Work Text
Jumin is the focus of my story, and I only wrote that story in the first place because I felt that the writing of Mystic Messenger’s later crop of writers failed to capture Jumin’s real character. Consequently, I did a detailed study of Jumin in order to transfer him from bare-bones chat to detailed narration and to try to stay true to his character in my lengthy story.Jumin is what the Koreans call a chaebol heir, the up-and-coming generation of an incredibly wealthy family-run conglomerate. (The word “chaebol” literally means ‘wealthy clan.’) Korea was a monarchy almost up to the beginning of the twentieth century, and South Korea has modernized incredibly rapidly since the Korean War. There’s a famous Korean entertainer in the prime of his career today who took his parents’ advice and didn’t expand his career beyond Korea when he had the chance to do so, something he regrets now: as he tells it, “I took career advice from two people who didn’t even own shoes.” So the chaebol families like Jumin’s continue to fill in modern Korean society the traditional role of the rich ruling families from not so long ago. Korean culture was incredibly firmly stratified before, and even now, there’s a huge cultural chasm between the chaebol and regular people.
Some chaebol members seem more like mafia dons than wealthy Americans: they walk around with groups of big bodyguards and do what they want when they want, even if it’s criminal. The corruption scandals involving government officials and chaebol are epic and have rocked Korea to its foundations, and the evil chaebol character who engages in casual rape or murder is a staple of Korean television.On the other hand, there is a sense that the chaebol should promote and further Korean business and culture in the way that the English might feel about their queen. Siwon, a real-life chaebol heir who joined the entertainment industry as an actor and singer, is proud to be the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific representative and is very active on the organization’s behalf. He is also reading the Bible aloud on his social media account to fulfill his goal of being a good influence and a responsible Protestant missionary.Unlike Siwon, Jumin doesn’t act or feel in the least bit altruistic. He’s a capitalist to the core. But he does have a strong belief that he needs to be extraordinary in order to fill the role life has given him. And because of how hard and how successfully he works, he feels quite confident that he IS extraordinary. Jumin is a member of MENSA and has gone to college overseas; one of his special skills is foreign languages, although the game never reveals which ones. Jaehee describes her boss as “incredibly intelligent and talented.” And when he’s chided for not being humble, Jumin remarks, “Considering my wealth and abilities, I am being humble.”Jumin’s father, Chairman Han, is the founder and CEO of C&R International, a massive conglomerate focusing on exports and diversified investment opportunities. Like all chaebol companies, this is a family business, and Jumin is expected to be CEO in his turn, although C&R is publicly traded and has a board of directors to which he and his father both answer (at least in theory). Jumin speaks occasionally about how his upbringing has been shaped by “risk and sense of duty: the burden,” which he claims simplifies his life. He points to Yoosung’s depression as coming from the fact that no one expects much of him. Consequently, Jumin forces himself to work to the limit of his time and talents: at the age of 27, he is an executive director (a vice president) and has made his division of the company twice as financially productive as any other division.Jumin seems to be in charge of investigating new investment opportunities. At different times, he travels to the Middle East to meet with an “oil prince,” probably in Dubai (his hotel room—likely the hotel penthouse—is on the 100th story); he works with a golf clothing company on their new line; he investigates a semiconductor deal; he meets with a group of winery owners (whom he claims are usually drunk but very rich); he works up a proposal to invest in a line of coffee shops; and he oversees the acquisition of a pharmaceutical company specializing in pain medications. At one point, Jaehee comments that the entire company relies on Jumin’s exceptional ability to analyze data and make accurate predictions.For his own entertainment, Jumin also has the company invest in a number of cat-related businesses because the greatest love of his life is his cat. Jumin’s answer to overwork is more work: he starts new cat businesses whenever he’s feeling particularly stressed because it gives him something fun to think about along with all the boring work. At one point, he complains, “I’m so busy I’m about to die,” whereupon he starts working up a proposal for a line of cat hotels. Jaehee lives in terror of this behavior because it upends her schedule and adds to her stress.One of the chats takes place at three in the morning, and it’s Jumin and Jaehee, still at the office. When Jaehee asks, “When can we leave work?” Jumin replies, “When we finish all the work.”Along with investigating new business lines in which to invest, Jumin, handsome and charming, is expected to work to secure contracts with new investors and generally make the company look good through outreach and public appearances. He speaks confidently at one point about how he could hold a conference on a particular niche topic (“Black Cat, White Cat, the Mysterious World of Fur”), implying that he’s organized and spoken at conferences in the past. Jumin’s father approves of Jumin working with the RFA because even though RFA parties are supposed to promote nonprofits, they actually make C&R look good and always bring in more investment.Jumin is a pragmatist in life and particularly in business. At one point, when he’s being criticized for not being worried enough about the danger MC is in, and therefore seeming inhumane, he comments, “I am humane too—I am only practical,” explaining that worry is a waste of time. As a pragmatist, Jumin believes that it is good professional behavior to do whatever is necessary to make the company successful. Although he wouldn’t break the law, he doesn’t believe that it’s the job of corporate executives to police themselves in terms of the harm capitalist institutions can cause society. When Zen reproaches Jumin over the problem of big corporations putting mom-and-pop concerns out of business, Jumin launches into a long lecture on the role of government in reining in the power of corporations. He doesn’t pretend he’s out to better the world: at one point, he says, “Life is supposed to be harsh.”Jumin also believes in doing whatever is necessary (again, within the law) to close a business deal. For instance, Jumin plays a lot of golf with prospective investors; he tells Yoosung at one point that he dislikes the game but is good at it, “enough to adjust my skills depending on who the other player is—if he wants me to win I win, if he wants me to lose I lose convincingly.” Disgusted by his father’s womanizing—and by his father’s women—Jumin detests meetings with “women who approach me with different intentions,” but he points to his ability to “coax them as best I can to make sure the deal goes through” as a sign of a true professional. Jaehee boasts about how he and she had a meeting with the Cultured Citizens’ Association, a collection of incredibly wealthy women. Although Jumin hated spending time with them, Jaehee gloats that thanks to his “sugar-coated smooth talk,” they received an enormous investment, at which point Jumin comments, “I must sacrifice for the company.” Jaehee goes on to say that Jumin got that enormous investment by knowing how to pay these rich women compliments—“compliments not related to money: their grace and personality, the color of their scarves, things like that.” At one point, Zen attempts to shame Jumin by saying, “You’re the creepy one who sucks up to everyone to make them sign contracts.” But Jumin just replies, “What’s wrong with that?”Off and on throughout the routes, it comes up that Jumin is a celebrity in his own right, something that Zen thinks is unfair. At one point, Jumin has come back from a photoshoot for the cover of a financial magazine. Zen fumes that actors work so hard for a photo opportunity, but Jumin gets straight into the magazine just because he’s rich. Jumin replies that “handsome actors are common, but the world knows that naturally handsome corporate heirs aren’t.” This media attention isn’t always positive, though. Jumin complains at one point that if Seven follows through with a threatened prank, “tabloid magazines will annoy me again.” During Zen’s route, an idol (that is, a top kpop celebrity) takes revenge on Jumin and Zen by filling the tabloids with really damaging rumors about the two of them, including a rumor that Jumin is gay, a very serious allegation in homophobic Korea. Zen is devastated by the negative attention, but Jumin is blasé about it and can’t understand why Zen would bother to keep checking social media to see how bad it’s getting. Jumin is more used to being in the public eye.In Jumin’s after-ending DLC, after Jumin and MC have married, they are besieged by reporters and crowds everywhere they go. Jaehee says, “I’m so sick of rumors… reporters… working overtime…” and laments that someone has leaked Jumin’s schedule to the tabloids so that the paparazzi could ambush them at the airport. Jumin apologizes to his new wife, saying, “I’m sorry we have to keep being surrounded by cameras,” and adds, “you’ll get used to the crowd someday.” His security detail has to protect the couple by keeping the mob pushed back.Jumin’s relationship with his father complicates his workdays, naturally, since they lead a business together. Jumin takes a week of vacation (the first in years) because he knows his father has been slacking off to spend time with a new girlfriend, so “the talented son has to take a break for him to work.” Chairman Han uses this same ploy on his son in another route: he learns that Jumin has taken a day off to visit a cherry farm, so the Chairman takes a “business trip” to Hawaii with yet another new girlfriend and forces Jumin to pick up the slack while he’s gone. This sort of tension leads to Jumin complaining occasionally about his father, usually in fairly muted tones because he doesn’t want to seem undutiful and also because he doesn’t generally like to vent. (He considers emotional outbursts to be a sign of poor mental training.) But he does say at one point that “I don’t feel very good thinking about my father this early in the morning” and at another time says, “I genuinely no longer wish to have anything to do with Father.” Each time this sort of conflict occurs, Jumin handles the stress by working even harder, a tactic not likely to produce any change.Jumin states at one point that “hate would be the more appropriate word” to describe how he feels about his father’s womanizing, a very strong statement coming from Jumin, who