Top 60 Cho Nam-Joo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “While offenders were in fear of losing a small part of their privilege, the victims were running the risk of losing everything.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

2. “The fact that they have families and parents,” Eunsil retorted, “is why they shouldn’t do these things, not why we should forgive them.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

3. “The world had changed a great deal, but the little rules, contracts and customs had not, which meant the world hadn’t actually changed at all.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

4. “The world wants our uterus to be drug-free. Like sacred grounds in a virgin forest.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

5. “Do laws and institutions change values, or do values drive laws and institutions?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

6. “How can you say something so backward in this day and age? Jiyoung, don’t stay out of trouble. Run wild! Run wild, you hear me?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

7. “I’m putting my youth, health, job, colleagues, social networks, career plans and future on the line. No wonder all I can think about are the things I’m giving up. But what about you? What do you lose by gaining a child?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

8. “Her boss grumbled, “This is why we don’t hire women.” She replied, “Women don’t stay because you make it impossible for us to stay.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

9. “The world had changed a great deal, but the little rules, contracts, and customs had not, which meant the world hadn’t actually changed at all. She mulled over Daehyun’s idea that registering as legally married changes the way you feel about each other. Do laws and institutions change values, or do values drive laws and institutions?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

10. “He offered no baseless optimism, impetuous encouragement, or the usual blaming. He let her be, helped where he could, and bought her a drink if the results were bad.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

11. “Girls don’t need special treatment – they just want the same responsibilities and opportunities. Instead of choosing the lunch menu, they want to run for president.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

12. “Number one on the roster was a boy, everything began with the boys, and that felt like the right, natural thing. Boys lined up first, boys led every procession no matter where they were header, boys gave their presentations first, and boys had their homework checked first while the girls quietly waited their turn, bored, sometimes relieved that they weren’t going first, but never thinking this was a strange practice.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

13. “Jiyoung felt as though her heart was filled with snow: replete yet airy, cozy yet cold. She was resolved to handle this next phase well, to keep it less challenging, demoralizing, or exhausting like her boyfriend said, but at the same time running as wild as her mother hoped she would.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

14. “People who pop a painkiller at the smallest hint of a migraine, or who need anaesthetic cream to remove a mole, demand that women giving birth should gladly endure the pain, exhaustion, and mortal fear. As if that’s maternal love. This idea of “maternal love” is spreading like religious dogma. Accept Maternal Love as your Lord and Savior, for the Kingdom is near!”

— Cho Nam-Joo

15. “According to reports, more than half of the women who quit their jobs are unable to find new work for more than five years.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

16. “Conscientiously and calmly, she was searching for a way out that didn’t exist to begin with. Baffled and ready to give up, she was told to try, try again; to walk through walls if it came to that.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

17. “She couldn’t picture herself at the company ten years down the road and resigned after some thought. Her boss grumbled, “This is why we don’t hire women.” She replied, “Women don’t stay because you make it impossible for us to stay.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

18. “Some demeaned it as “bumming around at home,” while others glorified it as “work that sustains life,” but none tried to calculate its monetary value. Probably because the moment you put a price on something, someone has to pay.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

19. “No sheer black tights, and no socks allowed. No sneakers, only dress shoes. Walking around in just tights and dress shoes in the middle of winter, Jiyoung’s feet got so cold that she wanted to cry.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

20. “Looking at the moments and scenes in Kim Jiyoung’s life that she chose to share in our sessions, I realise that I may have diagnosed her hastily. I’m not saying I was wrong, only that I’ve come to realise there is a world that I wasn’t aware of.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

21. “The more their mother praised, the more impossible it became for Jiyoung to complain.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

22. “Onto the feelings left unsaid for so long that they were desiccated and crackling, a tiny spark of a flame fell and instantly reduced the most shining romance of youth to ashes.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

23. “Every field has its technological advances and evolves in the direction that reduces the amount of physical labour required, but people are particularly reluctant to admit that the same is true for domestic labor.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

24. “Jiyoung became different people from time to time. Some of them were living, others were dead, all of them women she knew. No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t a joke or a prank. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

25. “See this here? This is Seoul. It’s just a dot. A dot. We all of us are living in this tiny, cramped dot. You may not get to see all of it, but I want you to know: it’s a wide world out there.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

26. “Customers thought the right to harass young women came with their purchase.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

27. “Her career potential and areas of interest were being limited just because she had a baby.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

28. “Jiyoung was standing in the middle of a labyrinth. Conscientiously and calmly, she was searching for a way out that didn’t exist to begin with.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

29. “But is it right to prioritise short-term efficiency and balance sheets? Who’ll be the last ones standing in a world with these priorities, and will they be happy?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

30. “Her nerves were frayed and sensitive only to the words ‘We regret to inform you’; no other words or censure could hurt her.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

