by REERA YOO
Today marks the start of Chuseok, a three-day thanksgiving holiday, in which Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and hold ceremonial feasts with family members. Reuters reports that fake casts for pretending to have an injury to evade having to help with holiday meal preparation have become brisk sellers in South Korea since the run-up to the holiday.
A fake cast from an online shopping mall. (Photo Credit: Daily News Now)
“We have been selling this for 10 years now, but sales increased drastically starting last week,” said an anonymous sales manager at an online vendor. He added that both men and women were buying fake casts.
Chuseok is known to have a long history of gender divide, with men chatting and drinking while the women are hard at work, preparing and cooking elaborate traditional Korean dishes. As a result, many young women suffer from post-holiday fatigue that is commonly referred to as the “daughter-in-law holiday syndrome.”
According to the data from the Ministry of Gender, Equality, and Family in 2010, only 4.9 percent of the people surveyed admitted that both genders shared holiday chores, while the rest said women do most of the work.
“Although an increasing number of women are actively engaged in economic activities, a perception remains that only women are responsible for holiday preparation,” said Lee Na-Young, a sociologist at Chung-Ang University. “We need to try to understand that both men and women are equal beings in working and raising children in a family.”
It may be difficult to get away with the broken arm ruse at this year’s Chuseok since several media outlets have already reported about the popularity of the bogus cast. Who knows, maybe a new chore-evading innovation will come up in the market next year?
Photo via Wikipedia