generally prides himself on avoiding violent emotions. Jumin hates all of his father’s women largely because they have tried so hard to cozy up to Jumin as well. He says, “I’m sick of looking at gold diggers,” and in another place remarks, “If Assistant Kang and you saw my father with all those extravagant women at my house, you would understand.” He says that he came to realize during his childhood that everyone but his father treated him nicely and flattered him just because they wanted something from him. He talks about going through a phase in childhood when he was rude to everyone, but everyone treated him just as nicely as before because it wasn’t Jumin they were being nice to, it was his wealth and position. Because of this, Jumin measures his self-worth only against his work: he realizes that his business results can’t lie, so he drives himself relentlessly to succeed. He also has what Rika once called a “mental allergy” to women in general—and indeed, Jumin himself compares his having to meet with fawning women to Zen’s having to take a modeling shoot involving cats, leading MC to say, “So, if Zen’s allergic to cats, Jumin’s allergic to women?” When Yoosung states that Jumin “might actually hate all women,” Jumin initially denies this, but when questioned further, weakens his denial to state that it’s “probably” not true. The only woman his own age Jumin has been friends with was Rika, and that’s because she was important to V, his childhood friend, and so Jumin allowed Rika to become important to him too.Throughout the main Mystic Messenger routes, Jumin never once refers to his mother. (She was added into some after-ending DLCs years later in what I think was a creative mistake.) The assumption is that his father divorced his mother long ago. Jumin has had a stepmother since his early teens, and it’s revealed at one point that she hit on Jumin when he was a teenager because she was lonely and neglected. Jumin now has a standing rule: he refuses to meet any of his father’s girlfriends until his father has maintained the relationship for six months, something his father never manages to do. This has kept Jumin from having to see most of the recent women, but his father occasionally breaks Jumin’s rule and surprises him at one of their father-son meals by bringing along someone new, an experience Jumin finds distasteful.Jumin’s work assistant is very important to him, functioning not as a secretary but as a highly skilled “second Jumin” to whom he can delegate very difficult tasks. It is revealed in several routes that Jumin lost the assistant before Kang Jaehee because his father had an affair with her. Jumin immediately fired that assistant, very bitter about her loss, and made it a requirement of Jaehee’s hiring that she keep her hair cut short and wear glasses she doesn’t need, all to try to keep his father from making off with another assistant. At one point, Yoosung reproaches Jumin for not having met his own maid, but Jumin replies that if she too winds up becoming one of his father’s many women, he’d just as soon not know who she is.To a great extent, Jumin extends this notion of gold-digging beyond women to everyone around him. He states that only he and his father understand the “emptiness” that comes from being surrounded by people while being “utterly and perfectly alone.” As Jumin puts it, his father and he will always “have that much responsibility, and our lives will be that lonely” because the people who surround them will never act as true peers but will always either need the talents of the two men to guide them or else will want to manipulate them. Jumin states that he saw his father’s womanizing as a sign that “the emptiness my father feels is more complicated than mine” and says that he became grateful during childhood for the fact that “my father had no need to use me because he already had so much more than me.” Because of this, Jumin does try to reciprocate his father’s genuinely fatherly efforts in spite of the tension between them, and Jumin mentions that they exchange gifts, dine, and go on trips together. At one point, Jumin shows off a pen his father gave him, telling him to sign good contracts with it, and he is upset when he later loses it. The few times Jumin gets the chance to see his father alone, he enjoys himself.Perhaps because of this suspicion that everyone is attempting to use him, Jumin is an extreme introvert, avoiding people whenever possible. He says, “I just don’t want to waste my energy by conversing with someone who doesn’t help the company,” an indication that he probably is a true introvert who finds social interactions tiring. At one point, Jumin reproaches Jaehee for not having come to meet him at the airport. She had sent someone else, and Jumin says, “Thanks to that, it was awkward on my way home.” Jumin’s regular involvement in the RFA chats indicates how important its members actually are to him and how seriously he takes his senior role in the absence of RFA’s actual leader, V.Jumin’s favorite activities are solitary ones: he enjoys visiting two orchards and his “small weekend farm” at his private garden. He laments being too busy to visit his garden, where he loves looking at the flowers, complaining, “What’s the point of having a garden if you can’t even walk in it?” He has a very expensive aquarium in the one in-game picture of his penthouse, indicating that he enjoys watching fish, and he also enjoys a quiet glass of wine, revealing at one point that his average bottle costs $200.But Jumin dislikes being drunk, and only twice in the chat is he reported to be drunk. Once, he complains about it himself after that meeting with the rich winery owners, saying that they served too many drinks and that he still feels it. He seems annoyed about it. Another time, V discourages Jumin from talking about their happy friendship in the past, telling him that he’s drunk. But both times, Jumin is as articulate as ever. The only sign of impairment is that he may be slightly more sentimental and less reserved than usual. When V warns Jumin that he’s drunk, Jumin is drinking one of the bottles of Montrachet that V gave him years earlier, and he’s recalling sadly that V and he used to share those bottles together.Because of Jumin’s loneliness and his refusal to consider any sort of relationship due to his “mental allergy” to women, Rika gave him his cat, Elizabeth the Third. (V picked out the name.) Jumin adores his cat (“Her existence itself is a blessing”) and deliberately treats her as a kind of girlfriend (he calls her his companion), devoting all the love and romance of his soul to making her happy. He convinces the owners of a strawberry farm to grow cherries instead because “Elizabeth the Third likes the scent of cherries,” and he brings her different items from his garden, such as roses, because she seems to find them interesting. He takes her with him on business trips when he can and worries about leaving her behind when he can’t; he brings her into work with him sometimes and even took her to the last RFA party, a move that reduced highly allergic Zen to a sneezing wreck. Elizabeth the Third is used to eating out of crystal bowls, and Jumin has bought her innumerable jeweled collars. He loves taking her to the countryside because the sight of her padding softly through the grass makes his heart happy.But even without this need to fabricate some sort of meaningful personal relationship for himself, Jumin would still be a cat person. (Seven calls him a cat mom.) One of the only cute things about Jumin’s chat persona is his tendency to use cat-shaped notes to express himself. He tries to encourage Zen past his cat allergy, saying, “Not knowing the appeal of cats is basically missing 50% of the joys life has to offer.”At one point, Jumin finds a little lost kitten. “All kittens are cute no matter what,” he says, but this one is “more beautiful” because it was abandoned in his private garden. He takes care of it even though Elizabeth the Third doesn’t like this, losing sleep to their squabbling until he can find it a good home. MC offers to take the kitten, but they’ve learned by this time that the RFA apartment is wired with a bomb capable of destroying the whole building. So Jumin refuses, saying, “I can’t leave a cat where there’s a bomb.” When Jaehee says that he talks as if the cat is more important than MC, Jumin replies, “Don’t hand me a problem with moral conflicts. My head hurts.”Essentially, Jumin is Confucian in his habits of mind. Confucianism, the state religion of Korea during the Joseon era, is woven through Korea from top to bottom of society and woven into every single sentence of its language. Jumin’s relationship with his father is fraught with tension, but Jumin holds close to his heart the idea that family is sacred, so much so that when Yoosung is going through a particularly rough patch at college, ditching class and gaming constantly, Jumin reaches out to Yoosung’s mother and tells her what he’s up to. All the other characters side against Jumin on this, but he is completely unfazed, saying that “family is beautiful.” And it turns out that Jumin is right: Yoosung’s mother comes out for a holiday with him, cleans up his room, feeds him home-cooked meals, and reignites Yoosung’s desire to work for a future. Similarly, when Zen is at his lowest, it is Jumin who goes out to talk him out of despair. (It’s a prickly conversation.) While doing so, Jumin convinces Zen to reach out to his family and let them know how he’s doing for the first time in ten years. Jumin’s profound belief in the value of family despite never having had a happy family is at the core of a Confucian mindset.During Jumin’s route, Chairman Han arranges a marriage for his son, something not generally done in Korean society anymore but still apparently practiced quietly among the chaebol. (The arranging of marriages for rich young chaebol heirs is the key plot point of a number of kdramas.) Jumin resists the proposed match, telling his father with some bitterness that if he’s bent on forcing Jumin to marry, he should at least give Jumin the courtesy of letting him pick from a set of resumes. But Jumin confesses in chat that he doesn’t really want to oppose his father like this: “Since my company is a family business,” he says, “there’s no point in my work if I don’t trust my family.” Jumin feels that he has a duty to respect his father regardless of his father’s character, another Confucian thing to believe: filial piety is one of its core values. Nevertheless, Jumin feels betrayed by his father’s effort to arrange a marriage for him because his father is only doing it in order to please yet another new girlfriend who wants Jumin to marry her friend (actually her sister). Jumin feels at this point that since his father has made him a pawn in his romance—used him, essentially—Jumin has lost the only peer he had.Jumin is very conservative in his beliefs, not unusual for a Confucian since the whole point of Confucian philosophy is to uphold the essential and unchanging order of society. Jumin was raised as a Protestant, and even though