She Endured It, So You Must Endure It Too

I

Many young women, reading chaebol stories, develop a simple hope: she, too, was once a bullied daughter-in-law; she should understand.

She should know what it feels like to be pressed to bear children, the stifled feeling of standing behind her husband in flat shoes, the suffocation of being scolded by the whole family for wanting to move out. Since she understands all this, she ought to shield those who come after her.

Hong Ra-hee’s life tears that hope to shreds.

She was not a girl marrying up. Her father, Hong Jin-ki, served successively as minister of internal affairs and minister of justice; after leaving politics, he ran the JoongAng Ilbo and Dongyang TV. Her mother came from the Choheung Bank family. She studied in the Department of Applied Arts at Seoul National University; her original plan was to go to the United States for further study and become an artist or a professor. At twenty-two she married into the Samsung Lee family in a match initiated by Lee Byung-chul. Samsung was at a critical juncture in the struggle over succession, and Lee Byung-chul needed the Hong family’s media mouthpiece and political connections to pave the way for his third son, Lee Kun-hee.

A resource exchange between equals. She entered with bargaining chips and still could not protect herself.

II

On the first day she stepped into the Lee family mansion, her identity was redefined: you are not the Hong family’s daughter; you are the Lee family’s daughter-in-law.

Her artistic interests became an ill-timed pastime. At family ancestral rites and large gatherings, the will of the Lee elders came first. Her husband, Lee Kun-hee, was reserved and taciturn; the couple was more like family business partners. Her joys and sorrows were not on his list of priorities. In public, though 168 cm tall, she wore flat shoes year-round, lowering her presence, and could not steal her husband’s spotlight before the cameras. She mobilized all the Hong family’s political and media resources to help her husband fight for the right of succession; this contribution was regarded as a daughter-in-law’s due obligation.

Four children were born in succession. The group’s core power circles were permanently closed to her; she was allowed to touch only the art museum, an area unrelated to the group’s actual power.

However great her natal family’s power, it could not charge into the Lee mansion to back her up. The Hong family would not offend the massive Samsung empire for the feelings of one daughter.

Outsiders saw the glory and wealth that later adorned her. Throughout her marriage, the weight of happiness was always ceded to family interests.

III

The chaebol system remade her in three steps.

Step one: external pressure. Elder discipline, her husband’s distance, the stripping away of her ideals. The cost of resistance was too heavy. She would find it hard to move a single step within the Lee family and might even drag down the Hong family’s cooperation with Samsung. She chose to endure.

Step two: buying her off with interests. Compliance brought wealth, social status, and a respectable future for her children. As Lee Kun-hee’s power rose, she gained social prestige, took charge of the art museum, and received the flattery of her circle. The system used rewards to tell her: obedience pays.

Step three: internal assimilation. To dissolve a lifetime of grievance, she began to persuade herself: all sacrifice is a trial every woman in a powerful family must undergo; the rules themselves are not wrong. To admit the rules were wrong would be to negate decades of endurance and the entire price she paid for giving up her artistic ideals. She could not square that account.

So she shed the identity of victim, accepted chaebol logic wholesale, and became the very kind of person she had most disliked in her youth.

IV

When her identity changed from daughter-in-law to mother-in-law, she poured the malice in her hands onto Lim Se-ryung.

Pain needs an outlet. She was powerless against the top family and its male power holders, so psychological instinct redirected it downward, projecting it onto Lim Se-ryung, someone of lower status and, like her, an outsider daughter-in-law.

To treat Lim Se-ryung well would be to admit that her own lifetime of swallowing humiliation had been meaningless. Only by demanding that Lim Se-ryung replicate her suffering could she keep telling herself: suffering is inevitable; everyone must walk this road.

Strictly disciplining her daughter-in-law was also a pledge of loyalty to the Lee clan, proof that she stood entirely on the Lee family’s side and was no longer an outsider whose heart remained with her natal family.

In her youth she had no say; her every move was controlled. Now, having endured until she became a mother-in-law, she finally held the power to discipline the younger generation within the household. Instinctively she replicated the pattern with which the elders had once treated her, releasing control desires suppressed for years.

Lim Se-ryung came from Daesang Group and was likewise a chaebol heiress, but after marrying in she remained a weak junior in Samsung’s power structure. She happened to become the receiver of this psychological projection.

V

The chaebol system was happy to see it happen.

Outsider daughters-in-law brought connections and capital from external families; they were tools for harvesting benefits through marriage. The system did not need them to have a rebellious consciousness; instead it expected that, after domestication, victims would iterate into new disciplinarians. Generation after generation of mothers-in-law relayed and enforced the old rules. No male power holder needed to appear personally; the family itself completed the restraint of its female juniors.

