by Yun Ko-Eun
‘You’ve committed a foul,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have to remove you from the team’s current project. Why don’t you focus on the maintenance of existing packages for now?’
The work Yona was assigned that afternoon would normally have been given to an intern.
‘Shall we have a company dinner tomorrow, Manager Ko?’ asked Kim the next day, using Yona’s more formal title. He didn’t really want her opinion and didn’t wait for her response before going on. ‘Everyone is busy, but that’s exactly why we need to relax for a few hours. Let’s not get samgyeopsal this time—let’s try something a bit more special. Go ask everyone what they want to eat.’
Because of Kim and his love for documents, Yona’s team ran out of A4 paper much faster than other teams. Recently, they’d been using up paper so quickly that they had to print everything double-sided. Yona asked her colleagues for their opinions about the dinner menu, and she typed up the results on a page that she printed out and brought to Kim. The document and the information it contained dissipated into irrelevance as soon as Kim brashly said, ‘Actually let’s just eat samgyeopsal.’
Yona spent the next several days performing similar tasks. If she wasn’t told to man the phone, she was stationed at the copy machine. She was so bored that she started going on to silly websites, like one that calculated the user’s date of death. When she clicked the death calculator button after inputting her personal details, she didn’t react in shock: all she thought was, ‘Oh, I guess I’ve done this before.’
Yona knew this screen with its quickly decreasing numbers. She had probably visited the website a few years ago on a day similar to today. That was when the monitor’s digital clock had begun to count down. The clock, measuring the passing of time to the second, even the fraction of a second, broadcast Yona’s slowly extinguishing life. Over the past few years, during which time she had forgotten about the site, the clock hadn’t stopped once. Today, once again, Yona had satisfied her sporadic curiosity about life expectancy. She marvelled at the numbers shrinking before her.
Yona sat in front of the timer that would someday reach zero and considered how a single second could decide one’s fate. Hadn’t Yona heard that whenever a fatal fire broke out at a New Year’s Eve party, most bodies were found at the cloakroom? If a fire started, if the earth began to shake, if an alarm sounded, you were supposed to stop everything you were doing and run outside. Small actions like looking for your coat or grabbing your bag, like saving the data on your laptop or pressing buttons on your phone: they divided the living and the dead.
Yona’s current situation was a disaster, and she was going to have to treat it like one of the disasters she researched for Jungle. She needed to look back at the actions that had driven her into the situation. Maybe it was a seemingly insubstantial event, but one that she couldn’t overlook, that had led her to a yellow card. She couldn’t clearly remember the time before Kim’s sexual harassment, but she knew the origin of her current malaise was definitely Kim. After leaving work, Yona sent an email to Human Resources. She received a reply shortly after. Choi, from HR, said that she would buy Yona dinner.
Choi was one of the rare older women at Jungle. She didn’t seem like an employee, and it was easy to talk to her. When Choi asked Yona what she wanted to eat, Yona felt at ease. Choi paid attention to simple things like choosing the menu for their meal. Yona decided on Pyeongyang-style cold noodles and boiled beef. After asking Yona if she’d like any alcohol, Choi ordered a bottle of soju as well. Yona’s lips felt heavy as she began to explain her situation.
‘Like I said in my email,’ she said, ‘it’s about programme team three’s leader, Jo-gwang Kim.’
‘Oh, Jo-schlong!’ Choi exclaimed.
Yona was surprised by Choi’s response, but her familiarity with the issue allowed the conversation to continue smoothly. Choi said that she knew exactly how Yona felt.
‘Kim hasn’t just caused problems once or twice,’ she explained. ‘I’ve had to deal with him a lot.’
‘He must have a lot of enemies, then,’ Yona mused.
‘Well, he does,’ Choi replied, ‘but everyone’s too embarrassed to call themselves his enemy, so there’s no backlash. It’s like a battle between an elephant and an ant.’
‘Have you heard the rumours?’ Yona asked. ‘That the people Kim touches are already on their way out?’
That was what Yona was most curious about.