he doesn’t believe God exists, he points out that most rich families have a religion because it helps support their conservative goals and views. So Jumin doesn’t really seem to see a conflict between his Protestant religion and his atheism. Jumin expresses several times his firm belief that a man and a woman should be married before living together. This probably isn’t because Jumin views the alternative situation as immoral, it’s just that Jumin strongly supports a clearly defined societal structure as a good in itself, and family is the central focus of Confucianism. Confucianism is probably also at the heart of Jumin’s drive to be an extraordinary chaebol heir and businessman. Confucius taught that a leader must not be small-minded but must lead through virtue, guiding the people who depend on him as a father leads his children. Jumin is being Confucian when, as the oldest active RFA member (in the absence of V), he works hard to keep in touch with the other RFA members and their needs despite his time constraints and introverted nature.To force himself to achieve as much as possible and to interact successfully with colleagues and investors he doesn’t like, Jumin puts a lot of effort into controlling his negative emotions. At one point, Jaehee calls him “very emotionally lacking” (Jumin just says that “you have to use your time wisely regardless of the situation”), and Jaehee also draws attention to how guarded his expression is. Jumin himself frequently refers to his efforts (successful, in his opinion) to suppress negative emotions such as anger and grief. About Rika’s death, he says that he was shocked, but that “I was able to conclude that grieving is only a waste of time and emotion” since “it was very clear in my head from the start that she’d never return.” And Jumin’s commitment to suppressing negative emotions isn’t just a matter of controlling appearances, either. He works hard to suppress their negative consequences as well, as he does when he’s distraught over Jaehee’s quitting her job but nevertheless wants to help her find a new one.In fact, Jumin is by no means unemotional. He just invests lots of energy into handling his emotions in a manner he finds appropriate. When others are emotional, he often tries to console them or encourage them. When it comes out that Yoosung is still devastated over Rika’s death, Jumin talks to him several times at length to try to help him, telling him that “after enough emotion has been let out, scars always heal.” And when MC finds out that there’s a bomb in her apartment and that she can’t leave for fear of triggering it, Jumin brings the topic up sympathetically, saying, “Having to work at a place with a bomb… I could never.” MC replies that she’s so nervous she can’t stand it, and Jumin responds, “I fully understand how you feel.” He’s the one who goes after Zen when Zen is at his lowest point emotionally and again talks for some time about emotions with him in order to persuade Zen to have hope. He is also quick to pick up on the emotions of others, at one point telling Zen, “You’ve got a good girlfriend there,” before either Zen or MC have admitted their feelings for one another.Although Jumin tries to keep his negative emotions in check, he often inadvertently indicates that his feelings are just as violent as anyone else’s. He admits that the loss of Rika, one of his only two real friends, was “a blow” to him, and he uses the word “hate” to describe his father’s womanizing. At one point, anger and distress cause Jumin to take one of Seven’s sports cars for a very dangerous joyride that ends in him flipping the car. And he implies at several points that worry and nerves are causing him tension headaches, even though he tries to persuade those around him not to worry because he says, “You become happier in the process if you just let go. The result is going to be the same.”Because of the harshness of Jumin’s workaholic life and the loss of the friends he loved, Jumin doesn’t often get the chance to express positive emotions. But when the occasion comes up, he doesn’t deny them or try to control them away as he does worry, sadness, and anger. At one point, Seven asks Jumin sincerely if he is happy, and Jumin says that he is happy because they’re getting the chance to hold another RFA party. Jumin talks about the good times he and his father have when they’re alone together, he reminisces warmly about his childhood adventures with V, and he waxes lyrical about the joy and peace he finds in nature and in spending time with Elizabeth the Third.In fact, it’s an interesting side of Jumin’s character that he refuses to hide the happiness he finds in his cat’s company no matter how often he’s teased about it. Zen and Seven give Jumin constant grief about his affection for Elizabeth the Third. (Seven is hoping for a “cat wedding.”) But Jumin isn’t shamed into hiding his feelings: he speaks constantly and warmly about how much he loves her and how much happiness she brings him. In a way, Jumin’s full expression of that happiness indicates just as much strength of character as his suppression of negative emotions does.Jumin’s life doesn’t have a lot of excitement in it, but he loves it when excitement comes along. He has a lot of fun in what is probably Dubai when he visits the Oil Prince, and he posts photos of the sunrise over the desert (showing his love of nature again). When he flips Seven’s car, he’s positively giddy afterwards, laughing several times in spite of MC’s worry and disapproval. Of the drive (and wreck), he says, “Wasn’t it great?” and adds, “I feel much better now.” And he admits that he only starts cat businesses in order to bring some excitement into his workdays: “I feel more energized when I start a *fun new project* to accompany the boring one.”It’s not surprising that Jumin, having witnessed so much greed and flattery in his life, struggles with even the idea of friendship. He strongly prefers relationships that come with clear contractually mandated obligations on either side, such as the relationship he has with Jaehee. At one point, when Zen tells Jumin he should be more warmhearted to his employees, Jumin replies, “It’s a waste giving yourself to people you’ve employed. It’s a business relationship. Money should be all there is to it.” Similarly, when urged to praise Jaehee for her work, Jumin replies, “I thank my employees with money. Words will only temporarily make them feel better.” He prides himself on the fact that he pays well and gives good bonuses. At one point, MC does the math and realizes that Jumin is paying Jaehee more than “most other companies” would.The business relationship Jumin has with Jaehee is one he finds very comfortable. He lets Jaehee nag him, and he regularly solicits and takes her advice. (He closes one chat feud with Zen by saying, “I’ll respect Assistant Kang’s opinion and stop teasing.”) At times, the two behave almost like an old married couple, understandable since they have spent by far the majority of their waking hours together for the last several years. But Jumin is content in this relationship only because he knows he’s completely in charge. At one point, when Jaehee follows up one of his orders by saying, “I personally think a bit differently,” Jumin replies, “We don’t need personal opinions right now.” When MC points out that everyone gets tired after working too long, implying that he should lighten up on Jaehee, Jumin just answers, “God…do you think I wouldn’t know that?” and ignores the point of her comment. And later, when Jaehee again complains about her workload, Jumin responds that she has traded her free time for money, “so nothing to cry about.”The RFA is a bit of a gray area for Jumin. Even though Jumin has known the other members of the RFA for years, he still calls V “my only friend.” Jumin is interested in the other RFA members, who seem to be the only thing resembling a peer group for him, and he does support them and even trust them to some extent. But he prefers to see the RFA as an extension of his business life and therefore to see the other members as colleagues, not friends.Jumin’s desire to keep his RFA relationships all business results in some interesting behavior. He unhesitatingly supports the members during danger from Unknown (Saeran or Ray, the hacker), and with good reason: at different times in different routes, Unknown partially blinds Yoosung, blows up MC, tries to kill Seven, abducts Zen and turns him into a drugged-up puppet, abducts MC and uses her as a sex slave, steals Jumin’s cat, and even shoots and kills V. When Jumin realizes how dangerous Unknown is, he immediately sends security guards out to protect each member, prompting Zen to lambast him for sending “the gangster-looking ones” to his house because they scared away Zen’s favorite street vendor, the fish-shaped bun man. Jumin isn’t upset about this ungracious response but merely replies, “Come to think of it, all you care about is looks.” And Jumin’s first reaction, when MC shows up at his penthouse, is to ask if she’s there because of the hacker and adds, “Tell me what you need.” But Jumin justifies his care of the RFA members both as a pragmatic act (since the parties are good for his business) and as a favor to V (since he believes the parties enhance V’s reputation). As noted above, he also views the RFA as a setting in which his senior role obliges him to take care of the others. Thus, when MC praises Jumin for being kind to the other members, Jumin rejects the compliment, saying, “The safety of RFA members is an important issue to me—nothing related to kindness.” This leads Yoosung to exclaim, “Oh! Rich people are really different…”At one point, Yoosung comes to Jumin to beg for help because Yoosung believes MC is in mortal danger. Jumin probably decides to help immediately, but he insists on treating the situation as business, saying, “Nothing is free in this world. If you think I’m going to do two favors for you without anything in return, you’re mistaken.” Jumin then presses Yoosung to adopt the kitten he’s taken in, saying, “I feel like we can make a good deal.” Yoosung has the cat for years and names her Lisa.Similarly, when Zen is at home with a broken ankle, Jumin becomes worried for his safety. Jumin’s initial comment is that “Zen’s problem is bothering me,” paving the way for Jumin to intervene but make it seem as if he’s doing it just in order to put Zen out of his mind. He then decides to send MC to look after Zen, but he asks her to attempt to persuade Zen to take a modeling job Jumin has offered him, pretending that this is his primary motive. When MC comes back having failed to make headway on the modeling job, but having done what Jumin has really wanted—protected Zen—Jumin remarks, “I gained nothing from this. It was a foolish investment.” Then he encourages MC concerning her developing feelings for Zen.When Jumin really does have to do the right thing out of pure kindness because the other RFA members don’t have that much to offer and there’s no deal even to pretend to make, Jumin prefers to interpret his compassion as a temporary act