Once an outsider daughter-in-law who had suffered internalized the rules, she would actively teach the next generation of women to sacrifice and obey. Harm self-replicated, and the cost of governance was extremely low.

If every woman who married in awakened and rebelled, it would disrupt family stability, shake primogeniture, and even trigger public opinion storms and damage the group’s reputation. So wealth, status, and a voice in the circle were given as rewards to outsider daughters-in-law willing to be assimilated, setting a model: only obedience brings dignity; resistance brings isolation.

The domestication process was silent: first strip away personal ideals, making career and hobbies yield to the family; then reinforce the brand of identity, repeatedly reminding you that your first identity is the family’s daughter-in-law and only secondarily yourself; use wealth and status as bait. Endure the previous generation, and in the future you too can hold a voice.

She endured until Lee Byung-chul passed away, Lee Kun-hee secured the chairman’s seat, and the older generation exited one after another. The young mistress once subjected to discipline transformed into the Samsung matriarch holding enormous equity. This power was not won through resistance; it was the reward the circle gave to the obedient after compromise and internalization of the rules.

VI

The double standard was glaring.

For her only son, Lee Jae-yong, she poured out all her effort to pave the way, arranged the major affairs of his life single-handedly, tolerated his faults, and placed the entire burden of family succession on her eldest son. Her son could pursue his career with abandon; if he made mistakes, the family would catch him; his private life was not bound by strict family rules.

For her daughter-in-law Lim Se-ryung, there was another, colder set of standards. She ignored Lim’s background and talent and demanded only that she fulfill the full set of duties of a traditional daughter-in-law. She had chewed on the pain of being pressed to bear children and experienced the suffocation of living under another’s roof. That suffering did not turn into compassion; instead it became the basis for disciplining Lim Se-ryung. Pressure to bear children, suppression of self, service to elders—all were transferred unchanged.

Toward her three daughters, she was likewise bound by traditional notions. The daughters could have education and careers, but core resources and inheritance rights naturally tilted toward the son. Her youngest daughter, Lee Yoon-hyung, sank into depression and met a tragedy, yet even this could not awaken her to reflect on women’s condition.

Toward the grandchildren, she placed extremely high expectations on the eldest grandson, regarding him as the symbol of continuing bloodline and tilting resources toward him; for granddaughters, she cared more about shaping them into presentable young ladies of a distinguished family.

Hong Ra-hee herself was highly capable. She ran two major art museums, and her vision, learning, and business acumen were all outstanding. But her professional ability was permitted only within art and culture, a “feminine domain.” The chaebol allowed her to stretch her talents in areas unrelated to the group’s actual power, but absolutely would not allow her to challenge the underlying order of family succession and gender division. Her career was marked out by the family; it did not mean she had the power to overturn the circle’s rules. Long steeped in clan order, her way of thinking had long been locked shut.

VII

Before Lim Se-ryung married in, Hong Ra-hee was warm and friendly, frequently inviting her to gatherings, her words full of admiration. This goodwill was satisfaction with family background, upbringing, and outward qualifications; it was approval of a perfect object for a commercial marriage alliance. Daesang Group held a core track in food additives, exactly the sector Samsung wanted to enter. By bringing about the marriage, Samsung gained an entry ticket to the industry, and the Lim family brought a generous dowry in shares.

After the wedding, the face changed at once.

In her sophomore year, Lim Se-ryung interrupted her studies at Yonsei University and went to the United States to accompany her husband, playing full-time the role of the crown prince’s partner. When her father-in-law, Lee Kun-hee, was being treated in the United States, Hong Ra-hee arranged for her to attend to his daily needs up close. Living in the mansion with her parents-in-law, her every move was placed under family scrutiny. Pressure to bear children followed, and she gave birth first to a son and then a daughter, bound to the identities of mother and daughter-in-law.

When she wanted to return to society and pursue a career, her mother-in-law blocked her. When she proposed moving out to live independently, the entire family collectively reprimanded her, judging it a breach of family ethics. For using a Sony Walkman, a Samsung competitor, she was severely reprimanded in public. When paparazzi photographed her picking up and dropping off her children, she was scolded for acting conspicuously and stealing the family’s spotlight. Her dress, speech, and behavior were all measured by a ruler: no flamboyance; the Lee family’s face came first in everything.