‘Well,’ said Choi, ‘I’m only familiar with the employees who’ve contacted me for help. But if the victims do end up being fired, I imagine it would be because they spoke up. How many people in the company could fight with Kim and stay?’
Two hours later, two more bottles of soju were empty, and Choi could speak frankly.
‘Yona, I’m telling you this because you remind me of my younger sister,’ she said. ‘Put the issue behind you.’
The soju stung Yona’s throat as she took another sip, but she knew the stinging wasn’t the only thing she had to ignore. Choi said one last thing.
‘This kind of incident happens all the time. You can press charges and turn it into a problem, but in the long term, that will just make things hard for you, Yona. Kim’s a snake: he’s always got away with transgressions. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.’
Yona had a tendency to bob her head when she was listening to someone speak, and the speaker inevitably interpreted the nod as agreement. That’s what happened now. Choi took Yona’s gesture to mean that Yona wasn’t going to go after Kim, and she gave her an approving pat on the shoulder. By the time they had emptied another bottle of soju together, Yona really did agree with Choi’s advice.
Complaints made to HR were guaranteed confidential, but victims who shared a harasser somehow learned about each other’s existence. Several days later, Yona began to receive messages from people who said that they were ‘in solidarity’ with her. She met four of them (three women and one man) after work one evening, at a restaurant quite far from the office. She could only guess how they had found her.
‘We have to use this opportunity to oust Kim,’ one of the other victims exclaimed. ‘We tried to do it two years ago, but we weren’t prepared and lost the case. Since then, we’ve been biding our time. We heard that you’ve been dealing with the same issues as us, Manager Ko, and of course we feel nothing but empathy for you, but we’re also reassured.’
They were asking her to help prosecute Kim, but Yona wasn’t convinced by them. As she listened, Yona wondered if rumours about the targets of Kim’s sexual harassment really were just rumours. Yona was the most senior person at the dinner. The others seemed to draw comfort from the fact that she was a top programming coordinator, but she felt just as burdened by them as she did by Kim. The group told her their stories, and she realised she was lucky that Kim had only targeted her three times. Some of the victims had suffered more explicit molestation and serious physical violations. Compared to them, Yona had scarcely been touched.
The most desperate-looking person at the table spoke directly to Yona.
‘Next Monday, we’re going to hold a protest in the lobby,’ he said. ‘All the victims will be on strike, so it won’t seem like we have anything to hide. We’re not the people who need to be ashamed—it’s that bastard Jo-gwang Kim, isn’t it? Manager Ko, join us, please.’
‘I’m sorry, there’s been a misunderstanding,’ Yona replied nervously. ‘Something unsavoury did happen to me, but I don’t know if I’d call it sexual harassment. I think I misunderstood Mr Kim’s intentions.’
Everyone looked surprised by Yona’s statement. The desperate man spoke again.
‘Team leader, we all saw it.’
This time, it was Yona who was surprised.
‘There are multiple CCTVs in the office,’ he said. ‘You may not realise it, but for all you know, everyone in the building knows what happened to you. If you try to hide something like this, something that everyone’s talking about, our situation onl
y becomes more awkward.’
Yona grew uncomfortable hearing the man say ‘our situation’. She tried to think of a prior engagement as an excuse to escape.
‘We know you’re embarrassed,’ he continued. ‘But that’s even more of a reason for us to pool our strength. We’ll get in touch. You need time to think.’
Yona hurriedly replied, ‘All right,’ and stood up from her chair. She pushed open the door to their private dining room and walked out into the hallway, but she couldn’t find her shoes. The restaurant consisted of private booths lined up against a central corridor, and customers had to remove their footwear before entering the rooms. It seemed that another customer had left wearing Yona’s shoes.
‘This is why you should have put your shoes on the rack,’ the owner of the restaurant grumbled to Yona. ‘Our customers are always losing their possessions, especially recently. What will you do without your shoes?’