of selfish caprice rather than as something more meaningful. At one point, MC calls him rigid for leaving Jaehee in a particularly difficult work situation. Jumin states that he doesn’t like hearing her call him that, so he will help Jaehee after all. Jaehee and Zen, quick to sense weakness, immediately call Jumin out for caving to criticism, something he never does. (As Jumin puts it, “I cannot become a good executive if I am easily persuaded by others.”) But this time, Jumin just replies, “My choice.”Similarly, when Jumin helps Zen during his broken-ankle incident by loaning him a car and driver, he later gloats that “[Zen’s] already loving it,” implying that Jumin has done this purely in order to push Zen into betraying his fiercely independent philosophy. When Zen later feels grateful to Jumin and apologizes for his earlier thoughtless behavior, Jumin isn’t quite sure what to do. “I did not expect to receive an apology,” he says. “This is flustering me a bit.”Ordinarily, rather than give way to feelings, which he feels waste his time and might mislead him, Jumin does the right thing if he thinks it meets his Confucian standards, looking to his role as a leader to guide him. For instance, during Zen’s route, when Jumin has lost something important, MC offers to come to his penthouse to help him look for it. But Jumin refuses, saying that it “won’t be right to Zen, who has feelings for you.” And when Jaehee quits working for him, Jumin is so upset that he wrecks the car. But he also says, “If Assistant Kang needs anything in finding another job, I’d like to help her as long as it is appropriate.”RFA and the workplace might only see Jumin’s more reserved side, but when Jumin does give his heart, he gives it completely, with no further need to hide behind business customs. Jumin would do anything in the world for V, his “only friend,” and he doesn’t hesitate to make that clear to everyone. He repeatedly defends V’s secretive and emotionally distant behavior, even though he doesn’t understand it himself, and his comments imply that V’s refusal to confide in him causes him pain. When V tells Jumin, “Just trust me for now,” Jumin replies, “I always do,” and Jumin’s loyalty to his friend generally prevents Jumin from even speculating about all the odd and dangerous things that are going on, even though Jumin is smart enough to know better. “I don’t want to harbor doubts,” he says. He admits at one point, “I’d be lying to say I don’t have doubts about V.” And at another point, he says, “It’s difficult to trust something you can’t understand—but I try.” When MC asks a question that Jumin feels cuts too close to implying that V might be a bad person, Jumin warns, “That question, you should be careful of it,” and then he reiterates, “I trust V.”Jumin’s conversation with V is always openhearted and marks a contrast to his typical detached style. They trade stories about their childhood, and Jumin allows V to question him about his feelings and his relationship with his father (but not to nag). After one chat with V, Jumin tells MC, “It feels very strange to have you see me talking to V when you haven’t been here for long. We used to talk on the phone often, but we rarely do these days. We each have our own lives, so there’s nothing you can do about that. But what happened to Rika was a blow to both of us. … I should get going before I end up talking too much.” V has largely stopped treating Jumin as a friend, probably because he knows that Jumin of all people would be the first one to figure out V’s secrets. The hole left in Jumin’s life by the death of Rika and the loss of V’s friendship is one that he rarely brings up directly, but at one point, he tries to console Yoosung in his grief over Rika, saying, “I understand the anxiety that comes with being alone.”Jumin’s style in friendship is to be a doer, and he has done many things for V over the years. Jumin is a doer in his relationship with his cat, too, the other “person” he wholeheartedly loves. He spends a great deal of time thinking of ways to enhance his cat’s life and make her happy. V's and Jumin's childhood friendship itself was a gift to V because V’s parents were neglectful, so V was often with Jumin at his house. V’s parents were estranged, and it was Jumin who persuaded V to rekindle a relationship with his mother (placing value on family again) and to pursue V’s artistic goals in spite of V’s father’s resistance. Jumin’s motivation for being involved in RFA in the first place was to support Rika and V, and he still does it to help V and enhance V’s reputation. It is Jumin who has to bankroll the expensive parties.Jumin reveals at a certain point that he has known that V is losing his sight and that he has done everything to try to talk his friend into getting the surgery to fix it, including making all the arrangements. But Rika herself caused the injury, so V feels that his blindness is a parting gift from her. Nevertheless, Jumin refuses to give up, even inviting an ophthalmological surgeon to the RFA party because he knows V will be there and might be persuaded to meet with him. Eventually, in some routes, Jumin gets his way and is able to arrange for V’s surgery and save his sight.Jumin laments in all routes that V has refused to confide in him concerning whatever secret problems V is facing: “He could have asked for help at any time, and we could have solved it.” And whenever V does reach out to Jumin and ask for a favor, Jumin follows through instantly and unquestioningly. When Jumin can’t do anything, he finds it very frustrating, at one point lamenting the fact that V has sent Seven and Yoosung into danger without telling Jumin first. Jumin says, “I wish I could have provided them help.”One of the saddest aspects of Jumin’s and V’s friendship is how little V deserves Jumin’s love and regard anymore. He has been allowing his character to become corrupted and ends up supporting other less worthy people against Jumin and the RFA in a way that Jumin almost certainly would never do to V. After one route, when V’s secrets have caused tremendous damage and pain to the RFA members, V announces that he accepts their censure and disapproval and will leave Korea and disappear. The rest of the members are fine with this, but Jumin never stops searching for his friend.
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Because Jumin focuses so much on business, he often sounds like he’s holding a meeting even in the chats, and this tendency isn’t helped by the fact that he and Jaehee often do use chat to conduct their business. (At times, Jumin prefers to use chat to talk to Jaehee because he says he gets tired of hearing her voice.) Jumin’s inability to leave the meetings in the boardroom adds to his somewhat humorless style. At one point, when MC has finally gotten a chance to spend one-on-one time with Zen, Jumin says, “Let me hear your afterthoughts: how was meeting Zen?”Jumin’s distaste for and distrust of beautiful people leads him to choose other adjectives besides “beautiful” to describe things that appeal to him. The word he reaches for most often is “cute.” However, if the topic is something really close to his heart, such as cats, he will use the word “beautiful” and mean it. And Jumin’s sense of his own dignity sometimes leads him to reject words that he feels are beneath him, just as he often rejects the idea of certain emotions when they’re attributed to him, such as kindness or anger. When V asks Jumin to help rescue Zen’s reputation, Jumin announces this course of action in the chat. Yoosung is thrilled that Jumin will be attacking the idol who started the rumors, but Jumin rejects that word, saying, “‘Attack’ implies that this is just a childish feud. Please call it ‘rebuttal.’” Yoosung then gleefully urges Jumin to take revenge, to which Jumin replies, “Even that word revenge is childish… god.”Jumin’s wealth comes up frequently in conversation, but Jumin himself almost never brings it up on purpose. It’s more likely that another character will bring it up to give him grief over it. Jaehee, for instance, scolds Jumin for having a private gym that’s vacant twenty-three and a half hours a day. She says all he does is run on the treadmill and adds, “I would hate to see all those fancy machines go to waste.” On another occasion, when Jumin has actually had an enjoyable encounter with his father for once, he posts a picture of the pen his father gave him. Zen immediately gives him grief because the pen has a large diamond in it. Jumin first points out that it may not be a real diamond but then admits that his father certainly paid the price for one. He finally concludes, “I never meant to brag about the diamond. I just wanted to emphasize how considerate my father was. … It’s a bit overpriced for a pen, I agree.”However, Jumin inadvertently brings his wealth up in many ways that indicate how out of touch he is with the lives of regular people. At one point, he joins a conversation speculating about Seven’s maid. Yoosung wonders if Seven’s maid also cooks meals, and Jumin says, “I’ll tell you one thing. Unless you hire a chef, food tastes all the same.” On another occasion, when Yoosung needs an exterminator, Jumin assumes that they will come out right away: “Shouldn’t they provide immediate service?” When Jaehee says Yoosung will need to make an appointment, Jumin counsels, “They’ll come if you pay more,” a technique Jaehee says she sees Jumin use constantly in order to get what he wants. And again on the subject of eating, which comes up a lot, Jumin opines, “A meal is one of the easiest things to purchase with money. If you don’t have enough money, you can just cook. Or you can hire a nutritionist and a chef.”Because of Jumin’s cutthroat business instinct, he occasionally enjoys engaging in “gotcha” dialogue where he can leave his conversational “opponent” at a disadvantage, like the chat exchanges featuring Zen. At one point, Jaehee doesn’t want MC to go meet Zen when Zen breaks his ankle, even though Zen has asked MC to come see him. Instead, Jaehee wants to go herself. Jumin asks what the difference would be between Jaehee going and MC going. Jaehee says she would go in an official capacity, with security guards and a company car. Jumin counters, “Then all I have to do is send MC a limo?” Jumin then calls Jaehee out for being jealous, leaving her sputtering. She finally says, “Mr. Han;;; You’re not enjoying this, are you?” To which Jumin replies, “A little bit.”Jumin’s love for this kind of “gotcha” moment serves him poorly when he attempts humor. It’s one thing when a clever comeback occurs spontaneously in conversation, but it’s another matter when it occurs as a deliberate joke. Generally speaking, Jumin’s occasional overt attempts at humor fall flat. Jumin laments this fact to MC, saying that he’s “cursed” when it comes to making people laugh. Nevertheless, he himself enjoys his jokes, even when others don’t notice that they were attempts at humor in the first place. In fact, he makes jokes mainly for his own amusement and doesn’t particularly seem to care when others don’t think they’re funny.
