Hyon-Joo’s Everyday Life

One of the good things about living outside Korea is that I’m rarely called ‘ajumma’. I guess I’ve just admitted that I don’t want to be called ajumma. However, believe it or not, I don’t have strong resistance against being ajumma - because I am, but I’d be still surprised a little bit if someone bluntly calls me ajumma in a market or café. I’m not quite ready for that yet only because I haven’t experienced it a lot.

Am I making it too big a deal to be called ajumma? Maybe. Am I subconsciously fearful about being called ajumma? Um… The thing is the word doesn’t show respect toward married women in Korea.

The literal meaning of ajumma is ‘married women’ or unofficially ‘women who look old enough to get married’ (it’s common that people are heavily judged by their appearance in Korea).

The actual meaning of the word is a lot more than that. It’s kind of a label for women who are chubbier and have short curly perm hair, so called ‘ajumma pama’, as if taking care of their hair is the last thing that they want to pay attention to, women who can sprint faster than Ben Johnson for a spot in a jammed subway or bus, women who don’t mind yelling at a vendor for bargaining, women who cut in in a long line, or women who grab another woman’s hair to show she’s right.

- Kim Ji-young from Forever the Moment (u-saeng-sun) shows the power of ajumma so well along with other heroines. The picture shows what ajumma pama is.

Of course this is not at all how I want to define ajumma, but this is how married Korean women have been described in a typical Korean context with the name of ajumma.

When the society mocks or contempts ajumma group like that, it’s certainly not being considered that they have to run for a vacancy because most of them are just so tired working two jobs - their regular nine-to-whenever job during the day and their job as a housewife during the night at home. It’s not being considered that their hair is actually the least important thing in their lives because their income is already held for kids’ tuition, medicine, clothings, food and so on. It’s not being considered that they get chubbier because they usually manage their dinner late at night after all the house work and don’t have workout time. Oh, there is a magic of huge drop of metabolism.

It’s not productive that I become cynical about the culture and ask questions like why the word ‘ajeossi‘ to address male adults who are married or look old enough to get married doesn’t imply this kind of hostility, why Korea hasn’t moved on that much from patriarchal norms or why Koreans still bicker each other based on gender and age.

The Korean culture is actually changing. Less and less ajummas focus only on their or their family’s interests when they do have to consider other people.  It is never right for ajumma or whatever group of people to put their own comfort or interest on top of everything no matter what.

I’d just like to see non-Koreans understand the meaning and the context of the word better when they encounter a situation to use the word. (I ran into a blog where its blogger complained how uncivilized ajummas are in Korea and it has been bothering me.)

The word ajumma(아줌마) is also used to address a female employee in a store or restaurant when she “looks” married - probably you won’t know if she’s actually married because Koreans don’t care wearing a wedding ring . The polite form of this word is ajumeoni(아주머니).

But to be safe you can say ‘jeogiyo(저기요)’ or ‘yeogiyo(여기요)’ to get their attention. They mean ‘there’ and ‘here’ respectively. These two words can be used both for male and female. Because of all the prejudices above explained, there is a slight chance that you might have to wait for your dish double times when you call them ‘ajumma’.

Most of those who work in a Korean restaurant in the USA will understand ‘excuse me’. I guess that’s the safest bet.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 under Culture to Question.