Review of Flowers of Fire by Hawon Jung

*Flowers of Fire* by Hawon Jung (2023). Published by *BenBella Books.*

As a graduate student, one of my core research interests has been tracing the thread of representation of women in Korean literature.

Next semester I’ll be even be doing guided research with a mentor on colonial women’s literature in Korea, and how depictions of women in translation worked in tandem with the male gaze in art and the creation of the “New Woman” in Korean society during the twenties and thirties. It’s an extension of the work I did in my colonialism class in fall 2022, where I looked at Japanese imperialism as a whole as a prism of cultural genocide against Koreans.

Anyways, I saw someone post Flowers of Fire when it first came out, and I was intrigued immediately by the prospects of what the book entailed. Korean feminism is always a fascinating subject even in the modern era, and I was interested in how this book was using firsthand accounts while being backed up by the facts.

It’s worth noting the book is in English too, so I was curious to see if anything was going to be lost in translation in the process of making this more accessible for an English speaking audience. So I requested it at my local library immediately and devoured the book one morning before going to work.

Onwards with my review!

An inside look at the feminist movement growing in South Korea during the past couple of decades.

Flowers of Fire is only about three hundred pages throughout its content, and that’s including the vast amount of bibliography that’s cited at the end of the book.

Jung chooses a specific approach in presenting the information to the readers: each section is centralized around the experience of one woman who was prominent in the feminist movement in recent years, and instead of presenting it in an interview format, Jung instead provides it in a narrative. For example, one of the earliest examples is of a prosecutor who went public with a superior sexually assaulting her years before, and her case of going public opens the floodgates seen throughout this traced history in the book.

We learn pretty on that the title, Flowers of Fire, refers to the Korean word for flame, which is bul kkut. That translates to fire flower, and the deeper meaning behind this choice is that women in South Korea are often referred to as flowers. They are often seen as decorative objects and are expected to remain quiet and compliant. If one goes against the grain, it could be pretty damning for the woman in question. And as we see throughout the book, the laws and system are against women who speak out.

Spycams are a big part of this narrative, as South Korean women tend to be targets of the country’s thriving tech culture. Whether it’s bathrooms or someone cutting the holes in the blinds of a girl’s window, videos of women peeing, stripping, or living their everyday lives manages to find its way onto the darkest corners of the Internet. Some find their lives completely ruined by these videos, while others make it their mission to try and alleviate the wrongs that have happened.

But the legal system, too, is dominated by men and it’s not so easy to try and fight other men. Throughout the book, Jung documents cases in which women try to fight against revenge videos, doxxing, or being taken advantage of, but the men who committed the crimes get away with it often with only a slap on the wrist.

It’s the classic example of laughing it off and just saying boys will be boys. But for many of the women depicted in the book, they are not going to give up.

Even when denied funding, resources, or they have to hide their faces when going to protests, the strength of women only continues to grow. There are some powerful accounts about the protests and how women share their stories, crying as they realize they are not completely alone in the world when it comes to their experiences.

As when learn for many countries in the world, and something I am acutely aware of as an American national, whenever the small wins are made, as seen throughout the book, there’s always a switch back on the pendulum.

In Korea’s case, that’s electing an anti-feminist President, the one who’s currently in office when I am writing this. That marks a devastating moment after reading about the wins and victories by the people and organizations in the book, and to realize that the people who want to suppress women are winning yet again.

If there’s anything to take away from the facts and admirable women described, there’s something to be hopeful for in the future.

Overall Thoughts

I think Flowers of Fire is a really good foundation for learning about the feminist movement in South Korea, even if you’re already knee deep in the research about it already. I had a good idea for what to expect from it and knew quite a bit of the content covered throughout the book, but I still learned quite a bit as well from the firsthand accounts.

The mundane experiences of people who were once ordinary, someone you’d pass on the street or glance at while on a commute, tell us a little bit more about the world and society we live in.

I think this was a wonderful book and humanizes a lot of the women who, as we see in the text, get demonized for speaking out about what happened to them. This is definitely a must read from my bookshelf!

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