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It’s revealed in chat that Jumin lives in a penthouse at the top of a building he owns, and Jumin states in his route that so many services are offered in that building that there’s no reason for MC to leave it. He bought it from his father in order to be near his private garden and small weekend farm. In his route, he invites MC to completely redesign or redecorate the penthouse if it will make her more comfortable there. Nothing much is known about the penthouse except for the fact that Jumin has a large round bed, an expensive fish tank, a private gym, and all the latest gaming equipment, a fact that makes Seven envious. Jumin also mentions a rooftop garden, and he mentions using helicopters as well, so it’s reasonable to assume his penthouse has a helipad. (Many buildings do in Seoul.)Jumin has a personal staff keeping the place—Zen scolds him about “all your maids,” and he admits he has four gardeners working his private garden as well. Also, V and Jumin reminisce at one point about Jumin’s nanny. She used to pick out Jumin’s neckties when he was small. He prefers to have a chef cook for him even at work: at one point, when MC issues the standard Korean greeting, “Did you eat?” Jaehee responds, “The chef just left.” Jumin has multiple cars with drivers, one of which car/driver sets Jaehee uses, calling it a company car. His usual driver is Driver Kim.Outside the front door of Jumin’s penthouse, which he calls “my house,” Jumin has a security room with several security guards, and he introduces MC to his head of security during his route. Jaehee says that she and he are constantly surrounded by security, an understandable precaution since Jumin occasionally talks about kidnapping attempts. Jumin’s guards work for him unquestioningly: in his route, he orders them to turn certain people away and also orders them not to let MC leave even if she tries.Jumin believes Elizabeth the Third has a taste for jewelry, and he has bought her lots of it. He contemplates buying her pink diamonds at one point.
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When I played Jumin’s route in Mystic Messenger, I was flummoxed by how poor the writing was. The writing in the earlier routes—and some of the later routes as well—was quite good. But not here. In particular, I was bothered about how abusive Jumin was in his route. He exhibited many of the behavioral red flags of an abuser. But this strange behavior didn’t match his character as it had been delineated in all the other routes.Here are examples of Jumin’s abusive behavior:
Jumin objectifies MC horribly: “I realized the moment I first saw you which hairstyle would look best… and the dress and shoes too… I even want to give you a private lesson on tea brewing with you dressed like a princess”—“It’s perfect. This music, these fresh flowers, this perfectly paired wine, and you in front of my eyes; the dress I chose, the perfect lip color for your skin, the hairstyle that reveals your ears…”
He insists on calling all the shots in how their relationship will go: “If there’s a need to define this relationship, I’ll tell you first: commonly used terms are ‘lovers,’ ‘couple,’ ‘companion,’ etc.”—“I wish I could put my name tag all over your body to say that you’re mine”—“I want to leave a mark on you so that everyone knows you’re mine”—“Soon you’ll realize that your biggest happiness is being beside me”—“I want to own you completely right now.”
He invades MC’s privacy and overthrows her autonomy, wandering in to watch her sleep in his bed (she wakes up to find him sitting beside her), asking her to go off and change into a dress he wants to see her wear, and even insisting on sleeping in bed with her, warning that if she gives him the slightest encouragement, he’ll attempt to have sex with her, “so please keep a conservative mind.”
He holds MC hostage largely to soothe his own anxiety, although he does mention some sound concerns about MC’s safety (she gets blown up if she ignores him and goes home): “If you try to leave me, I will use every means possible to restrain you.” Not only does he instruct his guards not to let her leave, but he himself uses physical force to keep MC from the door.
He refuses to allow anyone else into the house to check on MC, including having his own assistant turned away: “I don’t want anyone to ruin this perfect moment.”
He demands to hear from MC herself that she will not leave him, even though she barely knows him.
When MC tells him that she is not a substitute for his cat, he becomes genuinely upset.
This abusive behavior doesn’t get better as the story ends, even if the player has managed to obtain the best ending. The last thing Jumin says to MC, after they’ve rushed through a very quick wedding, is to tell her to “put yourself above everyone’s eyes and put me in second place. Now that you are my wife, I want you to choose a selfish life where you put yourself above everything else.” Placing MC on a pedestal and continuing an unequal relationship rather than a more normal give-and-take is a very dangerous sign of future abuse.And this is the best ending MC can get! She only obtains it if she has treated Jumin with great psychological care, alternately being his best friend, his most cautious enemy, and his live-in clinical therapist. Other Jumin-route endings involve MC falling to her death trying to escape the penthouse on her own, getting blown up as mentioned above because she loses all trust in Jumin and insists on returning to the apartment over his well-founded worries, or—in what is probably the most famous ending in all of Mystic Messenger—ending up with her hands tied in red satin restraints, with hobbling chains on her high heel shoes and various tracking devices installed on her body.It would have been one thing if Jumin had previously shown signs of instability, as Ray frequently did, or if Jumin had been given to objectifying women, as his father obviously did. But Jumin hadn’t acted like this at all! So I felt that his route was an insult to a sincere, hard-working, at times mildly boring, and responsible character—the most mature character in the game, to be honest.This overthrow of Jumin’s character really made no sense. The Jumin who participates in all the early routes is basically bulletproof. He’s a survivor of a very unsettled domestic life, and he now has a lot of personal power and options. He’s seen too many greedy, dangerous people cycling in and out of his life to fall apart over yet another greedy, dangerous girlfriend of his father’s. He’s challenged himself too much and put himself through too many highly stressful situations on too many continents to come unglued over the course of a few days.I also felt that even if Jumin melted down in the way the MM writers wrote him, he still wouldn’t act out the red flags of an abuser. Abusers refuse to take personal responsibility and try to force a narrative that everything negative around them is everyone else’s fault, including their own anger and shortcomings. They overthrow the independence of those close to them in order to force those people, puppet-style, to reflect that lie back to them. Therefore, according to an abuser, if a girlfriend or wife gets hit, it’s her fault.But Jumin in all the other routes exhibits the furthest behavior from this sort of lie. He doesn’t even demand the respect he’s legitimately due, as the later chapter on Korean honorifics in this series of background documents demonstrates, and he supports his friend V even when V shuts him out and refuses to support him. Rather than blame anyone else for his hardships or missteps, he insists on taking an oversized share of the responsibility because he’s more comfortable with the idea that he has been the cause of a problem rather than that someone else has controlled him. We see him do this when he caves to MC’s criticism at one point, saying, “My choice.” And he puts up with constant unmerciful teasing about every aspect of his work life, home life, and upbringing without complaining about it or becoming angry.We can also see through Jumin’s treatment of Jaehee that he doesn’t have an abusive personality. Because Jaehee is in such a subservient position, Jumin has the opportunity to be very selfish and controlling with her. But he stays strictly within appropriate work limits himself while giving Jaehee the freedom to move beyond those limits. He allows her to criticize him constantly in the RFA chat, which is essentially a work setting for them both. He frequently bows to her opinion, at one point even stopping a criticism of his father when Jaehee warns him off the topic. And he even allows Jaehee latitude to make fun of him, as she does when teasing him about his underuse of his gym, something an abuser would never allow a dependent person to do.Beyond that, Jumin doesn’t seem like the type to objectify women given that he’s grown up watching his father do just that and watching the women around his father encourage that behavior, which he finds repulsive. I just can’t imagine, after all the beautiful models and actresses he’s turned down, that Jumin is going to rave about a particular lip color or hairstyle on MC, who is described as pretty but not exceptional. I believe he would value other things about their relationship more highly than her looks, even if he thinks she’s cute or pretty. Also, Jumin doesn’t objectify any of the other women he’s close to. He regards Jaehee highly and brags about her intelligence, and he regarded Rika highly as well, based on those women’s personalities and abilities rather than their looks. At one point, he even criticizes Zen for a comment that he feels is borderline objectifying, saying, “That has overtones of sexism.”