At large family gatherings, she performed the full set of daughter-in-law duties, serving the whole family and smoothing away all her edges. Hong Ra-hee commented on her speech and behavior in front of the family elders, magnifying every small fault that did not fit the rules, letting the entire circle scrutinize and censure the young daughter-in-law together.

The most piercing thing was the double standard. Hong Ra-hee vigorously supported her Hong relatives, channeling resources to them without end. When Daesang Group fell into a debt crisis and Lim Se-ryung sought help from within, even though Hong Ra-hee’s own younger brother held key judicial power, her husband’s family looked on coldly, and Samsung even waited for a chance to acquire the other side’s shares.

Lim Se-ryung filed for divorce. Hong Ra-hee met her privately to apply pressure, using her two children as emotional bargaining chips and telling her that divorce was a monstrous scandal for a chaebol family. She joined with family elders to apply psychological pressure. She mobilized media connections to control public opinion, trying to coerce her with social judgment and make her bear the reputation of betraying the family and disregarding her children. She set up layer upon layer of obstacles in the division of property, using practical pressure to force her to give up.

Had Lim Se-ryung not been absolutely resolute and held bargaining chips to persist with litigation, the divorce would have been very hard to bring to pass.

VIII

Hong Ra-hee’s change was not innate wickedness. It was created single-handedly by the circle system of the Samsung chaebol.

She endowed her lifetime of endurance and sacrifice with sublime meaning: a woman’s self-sacrifice is itself a required course in a wealthy family’s marriage. She was unwilling to admit that more than half a lifetime of compromise had been a depletion. To empathize with Lim Se-ryung’s pain would be to overturn her own life’s choices.

Women trapped in this game had only two ways out.

The first: smash the rules and pay the heavy price of a rupture and escape, like Lim Se-ryung.

The second: endure. Endure until the previous generation exits and you stand in a high position. The price is accepting the game’s logic wholesale; you are no longer a victim resisting the system but become part of the system.

To stand firm in a wealthy family, one does not overturn the old order; one proves that one knows it deeply. She had to declare to the Lee family: I understand the duties a daughter-in-law should keep, and I will strictly require the next generation of daughters-in-law to keep them too. By passing on the restraints once imposed on her, she exchanged them for the circle’s full acceptance.

Long soaked inside high walls, perception was slowly tampered with. Past grievances did not turn into empathy; instead they internalized into a measuring stick: I endured it this way back then. What makes her special?

Outsiders could see the grand weddings, the hundreds of millions in wealth, the jeweled social occasions. They could not see the day-after-day spiritual depletion inside the private mansion. There was no violent beating or cursing, only fragmented, endless scrutiny, discipline, and boundary-drawing that slowly wore away a girl’s original edges.

Harm was passed down generation after generation.

IX

Do not use “she suffered too” to advance credit on goodwill.

A person’s narrative of suffering cannot naturally be a guarantee that she will treat you kindly. To judge a person, do not look only at what she has been through; look at how she treats those weaker than herself once she holds power.

Do not count on changing a mother-in-law formed by the old system. A woman who has long struggled to survive within old family rules is often forced to assimilate in order to live and gain status. Once she has accepted the survival law that “a daughter-in-law should endure and yield,” it becomes very hard for her to see your pain.

Keep boundaries and the ability to exit. Do not stake your life on “she will understand me.” Real dignity is not waiting for someone who has suffered to suddenly experience a pang of conscience; it is having the ability to choose to stay or leave.

X

Hong Ra-hee sat in the art museum office.

On the wall hung a painting in the style she had liked at twenty, long out of fashion now. On the windowsill was a pot of orchids, just watered, water droplets still hanging on the leaves. On the desk lay the installation plan for next week’s exhibition. She turned to the third page, stopped, picked up the phone, dialed three digits, and put it down again.

She went on turning the pages. At the fifth page, she picked up a pen and wrote a line in the margin, so small that one had to lean close to read it: “Has the ancestral rite menu been confirmed?”

Then she closed the plan, turned off the light, and put on her coat. The corridor was very quiet; her flat shoes made almost no sound on the marble floor.

She walked down the museum’s long gallery, both walls hung with photos of the exhibitions she had curated over the years. At the far end was a group photo from when she had just taken over the museum. She stood at the very edge, in a dark suit, slightly turned, leaving the center of the frame for her husband.

She glanced at it, did not stop, and kept walking.

The guard greeted her. She nodded and said, “See you tomorrow.”

It was raining outside. She stood at the entrance waiting for the car, clutching the umbrella she had used for many years, its handle worn shiny. The car came. She got in and closed the door.

The windshield wipers swung left and right; the road ahead was clear for a stretch, blurred for a stretch, then clear again.