
Understanding Korea, One Story at a Time Podcast· Staffel 1· Folge 52
🎧What Korean Society Looks Like When You Follow the Pain
Donnerstag, 2. April 2026 · 29 min
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Shownotes
Once a month, I read a book written in Korean that hasn’t been translated into English and bring it to you. Not because I enjoy being the only one who can read it — though honestly, sometimes — but because some of the most interesting thinking about Korea is happening in Korean, and it deserves a wider audience.
This month's book is “What Pain Makes Visible” (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…)( (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…)아프면 보이는 것들 (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…)) (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…). It's a collection by thirteen medical anthropologists asking one question across thirteen very different kinds of suffering: whose pain does Korean society take seriously, and whose does it quietly set aside?
The newsletter (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…)and the podcast ended up dividing the labor like a very efficient little content union: the newsletter covered postpartum wind, the humidifier disinfectant disaster, and infertility, while this episode takes up HIV stigma, the Sewol ferry disaster, and Korean-Chinese caregivers.
Same book, different route.If the newsletter was about care (yoonjiwon.substack.com/p/what-pain-makes-visib…), this episode is about recognition.
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