Sae Jin Chung

I often hear about what I should want, what my future should look like. There’s this silent expectation in the air, unspoken but heavy, that every woman’s path should lead to motherhood. For a long time, I didn’t see that as my road. Maybe it was because I watched so many around me, brilliant women, give up their careers, their identities almost, once they had children. It felt like a trap.

Here in Seoul, everything is fast—fast progress, fast life, but oddly slow change where it matters. We’re so modern and forward-facing, yet when it comes to how we treat women, it's like living in two different centuries at once. Women are expected to be both warriors in the workplace and caretakers at home. The math doesn’t add up.

I’m 33 now, and for years, I held my ground, rejecting the idea of becoming a mother. The financial pressures alone—how can we afford it? University, housing, even daycare costs, it’s overwhelming. It felt like having a child meant giving up my independence, my dreams, the life I worked so hard for. And the gender pay gap here? A joke. We’re among the most educated, yet so many of us hit a wall.

But things changed for me, slowly, without realizing it. My freckles, my dark skin that I used to hide, became something I stopped caring about. I started thinking less about what was expected of me and more about what I wanted, what felt right. Five months ago, I found out I was pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but when it happened, it felt...okay.

I’m lucky. My partner’s different from what you usually hear about men here. He respects me, and he’s not just saying he’ll help—he actually does. We’re both in this, and it doesn’t feel like the world’s ending just because I’m having a child. I know it won’t be easy, but maybe our daughter will grow up in a place where her options aren’t limited to either-or.

There’s hope in that, I think. Not just for me, but for her, too.