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In my story, JUMIN’S ROUTE, BUT WITHOUT THE INSANITY, Jumin refuses to allow MC to leave his apartment because he's afraid of what she'll face from the media and from his sasaeng fans. He isn't exaggerating the danger. The life of a celebrity in Korea contains all the problems mentioned in Mystic Messenger and in my story. None of those dangers are exaggerated for effect. If anything, they are understated. Korea is a small country with a strong sense of community, and the media and the public can feel quite entitled about invading and judging the lives of their celebrities or anyone else who catches their eye. In MM, when Jaehee warns MC not to date Zen for fear of ruining his career, she’s not kidding: in Korea, even kpop idols who have been in the public eye for ten or fifteen years don’t dare to date for fear of upsetting their fans. Korean fan clubs have driven idols out of the business entirely for dating or marrying and have continued to trash any attempts at a comeback even years later. Fan clubs tend to be very well organized and have gone so far as to buy stock in media companies in order to have a say over the careers of their celebrities.Sasaeng fans (obsessed fans bent on invading the lives of celebrities) can also be well organized in Korea. They may take jobs in the travel industry or at airports (possibly the way Jumin’s schedule has been leaked at the end of his official route). They may even get hired on at credit card companies in order to gain access to celebrities’ information, which they then release to other sasaeng fans and the media. They may assault or sexually assault celebrities in order to become memorable. Sasaengs have caused dangerous car crashes similar to the one that caused the death of Princess Diana, and they have bugged celebrities’ hotel rooms and restrooms. Sasaengs have broken into celebrity dorms and homes and have used high-powered cameras and telescopes to watch celebrities through windows. Groups of sasaengs have mobbed locations where celebrities are expected to be, stopping traffic, clogging up public spaces, and overwhelming security. This is particularly a problem at airports, as the end of Jumin’s route indicates. A kpop idol who has been nothing but sweet to his fans for years discovered not long ago that someone had poisoned the food he’d been handed at a meet-and-greet. He was so shaken that he moved out of his home to a safer location.But dangerous mob behavior isn’t just limited to the sasaengs. Negative media stories have caused spontaneous mobs to besiege Korean celebrities or even regular people. In Mystic Messenger, when damaging rumors come out about Zen, he says he is embarrassed to admit it, but “I’m even afraid to go outside right now” because there is an angry crowd at his door.In Zen’s route, Jumin is able to remain unfazed in spite of terrible press and clamoring mobs. He reacts with mild annoyance at one point when his driver tells him that the reporters downstairs “aren’t going away anytime soon.” But Jumin can do this only because he has the money to pay for his own physical and emotional protection. He remarks, “I don’t react to false rumors. That’s a rule my father taught me.” But Zen, who doesn’t have this luxury, responds, “Jumin, you’re lucky. … You have your dad and your money to back you up. … Honestly, I’m jealous that you can afford to be that confident.”The media treatment of so-called gold-diggers (women seen as preying on the wealthy or on celebrities in order to become famous) is particularly harsh. In one kdrama, a chaebol heir sexually assaults a regular single mother, leaving her hospitalized. She makes a police report, and the chaebol heir comes down to the station and simply denies her story. Almost immediately, the entire country hounds the poor woman. Groups of her neighbors stand outside her door to yell at her and harass her young child. Within days, she decides that her best course of action is suicide.Although Zen doesn’t specifically say that he’s contemplating suicide after receiving career-ending negative press, that’s the message between the lines when he says, “I just don’t see a way out.” Even very famous Korean celebrities have chosen to end their lives because everything they do gets hashed out in the media and on social media, often in brutal ways. The unending torrent of abuse can darken their lives to the point that they just can’t carry on. (And here we will pause for a moment to think of Hara, Sulli, SHINee’s Kim Jonghyun, and Park Dong-ik, star of the Oscar-winning film Parasite.) There is a strong desire in Korean media and society to find someone to blame for anything negative. When low-paid journalists desperate for Internet clicks feed this desire for judgment, vengeance, or chastisement, the results can be shocking. Public attention is particularly cruel when young women attempt to step out of their assigned or traditional roles.But suicide is a problem throughout Korean culture, indicating that the stress of all that high achievement carries a cost. For the past two decades, South Korea has had the highest rate of suicide among all developed countries. For the past decade, suicide has been the number one cause of death among Korean people under age 40, and the numbers are still going up. An entire fantasy kdrama, Tomorrow, is dedicated to illustrating the pressure of life in Korean society and the problem of suicide. It places special emphasis on the way Korea tends to treat its sexual abuse victims (victim-shaming them) and its female celebrities (hounding them for having the slightest perceived flaw). We can only hope that Korean citizens are paying attention and that they will be able to shift the dynamic in their culture for the better.
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In my fanfic, MC’s name is Cho Ara. (In Korean, this means something like “how wonderful.”) Since this is a fanfic that I wrote relatively quickly, I borrowed the characters of Henry and of Ara and her two friends, Moon and Dallia, straight from kdramas.Everything Ara says about her life and everything Jumin says about her friends come from Ara’s kdrama. I didn’t make any of those details up (including her father’s tendency to flip the table over to win an argument and his advice after her college graduation that she come home and pick lettuce in Namhae). The only thing I did was change her field of study.The number of college-educated women willing to marry in South Korea has fallen sharply in recent years, largely because of the problems Ara states. One third of Korean women in their thirties are unmarried, and they are voicing stiff resistance to the unpaid work expected from a Korean wife, who according to tradition should take care of her elderly in-laws as well as her house, family, and job, doing four times the average unpaid work her husband does. Government leaders bent on preserving tradition (for instance, refusing to sanction or regulate childcare) have left many women determined to resist matrimony altogether. Consequently, the birthrate has fallen catastrophically to well below replacement levels.There is a large difference between typical sexual conduct in America and typical sexual conduct in Korea, where PDA is uncommon, overt sexual behavior is still scandalous, unmarried mothers are a 1950’s-style disaster, and many young professional people are much too busy even to think about dating. Family is at the center of Confucianism, so traditional attitudes toward sexual behavior tend to be colored with conservative Confucian beliefs.Koreans in general often seem to exhibit stronger willpower than Americans do in their day-to-day lives. Jumin’s and Jaehee’s work behavior seems extreme to Americans but not to Koreans. This is a country where a businessperson may well routinely put in a twelve-hour day and then more unpaid overtime, as well as devoting weekends to company-sponsored events. High-school students there regularly devote every day from eight in the morning till one in the morning to structured studies to prepare for college entrance exams. All of these factors work together to create a culture that discourages promiscuity, and one in which stress is so high that suicide is all too common. Ara talks about how her work/life balance will fall apart if she tries to date. She’s protecting herself from more stress as well as she can.Because of this, a number of Korean celebrities have confessed that sitcom or drama roles have furnished them with their first kisses. In the kdrama Ara comes from, her character hasn’t had any romantic experience or even been kissed when the drama starts—and she’s seven years older than my Ara, thirty years old! A romantic opportunity just hasn’t come up for her before because she’s been putting all her energy into her studies and career.But, as Yoosung says in MM, the rich are really different. Jumin’s experience with a prostitute in Paris is based on the real-life story I learned from the son of an incredibly wealthy vice president of an international corporation. This young man was an American raised in Belgium, not a Korean. But in that real-life story, when that American “chaebol” heir’s father sent him off to his first sexual experience with a prostitute, he was fourteen years old!Jumin has had an international upbringing, so his idea of romance is closer to ours, something Ara often finds shocking or unsettling. He also seamlessly switches between Korean and English customs and manners throughout the story, depending on context.Ara and her friends do karaoke together because it’s a common nightlife activity in Korea (although it seems to be dying out these days). Koreans will rent a private karaoke room (noraebang) where they can sing with their friends. It used to be hugely popular because bosses would take their employees out drinking and end up at the noraebang, but laws intended to limit enforced drinking and sexual harassment have caused a decline in the number of noraebang. Still, when Koreans think about what to do in their spare time, especially to destress after work or class, karaoke is likely to come to mind, and there are still over twelve thousand noraebang in South Korea in which to drink soju and belt out tunes.Plastic surgery is big business in South Korea, but for reasons completely different from here. We see plastic surgery largely as a way to forestall aging. Koreans view beauty not as something to admire but as something to achieve, so they use plastic surgery to correct facial flaws. This isn’t just for the celebrity world, although countless kpop idols and actors have undergone it, usually at the command of their agencies (whether they like it or not). Plastic surgery is for professional people too. Companies in Korea often demand a headshot along with a resume, and people not perceived as beautiful enough can have a hard time getting hired. Often, parents will hold out a nose job, double eyelid surgery, or a chin shave as a reward for excellent grades or college entrance.Jumin indirectly brags in the MM chat that he hasn’t needed plastic surgery: he’s a “naturally handsome” corporate heir. But at one point, when Zen (who also has had no surgery) gets too obnoxious about his beauty—in Jumin’s opinion, at least—Jumin points out that he could pay for all the beauty he wants if he felt like it, and he’s talking about plastic surgery there.Engagement rings are a fairly new phenomenon in Korea and are much more common among the young than among their parents’ generation, something that comes up when Chairman Han sees Ara’s ring.Ara is Catholic in my story because Catholicism is an important part of Mystic Messenger. Out of the seven past and present members of the RFA, four are/were Catholic: Rika, V, Jaehee, and Seven. Catholicism has experienced explosive growth in South Korea in the last twenty years and enjoys a strongly positive perception in the country, with polling data showing it to the most trusted religion, winning that spot over Protestantism and Buddhism in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that both those religions