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The Reality and Representation of Ssibaji - Alternative Family Practices in With or Without You(2015)

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2025, 31(2), pp.537~579
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : May 13, 2025
  • Accepted : June 19, 2025
  • Published : June 30, 2025

Chae Ye-Ram 1

1연세대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the 2015 documentary film With or Without You as a dynamic text that reveals new possibilities within the entrenched discourse of normative family structures in South Korea. The film addresses the historically customary family practice known as “ssibaji” (surrogate motherhood). This study focuses on the historical context of family discourse and the ways in which the existence of ssibaji has disrupted Korea’s normative family narratives. In particular, it concentrates on the relationship between the two women depicted in With or Without You, proposing the potential for otherness recognition and empathy mediated through their shared embodied experience. Since the 1950s, the legal context surrounding the abolition of polygamy has been under discussion, and the 1987 film The Surrogate Womb further reinforced negative perceptions of ssibaji. While ssibaji was regarded as an undesirable figure within the postwar social norms of Korea, their presence was never entirely erased from the realities of family formations. The two women highlighted in With or Without You represent the relationship between the legal wife and the ssibaji, an extramarital relationship that continued openly in practice even after the legal prohibition of polygamy. The film reveals a family configuration that undeniably existed but was suppressed from visibility, while simultaneously implying conditions for genuine solidarity. Furthermore, it questions how two women, connected through bodily functions under a male-centered family system, formed bonds outside the boundaries of social convention. Documentary texts that have emerged since the 2000s demand attention for their appeal to shifts in perceptions and imagery regarding ssibaji. In particular, the relationship between the two women depicted in With or Without You—though confined to the private realm of a single household—demonstrates the possibility of new forms of family practice that transcend legal recognition and normative family discourse. The fact that these two women, who constitute an unofficial and non-kin family, have maintained a caregiving relationship for decades suggests that care is no longer limited to familial or blood ties. Their solidarity, grounded in a shared embodied experience rather than merely as reproductive subjects, presents a significant case for rethinking family and care structures.

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