The owner made more of a fuss than necessary looking for the missing sneakers and opened the door to the room full of Kim’s victims. One of the people inside offered to go out and buy Yona a pair of shoes to wear to her next destination, but Yona just wanted to get as far away as possible from everyone in there. She forcefully declined and decided to borrow a pair of rough slippers from the restaurant for the time being.
The shoes she had lost were actually part of a pair and a half. The store she’d bought them from offered a second right shoe for free with the purchase of each pair. If only the first two of her three shoes hadn’t been stolen at the restaurant, the remaining survivor wouldn’t have taunted her from the hallway of her apartment when she got home. But the leftover single shoe reminded her of the group of victims and of Kim, and it made her anxious.
Yona received several emails and phone calls after the meal, but she didn’t answer them. She would rather not accept the fact that she’d been sexually harassed. Neither did she want to stand unashamed in the lobby and attack Kim. More specifically, she had no desire to join the group of victims, the has-beens and the losers, the dregs of the company. She thought again of what they had told her about the CCTV, that everyone already knew what had happened to her.
On the day of the protest, Yona ran into them in the lobby, holding a large banner. They didn’t cover their faces, but Yona unwittingly hid hers as she passed by them. The protesters were disciplined within a few days. That night, Yona threw out her third shoe.
‘Please, just take it,’ Yona’s co-worker said, handing her the customer service call. The man on the phone kept asking, ‘Why can’t I?’ over and over again. Why can’t I cancel the trip? was what he meant. ‘Why can’t you hang up?’ Yona wanted to say in response. As she listened to the man speak, she forgot her prepared script for dealing with customers. The person with whom this man was planning to travel had died.
‘Is it a direct relative?’ Yona asked. ‘The person you were going to travel with.’
‘No, she’s not,’ he answered.
‘Let me check our policy and I’ll call you back.’
Yona unnecessarily asked for the man’s phone number a second time and hung up. She didn’t want to, but she had told him that she would check on his case. The cancellation of this trip depended entirely upon Yona. If she decided to, she could cancel without a fee, although of course Jungle officially discouraged doing such a thing. But how could someone go on holiday after his travel partner had died? Yona decided that she would cancel the trip for the man. But that afternoon, a brochure for the Jinhae trip landed on Yona’s desk. Its acknowledgements page bore the name of a co-worker from another team. Yona was filled with such feverish anger that she couldn’t sit inside the office any longer. She left work early, before she could file a cancellation request.
Yona usually took three different subway lines on her way home, even though she could get home by taking only two. Over the past few years, the possible routes between Jungle’s office and her apartment had increased. Stations dotted the city with greater density, new lines had emerged and existing lines had expanded to neighbouring towns. It varied a bit depending on which route she took, but travel time between Yona’s apartment and work kept decreasing. This surprised Yona, because now there were more stations than ever. In spite of her shortened commute, the typical journey home felt lengthier and even more boring than before. It was exhausting, too, that in spite of so many new lines, train cars were always packed during rush hour. The city was satiating its ravenous hunger by pulling more and more people into its belly. Yona’s phone rang. It was the customer who had called her that morning, already forgotten in the midst of Yona’s distress. Didn’t he say that his travel companion had died? She had told him she would cancel his trip, because of course he couldn’t go now. She was angry with the man for following her home by phone, but more than that, she resented Jungle for giving out her mobile phone number so people could call her after hours. Yona gave the man the following verdict:
‘Refunds are only possible in the case of death of the purchaser,’ Yona said as she was swept up into a large crowd. ‘This means that the person you planned to travel with can cancel for a refund, but if you cancel, you won’t get your money back.’ The man hung up. Yona looked at the subway map. Lines under construction suffocated the city with one new stop after another. Yona wanted to set the end of one of the subway lines on fire, like using a match to stop a run in a sweater. She wanted the threads to stop unravelling.
Summer began. It had been a while since flowers fell off the trees, and in their place black cherries were now plummeting to the ground, so that the pavements were covered with juicy bruises. Yona finally sent in her resignation letter.
