Victim Blaming

Victim blaming in the novel is a recurring transfer of responsibility: women are asked to manage the risks created by other people and then judged for failing to prevent harm. It surfaces in Kim Jiyoung’s experience of being followed, in the assumptions that shape women’s choices at work, and in a company’s response to hidden cameras in its women’s restroom. The episodes differ in scale, but each exposes the same reversal: the affected women must explain themselves, while those who cause or excuse the harm are allowed to minimize their responsibility.

Personal Safety and the Assignment of Blame

As a student, Kim Jiyoung is followed off a bus by a male student who interprets her routine politeness as encouragement. A woman on the bus helps her contact her father, but when the follower gets off at the same stop, Jiyoung is left alone with him on a deserted street. After he leaves, her father arrives, and Jiyoung explains that she barely remembers the student and had not intended to signal interest. Yet her father’s response at home is to question why her cram school was so far away, why she spoke to strangers, and why her skirt was short. The questions turn the focus from the man’s conduct to the choices Jiyoung might supposedly have made to avoid it.

The reproach fits a wider lesson Jiyoung has been taught: women should be cautious, dress conservatively, and behave in a way considered ladylike, because avoiding dangerous places, hours, and people is treated as their responsibility. In that logic, safety becomes a test women can fail, and harm is recast as evidence that they did not take sufficient precautions. The woman who intervened offers a contrasting account. When Jiyoung calls to thank her, the woman reassures her that responsibility belongs with men who behave this way, not with the women they target. Jiyoung cries and cannot answer. The exchange matters because it gives her an alternative to the blame she has already received.

That reassurance does not immediately undo the effects of the incident. Jiyoung quits the cram school, avoids bus stops after dark, stops smiling at people, and avoids eye contact with strangers. She becomes afraid of men and sometimes screams when she encounters her younger brother in the stairwell. The woman’s words stay with her, however; the narrative presents that reassurance as a reason Jiyoung does not remain fearful for even longer. The aftermath shows both the reach of victim blaming and the importance of having someone name the injustice rather than repeat the demand that a woman should have prevented it.

Self-Scrutiny in Work and Hiring

The same pattern enters Jiyoung’s understanding of professional life, where discrimination can prompt women to scrutinize their own conduct instead of the conditions around them. During a job interview, one candidate says she would examine her clothing and attitude to identify anything that might have induced a client’s inappropriate behavior. Another interviewee reacts with bafflement, while Jiyoung feels chagrined at the answer and wonders whether it is more likely to earn approval. She is troubled not only by the candidate’s response but by her own thought that self-blame might be the safer answer.

The scene connects an individual reflex of self-correction to a wider employment context. Jiyoung’s friend Yun Hyejin is more qualified on several measures, yet points to women’s limited presence at job fairs and alumni events. In 2005, women made up 29.6 percent of new employees at one hundred companies; a separate survey found that 44 percent of recruiting managers surveyed preferred male candidates when qualifications were equivalent, while none preferred women. Those figures do not describe a woman’s personal failure to present herself correctly. They locate unequal outcomes in hiring practices, even as interview situations can encourage women to treat their appearance and reactions as the problem to be fixed.

Workplace Surveillance and Institutional Evasion

The hidden-camera scandal at Jiyoung’s former company makes the transfer of blame more collective and more consequential. A building security agent hid a camera in the women’s restroom and uploaded images to a pornography site. A male section manager recognized the restroom and the clothing in the images as belonging to his colleagues; rather than alerting the police or the women, he shared the pictures with male coworkers. A female employee learned enough to become suspicious, pressed her boyfriend for an explanation, and eventually confided in Kang Hyesu. Hyesu notified the women in the office; they searched for cameras and reported the case to police.

The chain of events distinguishes the person who installed the camera from the people who circulated the images, without treating that distinction as an excuse. Some accused employees argued that they had not installed the cameras or taken the pictures and had only viewed images available online. That defense shifts attention away from their choice to distribute them and toward a narrower account of who physically recorded the women. It also leaves the affected employees facing uncertainty about how many people saw the images, how long they circulated, and whether their own pictures were among them. Hyesu tells Jiyoung that the cameras were installed after Jiyoung had left the company, but describes the lasting fear and distress among current employees.

The company director’s response extends the same logic into institutional protection. He resists the victims’ demands for an official apology, preventive measures, and punishment, emphasizing the company’s reputation and the accused men’s families instead. Kim Eunsil, the team leader, rejects that appeal: having families should make the men more responsible, not make the victims more obliged to forgive them. Eunsil and other women seek advice from a women’s organization, while she prepares to leave with some female staff and start a business. The victims are exhausted and want to return to ordinary life, but the company’s preference for quietly closing the matter places the burden of that return on them. The scandal thus reveals victim blaming not only as an overt accusation, but also as pressure to protect the institution and its employees from consequences.

A Broader Recognition of Responsibility

The novel places these episodes beside the choices constrained by childcare and employment. Before their child is born, Jiyoung and Jung Daehyun write out three possible work arrangements and consider childcare, costs, and advantages and disadvantages. Their options include sending the child to Daehyun’s parents in Busan or hiring a live-in nanny if both remain employed. They decide one parent must stay home; although Daehyun’s job is more stable and better paid, the choice falls to Jiyoung, also because it is more customary for wives to care for children and manage the home. This is not identical to blaming a victim for harassment, but it belongs to the novel’s account of how unequal arrangements can be treated as women’s individual decisions while the conditions shaping those decisions fade from view.

The frame of the psychiatric account makes that problem of recognition explicit. The psychiatrist first understands Jiyoung’s condition through a familiar diagnosis, then reflects that he may have diagnosed her too hastily and that he has encountered a world he did not know. He connects his growing awareness to his wife’s successive compromises in her medical career and to her responsibility for their son. When his wife challenges his certainty about the boy’s behavior, she points out that he spends little time attending to the child. His eventual recognition does not erase the earlier limits of his understanding; it shows that authority and professional status do not guarantee insight into experiences a person has not had to notice.

Across these strands, victim blaming is both a response to particular acts and a social habit of explanation. Jiyoung is told to have avoided the man; the interview candidate considers correcting her appearance and attitude; coworkers minimize their role in circulating images; and a director asks women to weigh the accused men’s lives and the company’s reputation. Against those deflections, the woman at the bus stop, Hyesu, Eunsil, and the psychiatrist’s later reflection make responsibility more visible. The pattern’s significance lies in how easily blame travels toward women—and how much effort it takes for their experience to be recognized as evidence about the conditions around them.