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When the Japanese drama “Oshin” was broadcast on NHK from April 1983 to March 1984, it set a record as the most-watched show in the history of Japanese television, with 62.9% of viewers tuning in.

The story begins in 1907, when Oshin — a girl born in 1901 to a family of poor tenant farmers — is sold for a sack of rice to a sawmill owner who is looking for a live-in housemaid. Later in life, Oshin’s fortunes improve, and she even launches her own supermarket chain. The drama “Oshin” was shown on Korean television under the same name, and a subsequent novelization was also published in a Korean translation.

When the Japanese took over Korea, they brought with them the concept of the “shikmo” — literally meaning “food mother” — a live-in housemaid/nanny who cooks, cleans, and cares for their employer’s children.

Japanese housewives who moved to the Korean Peninsula after annexation began hiring Korean women to do their housework. Well-to-do Korean families hired housemaids as well, but Japanese-speaking housemaids could earn twice as much working for Japanese families.

In 1938, 23,527 Korean women were hired as housemaids, representing 87% of the 27,014 women who were looking for work. In other words, live-in domestic work made up a majority of the jobs available to women at the time. (Source: “The First Women in the Workforce: Maid, Bus Attendant, Factory Worker” by Jeong Chan-il)

When Koreans began congregating in cities after the Korean War, there was a surge of urban households looking to employ housemaids. Poor families in the countryside with too many mouths to feed would send young daughters to serve as housemaids, without even sending them to school. As live-in housemaids, they wouldn’t have to worry about room or board.

In 1969, 53% of Seoul families had a housemaid. Apartments that measured 100 square meters would often have a small room for the maid (measuring about 6 square meters) attached to the kitchen.

On top of being paid little, these women had to contend with insults, beatings and sometimes even sexual assault.

As Korea’s industrialization progressed, more jobs opened up for women, leading to a sharp decline in the number of housemaids beginning in the mid-1970s.

The advance of women’s rights was one factor behind the elimination of housemaids. The nomenclature for domestic workers changed as well. The women once called housemaids were now known as “household managers,” “housekeepers,” “domestic assistants,” or “domestic helpers.”

The Korean government is moving quickly to make it easier for Korean families to hire domestic workers from abroad.

The idea was first proposed last year by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon. Then Cho Jung-hun, a lawmaker with the minor Transition Korea party, submitted a bill this past March that would exclude foreign housekeepers from the legally mandated minimum wage, and President Yoon Suk-yeol instructed officials to look into implementing the idea on a trial basis.

The main appeal emphasized by the government is that foreign housekeepers and nannies could be hired on the cheap.

The benchmark here is Singapore, which began allowing migrant domestic workers in 1978. But that program wasn’t launched in response to a low birth rate, nor has fertility increased in Singapore since then.

Nevertheless, advocates of the migrant domestic program have begun promoting it as if it were the only solution to Korea’s low birth rate.

By Jeong Nam-ku, editorial writer

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