innocent children grow up, and they do not have many chances to escape their misery. While we almost automatically feel for the poor women, we almost always condemn the men.

Anyways, in the end, dramas are fiction, and they exist to generate money, not to change the world. When watching dramas, I always have in mind that it's fiction, and I watch them to be entertained. Kdramas make that easy for me because they are rarely subtle and nuanced. The writers basically tell you how you are supposed to feel about certain characters. :/

In the first episode, pretty quietly. Other characters made statements to them along the lines of "You have no-one else" or "You come from nothing".