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The Vicious Cycle of Maternal Worship and Maternal Hatred - Focusing on Lee Su-ji's Character "Jamie Mom" and Park Seo-ryeon's "The Game Your Mom Plays Better Than You"

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2025, 31(2), pp.327~360
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : May 14, 2025
  • Accepted : June 19, 2025
  • Published : June 30, 2025

Park Dasom 1

1한양대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Since the discourse on care emerged as a subject of wide-ranging discussion in Korean academic circles, the demand for socio-cultural recognition of women's care work within the home has gradually become common sense in our society. However, unlike the lack of economic recognition that seems clear, there is some ambiguity in the issue of socio-cultural recognition of maternal care work. This is because, in the discourse of popular culture, the worship of caregiving women is readily found. At the same time, the hateful expression “mom-chung” also roams freely through everyday language. What is the reason for the simultaneous appearance of both the worship and hatred of motherhood? According to Jacqueline Rose, society has actively utilized the concept of motherhood to conceal its own problems. In particular, Korean society has often displaced educational issues onto motherhood. In Korea, the maternal subject is simultaneously a victim caught in the murderous competition of the education system and a problematic image onto which the various dysfunctions of the education system are projected. Comedian Lee Su-ji's ‘Jamie Mom’ and ‘You’ from Park Seo-ryeon's novel “The Game Your Mom Plays Better Than You” are examples of this. The recent controversies surrounding the character of ‘Jamie Mom’ show the whole process of how the performance of hatred against the image of motherhood obsessed with the education of children ultimately reinforces the myth of motherhood. Meanwhile, Park Seo-ryeon’s novel points out the phenomenon of ‘mother’ being used as a curse word in online games, and the reason such hate speech is possible is, paradoxically, because ‘mother’ is the most sublime object to the male subject in a patriarchal society. Here, worship is the cause of hatred. This study aimed to demonstrate that worship and hatred are not only structurally identical in the way they otherize motherhood, but also that worship and hatred operate within a tightly interconnected causal cycle, producing a mutually reinforcing dynamic. The mechanism through which worship and hatred circulate reveals how cultural recognition within an already heavily distorted symbolic field becomes a highly challenging issue. By identifying the cycle of worship and hatred in which the concept of motherhood in our society remains trapped, this paper underscores the urgent need for continued scholarly inquiry into motherhood.

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