have a larger presence in the population.And Koreans have every right to view their Catholic heritage with pride. Korea remains unique in the history of the Catholic Church because it is the only self-evangelizing country in the world. Koreans learned about Catholicism in China and brought the religion home themselves in the 1780s rather than wait for missionaries to find a way to come to them. The first Catholic priests didn’t arrive until the 1830s (and were promptly tortured and put to death, as they knew they would be). Koreans are also proud of the fact that so many native-born martyrs were willing to die for their Catholic religion, with at least 8,000 *known* Korean martyrs dying in the 19th century alone, many of them as late as 1866. The actual number of martyrs is doubtless considerably higher.Although Ara is Catholic by religion, she reveals through her actions and thoughts that her family practices the rites of ancestor worship (Jesa). To honor the ancestors of her new family, Ara performs keunjeol, the big bow, something sometimes done at the future in-law dinner and possibly also the wedding, and also at Lunar New Year’s and at Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving, more or less), and on deceased ancestors’ Jesa days. Jumin’s family doesn’t practice Jesa, but like any Korean, he knows all about it and alludes to it in conversation.The Catholic Church has allowed its Korean members the option of practicing Jesa since 1939, although Protestant religions still do not. Again, Jesa is based on Confucian teachings. The general idea is that the souls of dead ancestors continue to watch over the family for several generations, and so these ancestors have the right to be honored by their descendants: this is another way to practice Confucian respect for elders and to preserve society in its essentials down the generations. Jesa dovetails neatly with the Catholic belief that the “faithful departed” (those who die in God’s grace) have the freedom to remain interested in current events and to pray for help from God on behalf of their descendants or anyone else who asks for their help.Generally speaking, Koreans cover up more skin than Americans do. For women, shoulders generally shouldn’t be bare, and cleavage mustn’t show. Female idols will wear the shortest of miniskirts, but this isn’t always well tolerated in public when regular women do it. Korean men may also wear more clothes, so it isn’t that surprising that a Korean man would choose to swim in a swim shirt and walk around in a full pajama set, particularly if he knows that high-powered cameras are waiting to photograph him through his own home’s windows. In Korean shows, the amount of time men spend onscreen without shirts is often limited to a couple of minutes out of a full twenty-four-hour-long miniseries, and that couple of minutes is presented as a huge romantic tease.In Korean, “Did you eat?” is a perfectly normal way to greet someone—the equivalent of “How are you?” The phrase comes up so often in Mystic Messenger that it’s more or less its own meme. Nor is this an idle question: in the chats, if MC admits that she hasn’t eaten yet, any and every character will express concern and give advice not to skip meals and to look after her health. So I couldn’t resist using it in my story.On the other hand, Koreans often don’t eat three full meals a day like we do. They will have one large meal or one large and one small meal, and that’s how the Koreans eat in my story.Korean culture is all about who’s older and therefore more responsible in any given relationship. In any given group, the oldest will very likely take on a special responsibility toward all the other members, and they in turn will—or at least should—repay that oldest member with respect. So, in my story, when Ara points out to Jumin that he’s older than she is, she’s asking for a certain kind of protection and consideration from him. In Mystic Messenger, Jumin is aware of his senior role within the RFA and takes it seriously, particularly stressing his “big brother” role to the “maknae” of the group, Yoosung, so it makes sense that he would take Ara’s comment seriously as well.In my story, Jumin’s nanny graduated from Norland College, making her one of the best of the best. Norland Nannies have served the royal family and the super-rich around the world for generations.Koreans love their coffee. Seoul has over 18,000 coffee shops, and kdramas are full of scenes in them (product placement!). Ara enjoys drinking black coffee, and Henry is brewing that coffee (not substituting espresso for it) since she talks about how lovely and smooth it is. But he also has an espresso machine, and Koreans do drink lots and lots of Americanos, iced and otherwise, followed by lattes and then more fancy drinks.The denizens of Seoul are very clothes-conscious, and they love all the same famous designer brands we do, something I made use of in my story. I also put several pieces of jewelry into my chapters. In order to be sure I was describing jewelry worthy of a billionaire’s attention, I chose only pieces of jewelry that I could find in real life. Ara’s ring costs $19,000, and so does the tiger’s eye necklace, a vintage piece by a known jewelry designer. The diamond, emerald, and sapphire collar costs a whopping $98,000.Confucian customs govern Korean drinking. It’s impolite to pour your own drink but very polite to pour for others. Pouring a drink using both hands is especially polite. (One hand supports the other at the forearm, mimicking the behavior of traditional Koreans pulling back the wide sleeve of hanbok as they poured.) It also isn’t polite to look someone in the eye as you drink, particularly if that person is an elder.Wedding behavior in Korea differs from that in America. Brides don’t have bridesmaids, and they will often go through two different ceremonies, or maybe even three: there may be a church wedding and then a reception-style ceremony at a wedding hall, where there will be a master of ceremonies conducting a series of entertainments. But if a bride and groom don’t have a religion, they will just go through the wedding hall event, often saying their vows there. The mothers of bride and groom come to that event in hanbok, and the bride and groom have separate rooms in which to greet their friends before going into the hall together to greet all the guests. Traditionally, the parents of bride and groom can invite as many guests as they want, and everyone eats a huge amount. Tons of posed photos are taken of the bride and groom with their friends and family.The job of the wedding master of ceremonies is considered quite important, and it can be a lot of work too if the wedding is long and has lots of entertainment (singers and such). One wonders whom Jumin would choose to be his MC. Would he have Zen do it even though Zen’s always so rude to him? Zen does host the RFA parties, so he would do a good job.Perhaps on the same day (with guests present), or perhaps the next day or a couple of days later (just with family present), another small ceremony (pyebaek) is held, in which bride and groom both wear hanbok and the parents toss them dates and chestnuts to see how many children they will have. The groom may also carry the bride and then mother-in-law piggyback at this ceremony. It’s not required anymore, but Jumin might choose to do it as a bonding experience with his in-laws. Or he might not. I can’t see him enjoying it.However, in Korea, a marriage is binding only if bride and groom sign the marriage certificate and file it, along with their family documents, at city hall.The dinners with the future in-laws are incredibly important. Even today, Korean weddings may not happen at all if a parent disapproves. The gifts given by a future son-in-law are quite important too. (The ones in my story are the traditional ones.) And the dinner between the in-laws is imperative. Traditionally, Koreans may consider the bride and groom to be married once the formal dinner between in-laws has occurred. This wouldn’t be the case for a Catholic, but it can be for nonreligious Koreans.
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The Korean language is all about respect. Every single sentence reveals whether you respect the subject, whether you respect the object, and whether you respect the listener. This is one of the reasons the US State Department ranks Korean as one of the most difficult languages in the world for English speakers to learn.Again, this respect is Confucian: respect of younger to older (even slightly older), of subordinate to superior, of child to parent, of colleague to colleague, of waiter to customer, or even of announcer to audience. It’s very important to this day. For instance, there are hot, trendy kpop groups that have performed together for years, and the members are only a few years apart in age from one another, but the younger members still are not allowed to use informal speech to the older members. They must use speech that shows their respect.One popular Korean comedy/interview show comes with the premise that the interviewers and interviewees are all in the same grade of high school together, complete with school desks, lectern, and school uniforms. This is nothing more than an elaborate ploy to do away with the honorific speech requirements. It allows everyone on the show to speak (and act) informally, regardless of their age or social level.There are four levels of honorific speech commonly used in Korean today, and three of them (with variations) show up in the Mystic Messenger chat and in phone calls:Formal polite speech—This speech is used by complete strangers wishing to be extra polite, by waiters, by business people in formal settings, and by Jaehee, who would use it to Jumin anyway, but who carries that “I’m still at work” vibe to her online presence by using it with everyone on the MM chat. She always calls Jumin “Mr. Director” in Korean (as opposed to the English translation, “Mr. Han”), and she calls MC by a job title as well, something common in the Korean business setting. Because of this, I’ve had my characters refer to Jumin as “Director Han” for the most part, rather than Mr. Han.Polite-casual speech—This speech is very common and is used between people who consider themselves more or less equals but not good friends, such as strangers or business colleagues in informal settings. It is also being used these days by younger to older speakers. Many Koreans continue to use this speech with one another even when they’ve worked together or known one another for years. Often, someone has to make a deliberate proposal for their speech to move to the informal level in order to change this habit. In one kdrama, for instance, a woman gets blind drunk and chews a colleague out for still using polite-casual speech with her, implying that they aren’t actually friends; the next day, when he uses informal speech, she’s surprised because of course she can’t remember what she said. Other kdrama drunk scenes (Korea has a huge binge-drinking culture) are interesting to watch because almost-falling-down drunk characters will still be switching between informal and polite-casual speech depending on which other drunk person at the table they’re talking to.Yoosung and Seven use polite-casual to MC and to Jaehee. They both continue to use polite-casual while they’re romancing MC in their routes; in fact, Seven is still using polite-casual to MC even as he’s asking her to sleep with him at the end of his DLC. Yoosung uses polite-casual to everyone in the chat, as a good maknae (youngest member of the group) should, but Seven uses informal speech with Zen and Jumin, part of his typical sass. Neither man calls him on the fact that he should by rights be using more respectful speech, but it may add to their perception, as Zen voices it, that “Seven is a freak.” Seven does honor Zen and Jumin with the proper “friendly-respectful” terms of their names, though, using “Zen Hyung” and "Juminy Hyung.” These roughly translate to Big Brother Zen and Big Brother Juminy in English. Yoosung calls Jaehee “Jaehee