31. “Just as putting the care of your child in another’s hands doesn’t mean you don’t love your child, quitting and looking after your child doesn’t mean you have no passion for your career.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

32. “Since she became a full-time housewife, she often noticed that there was a polarised attitude regarding domestic labour. Some demeaned it as ‘bumming around at home’, while others glorified it as ‘work that sustains life’, but none tried to calculate its monetary value. Probably because the moment you put a price on something, someone has to pay.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

33. “Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be “ladylike.” That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

34. “The young laborers worked without adequate sleep, rest or food, thinking that was what working entailed for everyone.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

35. “Jiyoung quit the cram school. For a long time, she couldn’t go near a bus stop after dark. She stopped smiling at people, and did not make eye contact with strangers. She was afraid of all men, and she screamed sometimes when she ran into her younger brother in the stairwell. But she kept thinking about what the woman said. Not my fault. There’s far more great guys out there. If the woman hadn’t said that to her, Jiyoung would have lived in fear for even longer.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

36. “What do you want from us? The dumb girls are too dumb, the smart girls are too smart, and the average girls are too unexceptional?”

— Cho Nam-Joo

37. “The gender pay gap in Korea is the highest among the OECD countries. According to 2014 data, women working in Korea earn only 63 percent of what men earn; the OECD average percentage is 84.13 Korea was also ranked as the worst country in which to be a working woman, receiving the lowest scores among the nations surveyed on the glass-ceiling index by the British magazine The Economist.14 8 “Repeated Protests against Tuition Increase,” Yonhap News, April 6, 2011.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

38. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? ‘Smart women are taxing,’ they say. And when she passes the law exam all on her own without any help from the college? They fly banners and toot horns! ‘Proud alumni!”

— Cho Nam-Joo

39. “Frankly, it’s only natural that men remain unaware unless they encounter special circumstances as I have, because men are not the main players in childbirth and childcare.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

40. “She couldn’t win: exercising all the rights and utilizing the benefits made her a freeloader, and fighting tooth and nail to avoid the accusation made things harder for colleagues in a similar situation.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

41. “Entering high school meant a sudden expansion of her geographical and social world, which taught her that it was a wide world out there filled with perverts.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

42. “The combination of her tone, expression, angle of head tilt, position of shoulders, and her breathing sent them a message that was hard to summarize in one sentence, but, if Jiyoung tried anyway, it went something like this: How dare you try to take something that belongs to my precious grandson!”

— Cho Nam-Joo

43. “My wife is still doing the math workbooks, and I wish she’d do something more interesting. Something she’s good at, that she likes, that she really wants to do, not something she does because there’s nothing else. I wish the same for Kim Jiyoung.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

44. “They say they neither set up those cameras nor took the pictures, they just saw some photos posted on a website everyone has access to, and we are treating them like sexual offenders. They distributed the pictures and were complicit in the crimes, but they don’t understand why that’s wrong. It blows.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

45. “Jiyoung discovered that she wasn’t as introverted as she’d thought she was when she didn’t have the opportunity to think, or form and express opinions. In fact, she turned out to be surprisingly friendly, sociable, and fond of being in the spotlight. And she met her first boyfriend at the college hiking club.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

46. “She truly believed he was a decent husband to her for not sleeping around and not hitting her. Of the four sons she raised thus, Jiyoung’s father was the only one to carry out his duties as a son in her old age. Unwanted by her ungrateful children, Koh Boonsoon rationalized this sad outcome with an incoherent logic: “Still, I get to eat warm food my son made for me, and sleep under warm covers my son arranged for me because I had four sons. You have to have at least four sons.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

47. “There were times when she had an inkling of a situation not being fair, but she was accustomed to rationalizing things by telling herself that she was being a generous older sibling and that she shared with her sister because they were both girls. Jiyoung’s mother would praise the girls for taking good care of their brother and not competing for her love. Jiyoung thought it must be the big age gap. The more their mother praised, the more impossible it became for Jiyoung to complain.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

48. “All he wanted was to quietly close this case: It’ll ruin this company’s reputation if word gets around in the field. The accused male employees have families and parents to protect, too. Do you really want to destroy people’s lives like this? Do you want people to find out that your pictures are out there? These obviously self-serving words of absurdity flew out of the mouth of the director, who was considered to be progressive and sensible compared to his peers.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

49. “But you know what?” the woman added. “There’s far more great guys out there.”

— Cho Nam-Joo

50. “The woman said she was glad Jiyoung was fine, and suddenly declared, “It’s not your fault.” There were far too many crazy men in the world, she’d had her share of run-ins with these people, and the problem was with them, not with the women. Hearing this made Jiyoung cry. Trying to swallow her tears, she couldn’t say anything back. “But you know what?” the woman added. “There’s far more great guys out there.”

— Cho Nam-Joo