This personal reflection is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What drives us? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.
In the fall of 2022, I emailed my publishers and asked to cancel my contracts. I had agreed to publish a short story in a magazine and had promised full-length manuscripts to two publishers. But I had nothing for them. Not a single word.
I had recently released a collection of short stories that I had published over the years, but it had been a long time since I had written anything new. The book contracts had no set deadlines, and the publishers were understanding and didn’t press me for pages. Nevertheless, I didn’t want the unsettled debt hanging over my head. More to the point, I didn’t want to write anymore.
My novel “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” was published in South Korea in October 2016. The book, which follows an ordinary Korean woman and the struggles she experiences throughout her life, found far more readers than I ever expected, and I was honored and humbled by the experiences it afforded me. But most of all, I was grateful to have a platform.
After experiencing years of rejection, I understood that I was being given a rare chance to send my writing out into the world, and I wanted to make the most of it. While a single piece of writing or a book might not completely transform a society, I still hoped my work could serve as a small catalyst for change. I believed the thoughts and feelings that would arise after reading my words, as well as the exchange of opinions and new layers of writing that would result, could create a meaningful turning point for Korea.
For a few years, I was very productive. I published short stories in magazines, wrote a regular column in a daily newspaper and eagerly contributed to anthologies. I published three novels and released two short story collections documenting the lives, questions and struggles of women from their teens to their 80s. More often than not, my focus was directed toward women. It was what I was drawn to at the time, and I wanted my fiction to positively contribute, however slightly, to the lives of the next generation of women.
There’s been some progress for South Korean women since the publication of “Kim Jiyoung.” In 2019, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled that a ban on abortion was unconstitutional. In 2020, the Sexual Violence Punishment Act was revised to strengthen penalties for digital sex crimes, and in 2021, the Stalking Punishment Act was enacted. In 2025, several child care laws expanding assistance for childbirth and child-rearing also took effect.
And yet the necessary follow-up legislation for the abortion ruling still hasn’t passed. A proposed revision of rape laws that would update the definition of rape from sexual acts under threat of “violence or intimidation” to “sex without consent” remains stalled. And South Korean women consistently face the highest gender wage gap among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Has the world gotten any better? I can’t say. But over the years, my writing and I endured so much attack and misogynistic ridicule. Everything I had worked on felt pointless.
One day, my daughter, who at the time was an avid reader of children’s fantasy books, asked me why “happy incidents” never occurred in her real life. I asked her if she wanted my honest opinion or an answer tailored to her level of understanding, and she asked for the latter. I suggested she assign “happiness” to moments of luck that weren’t too common, like the light turning green just as she arrives at a crosswalk or opening a milk carton on her first try.
My daughter considered this for a moment before asking to hear my honest opinion. I told her that to live is to endure a tedious, repetitive routine day after day — going to school, going to work, cleaning, doing laundry, then getting up the next day for more school, work, cleaning, laundry. That’s how everyone lives. Even the dazzling performances of her favorite pop stars are the result of repeating the same moves hundreds, even thousands of times. Life, by nature, contains little happiness, meaning or reward. As she took this all in, she once again thought for a moment before confidently declaring, “I’ll say it’s opening a milk carton on the first try!”
My daughter is all grown up now. Her grip is stronger, and she’s very good at opening milk cartons on her first try — she hardly ever fails. And while I wonder if she still feels happy every time she drinks milk, I’ve come to understand that I cannot change other people’s thoughts or feelings. The only thing I can change is myself.
The “Great Learning,” a classic text in the Confucian canon, has a passage that states: “From the highest ruler, down to the common people, all must take self-cultivation as their foundation.” The work is organized around three guiding principles and eight steps, all of which are centered on self-cultivation. The three principles name the ultimate aims of learning: to illuminate bright virtue, renew the people and rest in the highest good. The eight steps are the stages for reaching those principles: investigating all things, deepening knowledge, being true to one’s will, rectifying the mind, cultivating the self, bringing order to the family, governing the state and bringing peace to the world.
Self-cultivation is at once a mind-set, a process and an outcome of working toward becoming an upright person by disciplining the body and the mind. I understand it as a goal or direction. You don’t cultivate yourself to bring peace to the world. Rather, when you truly attain self-cultivation, your enlightened energy radiates outward to your family, your nation and the rest of humanity.
And that’s why self-cultivation is the foundation; it’s the beginning and the completion, the root and the fruit of everyone and all of our endeavors.
For a long time, my goals lay outside of me. I wanted the industry I belonged to, the community around me, the society I lived in and ultimately the world I inhabited to become better. Work that may not lead to any gain, or whose outcome is uncertain, is bound to make one feel tired, disappointed and powerless. And the idea of changing others — of changing the world — feels presumptuous in retrospect.
Now I’ve brought the locus of change from the outside to the inside of me. I try to be more industrious in my daily life, produce better writing and become a more decent person. A better me will become part of a better world.
I’m now writing again. I write with the spirit of self-cultivation, of tempering myself. I simultaneously marvel at a world that’s different from that of yesterday, and despair at a world no different from that of 10 years ago. I then quietly return to my desk and repeat the tedious act of reading and writing. My new novel is in its final stages.
Cho Nam-Joo is a South Korean author. Her works include “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,” “Saha” and “Miss Kim Knows.”
This essay was translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, who also translated “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982.”
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