‘Be honest,’ Kim said as he grabbed a drink for her from the coffee machine. ‘Do you need a break, or are you looking for another job?’
It was a fitting question.
‘I just need to rest for a bit,’ Yona said. ‘I haven’t been feeling well recently.’
Kim nodded. Who knew if Yona was repeating the words of so many employees before her?
‘Even so, I can’t really let you go, can I?’ Kim asked.
Yona quietly looked at the ground.
‘Why don’t we do this—I’ll give you a month’s break, and for the first couple of weeks you’ll go on a trip,’ Kim announced. ‘Not as an employee, but as a customer. Several of our packages are currently in the middle of review, and we’re trying to decide if we’ll continue to offer them or if they should be discontinued. You pick one of these, and we’ll cover the entire trip like it’s a business expense. After you come back, all you have to do is write a one-page report about your travels. You’ve been working here for ten years—you must be tired.’
‘Can my position be vacant for a month?’ Yona enquired.
‘It’ll be a break for you, but Jungle sees it as a business trip, so don’t worry. I’ll use your report to decide whether or not to terminate the package.’
‘Are any of the trips I designed at risk of termination?’
‘Um, no.’ Kim looked irritated.
‘So I’m making a final decision about someone else’s project?’
‘Can anyone objectively judge a trip that he or she designed? We have to perform evaluations like this sometimes. I’m in charge of the trips in question. Aren’t you a top programming coordinator, someone I can trust? Your time away might be a holiday, but it’s still part of your work duties. Understand?’
Yona looked at Kim with wide-eyed surprise, and he softened his tone.
‘When I’d been at Jungle for about ten years, my boss did this for me, too. I accepted the offer for a free trip, of course, but I’d realised by then what a cold-blooded company this place is. Thankfully, the timing works out well with your attempted resignation. Just think of this as a thank-you gift for your years of service.’
Yona hadn’t submitted her resignation letter with the absolute intention of quitting. It just seemed like if she didn’t send Kim some sort of signal, he would bully her even mo
re. At Jungle, a holiday didn’t mean a brief, comma-like pause. It was an action that indicated finality: the full stop at the end of a sentence. Only when someone was on the brink of exhaustion did the company start to throw days off at him or her in all sorts of circuitous ways. Otherwise, you never knew when you’d get time off. Occasionally, though, the full stop was a comma: a break between intervals of feverish devotion to one’s work. If you were a necessary employee, someone Jungle wanted to hold on to, they didn’t just let you wallow dissatisfied until you resigned. Before granting her a break, Jungle needed to find out whether Yona really was considering leaving. Finally, she thought, they’d reached a silent agreement. Kim was trading in his wrongdoings for the offer of a no-strings-attached business trip. If only he hadn’t brushed Yona’s waist twice as the conversation ended, she almost could have forgotten his earlier remarks about his Johnson.
Yona glanced over descriptions of Jungle’s current destinations. Experience the Ashen Red Energy of a Volcano! Feel Mother Earth Tremble. Ride Noah’s Ark and Be the Judge of the Seas. Tsunamis: Calamity and Horror Before Your Eyes. Not one of the ten most popular trips was attributed to Yona, even though the Jinhae expedition was obviously hers. After planting and nurturing the seeds for the trip, undergoing all sorts of hardship as she fertilised its field, she didn’t even get to experience the fruits of her labour. Right before she could harvest the crop, the trip had been handed over to another employee. Just looking at the description of Jinhae and its cherry blossoms made Yona’s blood sizzle with anger. That trip now ranked seventh in sales. Yona’s replacement had essentially been given an already-complete project. He was probably dilly-dallying about right now, oh-so pleased with himself. She got even angrier.
Yona had five trips to choose from. Fortunately, none of her own projects were at risk of removal, even if she wasn’t getting credit. Yona’s trips usually lay somewhere in between the most and least popular destinations. She tried to learn more about her holiday options by speaking with an adviser in the customer service centre. As soon as Yona said that she was trying to decide among five trips, the adviser unsurprisingly suggested the most expensive one.