Noona,” Big Sister Jaehee, but Seven calls her the Korean equivalent of Ms. Jaehee. One wonders if this helps or hurts his tense relationship with her.V uses polite-casual when talking to MC, even though he is much older than she is. Is this another way to put distance between himself and the RFA? Or is he just trying to be kind and show her respect to put her at ease? V uses a “close friend” ending with Jumin’s name, calling him Jumin-ah.Informal speech—Because this level of speech is used by family members close in age, friends, and lovers, beautiful boy Zen uses it immediately to flirt outrageously with MC; he calls her pet names from the get-go, and even if MC develops a relationship with another player, Zen continues to use this “friend” level of speech with her throughout. (Of course, he is also older than she is.) But this isn’t unusual for Zen: he uses this informal level of speech with everyone except Jaehee. To show Jaehee added respect, he uses polite-casual to her, and she of course is using even more formal speech back to him, as she does with everyone on the chat. Zen’s informal speech actually sounds really sweet and cute and doesn’t translate into English at all, which is a shame because English makes Zen sound more uncaring and narcissistic than he really is.It’s no surprise that Saeran the hacker also uses informal speech. After all, he truly is a freak.Jumin uses informal speech as well, but for a different reason than Zen’s. Because of his higher social standing and business position, it’s probably natural for him to use this informal speech with many people in his life, except of course with his father and with other rich people he’s trying to persuade to close deals with him. Jumin’s use of informal speech also indicates that he is taking a leadership role in the RFA, and he talks about his duty to look after the other members, regularly calling MC or chatting with her to check on her health and give her advice about eating right and going to bed at a reasonable time. (At one point, Jumin breaks the fourth wall, telling MC, “Don’t play the game too late.”) Jumin carries this impression of taking charge of the younger members even further with Yoosung, the maknae: he shows his big-brotherly role to Yoosung by using a friend ending, ‘-ah,’ on Yoosung’s name. This isn’t even an ending that he uses with V, although V uses it with him.It’s worth noting that Zen not only uses informal speech to Jumin, but he also refuses to follow Jumin’s name with the title “Hyung,” Big Brother, even though Jumin has that right. This can be construed as rather rude, and television interviews even of young celebrities have screeched to a halt while a slightly older person chews out a younger person for doing it or something similar, such as breaking into informal speech from polite-casual, often with the chilling question, “Are we friends?” But Jumin never seems bothered by it when Zen does it and never demands appropriate respect from him.I think this is a sign that Jumin and Zen are actually closer friends than their bickering would imply, and it also shows that Jumin has the self-assurance not to get caught up in the small stuff. I think it also indicates that Jumin’s self-respect comes only from his own opinion of himself. He hates to be flattered, so he doesn’t mind Zen’s rudeness. I do think Jumin values Zen more than Zen realizes.All this honorific usage gives us important clues about MC’s age, which is never stated directly but which can be guessed with accuracy. Yoosung, aged 21, calls MC “Noona,” Big Sister, even though he can romance her in his own route. But Seven, aged 22, doesn’t, and neither do the rest of the characters. This tells us she must be 22, like Seven.In my story, I’ve tried to give some sense of the Korean honorific levels by making the speech of staff members (and particularly the butler, Henry) very formal, to mimic Jaehee’s formal-polite Korean. Meanwhile, Jumin’s style is more casual. Henry’s speech is the classic speech of English butlers in the early 1900s, but that made sense to me because they were in exactly the same sort of social structure that Henry finds himself in now. Ara uses this same formal-polite speech back to Henry, as a young person to an elder, and I’ve tried to show this by having her call him Uncle and by having her be more on her best manners with Henry than she even is with Jumin.Athough it’s impossible to tell in my story, I imagine that Jumin and Ara probably carry forward their chat behavior, with Jumin using informal speech and Ara using polite-casual back to him up to the last few pages or even beyond, not that it would bother Jumin if she switched to informal since he isn’t troubled by Zen’s and Seven’s linguistic “sass.”Only one person in my story uses informal speech with Jumin when he doesn’t think she should, and he calls her on it. But in English, I can only show this by having him reject the “-ah” ending tacked onto his name.
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It can be difficult to transition from chat dialogues to a fully narrated novel, and it can be difficult to transition from graphic-novel-style illustrations to a living character. In order to visualize Jumin interacting with MC in the scenes of my story, I had to be able to picture them both as normal human beings, with changes of expression, characteristic gestures and movements, and certain tones of voice. Since Jumin and MC are Korean, I ransacked kdramas to find actors I could study as my models for them.I'm sure every fan of Mystic Messenger will have their own Jumin, but I settled on Lee Soo-Hyuk. He's tall and slender, with a lean face and thick black hair (although it's usually cut shorter than Jumin's). He looks so good in a suit that designers and corporations on multiple continents have paid him millions of dollars to wear their suits for them, along with their watches, shoes, perfumes, shirts, jeans, skincare products, and anything else modeling can sell. He frequently plays aristocratic or chaebol (wealthy corporate) heir characters like Jumin, and he brings dignity and elegance to those characters. He is capable of intimidating the other characters around him with his calm, arrogant expression and his vicious glares, and he gives orders with an easy and convincing authority in a low voice that some consider hypnotic. I could easily imagine Kang Jaehee reproaching a Lee Soo-Hyuk character for his expressionless face, and I certainly think he would be capable of charming rich women into signing his contracts, or anything else he might want them to sign.Because Lee Soo-Hyuk can look so intimidating, he usually plays villains or antiheroes. In real life, he has a ridiculously adorable smile and infectious laugh, but he almost never gets to show this off in his acting roles. Here are a couple of videos of Lee Soo-Hyuk playing an antihero, the second male lead in a show called High School King of Savvy. As second lead, he won't get the girl, but he refuses to give up without a fight.(Please note that these links do not open in a new window. You will need to use your browser's "back" arrow to return to this chapter.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaN0fpP0Kbs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU0NU1v0aX8
In this show, Lee Soo-Hyuk's character is a director, like Jumin, and the son of the CEO as well, although unfortunately, his father hates him. In the second of these two videos, even though he's drunk, he manages a deferential bow to his furious father, fulfilling the norms of filial piety, just as Jumin would expect. Incidentally, the music to these videos is Darling, by BigBang's Taeyang. It's a great breakup song and perfectly matches the mood of Lee Soo-Hyuk's character in these clips.I mentioned Lee Soo-Hyuk's mesmerizing voice. Here's a clip from that same drama, showing off his voice. Unfortunately, I can't find this scene with English subititles, but it's fairly easy to follow. The female protagonist walks in on Lee Soo-Hyuk's character begging his father on his knees to visit his mother, who is sick in the hospital and who just isn't getting any better. The father angrily refuses, and Lee Soo-Hyuk's character, beside himself with stress, first gets into a car wreck and then has a fullblown panic attack. The female protagonist won't let him drive, and he ends up yelling at her to leave him alone, after which he lets her drive him home. When they reach his building, he asks her please to stay with him for a while, but she has an appointment and refuses. He realizes she's leaving to be with his rival, the young man he was punching in the earlier videos here, and he continues his string of bad luck and bad decisions with yet another bad decision, whereupon the female protagonist slaps him and leaves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOP8i3B5cDI&t
As I said, Lee Soo-Hyuk's character here is an antihero, not a villain, and he winds up being a sympathetic character in this drama. He is friends with both the male and female leads by the end. In his last scene with the male lead—the man he was fighting with—that young man has come to ask him for advice and has brought a fried chicken dinner in payment. Lee Soo-Hyuk's character, older by several years, dispenses the advice in true Jumin fashion, causing his young friend to say, half admiring and half scoffing, "Wow, are you God or something?" The scene ends with them both wanting the last drumstick, whereupon the male lead begs Lee Soo-Hyuk's character for it, using all of the Korean variations on the honorific term, "Big Brother," one after another, until Lee Soo-Hyuk's character finally relents and lets him have it. We could easily picture the very same scene taking place between Jumin and Yoosung, reinforcing that important Korean role of the elder male looking after the younger male which we see so often in the interactions of those two.I pictured MC (Ara in my story) as the popular actress, Park Bo-Young. She's short, cute, and fearless, a Korean Everygirl who really is MC's doppelganger and who handles tragedy and comedy alike with good humor and intelligence. In one kdrama, Doom at Your Service, Park Bo-Young's character even has MC's hairstyle. Lee Soo-Hyuk is in this drama too, as Park Bo-Young's boss, again playing a chaebol heir. But this time, instead of dazzling the world in well-cut business suits, he's slumming in expensive but baggy designer track suits, working half-heartedly as an editor for a small company simply because he feels that he shouldn't be completely idle. Also, the company is located downstairs from his penthouse home, so he can commute to work via elevator.In this scene, Park Bo-Young's character has just discovered that her former boss is actually filthy rich, and she handles it with typical aplomb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kzHx1GElwA&t
For those few people (any people??) who enjoyed the previous chapter on honorifics, I'll just add that Lee Soo-Hyuk's character here, even though he's dressed in sweatpants, is still a chaebol to the core. He immediately notices that his former and future employee has dropped the honorific speech he's used to hearing. This is one of the reasons he has stopped working for the company owned by the boss both of these characters had worked for before. That man had a tendency to burst out with very rude Korean, the equivalent of saying, "Hey, boy!" to an employee. Park Bo-Young's character is indeed using sentence endings that may indicate that one is talking to onesself. They are endings that one also uses when one is writing in a diary. But after Lee Soo-Hyuk's character calls her on it, she reverts to polite-casual speech, more or less. He, on the other hand, as her elder, her former and future boss, and her social superior, uses informal speech throughout, just as Jumin uses with MC during his phone calls with her. This doesn't mean Lee Soo-Hyuk's character is disrespecting Park Bo-Young's character, nor is Jumin disrespecting MC. It just means that they're behaving appropriately, taking their proper place in the social structure.