65. I Said I Was Taking a Break. Here’s the Whole Story.
A personal summer note on motherhood, unfinished books, paid subscriptions, and finding a rhythm that can last.
A small note before you start: this week, the newsletter and the podcast say pretty much the same thing, just in different voices. So however you'd rather take this in today — with your eyes or with your ears — that's the right way. [🎧 Listen to the episode here]
Dear readers,
I hope your summer has been kind to you so far.
And yes, if you read last week’s newsletter, you may be a little surprised to see me in your inbox again. Didn’t I just say I was taking a break?
I did.
This is not a regular essay. It is a personal letter before I step away from my weekly Thursday newsletters for the rest of the summer, and a chance to be entirely honest with you about why. It might feel like a bit more information than you originally signed up for, but I wanted to share these reflections with you anyway.
Some of you may have missed last week’s post. Some of you subscribed after it went out. I also know how easily updates can get lost in a busy inbox.
So I wanted to make sure I shared my gratitude, my plans for the coming months, and a little of the life behind this work with all of you.
You may still see me occasionally on Substack Notes, social media, or through web-only archive posts on the Substack site. But I am taking a pause from the regular weekly Thursday essays until September.
Jihyun, who brainstorms with me, fills in the Korean context I need, and finds sources I'd otherwise miss, is also having a very full summer, so this slower rhythm feels right for the people behind the work as well as for the work itself.
Why I’m Stepping Back
There’s no shortage of writing about Korea right now. Travel guides, news explainers, K-drama recaps, K-pop analysis, academic books, memoirs, hot takes, beautiful personal essays. It’s a crowded room.
For my work to mean something in that room, I dig through a lot of sources every single time, reading, cross-checking, and verifying, because my goal has always been the same: to show you Korea in layers, not headlines.
Not just the surface, but the history beneath it. Not just the custom, but the feeling inside the custom. Not just the “interesting fact,” but the social world that made that fact possible.
I love this work. I love taking something that seems small, such as a bowl of rice, a delivery app, an iced Americano, or a sentence like “Did you eat?”, and following it until it opens into history, class, family, labor, pleasure, pressure, and care.
That’s the heart of this project for me.
But the newsletter format has real limits. Every week, my biggest struggle is cutting down stories that don’t want to be cut. I started the podcast partly to bridge that gap, but even there, the narrative kept feeling fragmented, interrupted.
Deep down, I’ve known for a while that the stories I want to tell belong in a book, a format that allows for a longer, uninterrupted breath. And because the weekly newsletter takes all of my time and creative energy, my book has spent months sitting on the back burner.
What “Mom Camp” Taught Me
A few small summer moments made me stop and rethink everything.
My husband and daughter went to a baseball game together while I stayed home working on the newsletter. Around the same time, during the first week of her summer break, she had no camp, so we made our own. We called it “Mom Camp.”
It wasn’t elaborate.
We went to the YMCA; she played in the kids’ zone while I worked in the lobby. We had lunch together. We walked through a nearby park, and while she played at the playground, I sat on a bench with a book. We got ice cream when it was hot. We went to the library, where she read and played while I sat beside her with my laptop.
To me, it felt like a patched-together workday.
To her, it was apparently paradise.
My seven-year-old told me Mom Camp was the best. Not 100 out of 100, but “infinite” out of 100. Then she asked when we could do it again.
Some parenting moments land quietly but hit very hard.
I realized how chronically busy I must have looked to her all this time. She’s growing so fast. Soon she will prefer her friends to me, and eventually she will leave this home for her own life. That is, of course, exactly what she is supposed to do. But while she still wants nothing more than my company, I want to be present enough to receive that gift.
I do not want to miss this summer entirely because I am always trying to meet the next deadline.
So this pause is partly for the book.
Partly for my child.
And partly for the future of this newsletter, too.
I want to find a rhythm that lets this project continue without burning through the life that gives it meaning in the first place.
What I’d Regret
This got me thinking, in a slightly morbid way I won’t apologize for: if my life were suddenly much shorter than I imagined, what would I actually regret?
The books I want so badly to write, and yes, plural, there are several, remain unwritten because I haven’t yet given them the time and care they deserve.
All the wonderful books already out in the world that I still haven’t read.
And the places I haven’t gone.
I have a restless urge to explore what I haven’t seen yet, and I got lucky. I married someone who feels the same pull toward the unfamiliar, and somehow we made a kid with that same instinct.
It doesn’t have to be far. I want to make the most of where I already live, the Pacific Northwest, while my daughter is still young enough to want to explore it with me.
When I earned tenure in Chicago, I remember thinking, okay, this is it. This is home now. I genuinely believed I would build the rest of my life there.
And yet, after seven years in Chicago, just one year after earning tenure, I left for Seattle anyway.
Right now it feels like I’ll be here a long time, but life has already taught me not to assume that.
So I want to read more, write more, and wander this incredible landscape more. Slowly, if I have to. Imperfectly, if I have to. But with my daughter, while I still can.
That is also part of why I need this summer.
A Note About the Podcast and Older Essays
I will also use this pause to do some housekeeping with the podcast and the archive.
As the podcast has developed, its style has changed a great deal. Recently, I decided to unpublish some of the earlier podcast episodes that no longer felt aligned with the direction of the project.
Because of how Substack connects audio and text, unpublishing those older episodes also removed the newsletter posts attached to them.
To preserve those essays, I will be cleaning up and republishing some of them directly on the Substack website over the summer.
If you have been reading for a while and see something appear on the site that feels familiar, you are not imagining it. It may be an older essay returning to the archive in a cleaner form.
To respect your inbox, I will not send those restored pieces as new newsletter emails. They will simply live on the Substack site again.
For Paid Subscribers
I also want to thank my paid subscribers very clearly.
As a small gesture of appreciation during this summer pause, I have extended all active paid subscriptions by three months. As far as I can tell, this has been applied properly, but if it does not look right on your end, please reply to this email and I will personally check it.
I have also recently lowered the annual subscription price to $30.
The monthly subscription will remain $5 because Substack does not allow me to set it lower than that. But I wanted the annual subscription to feel closer to the price of one good book.
That image matters to me.
In some ways, I think this Substack can become a kind of summer reading shelf for readers who want to understand Korea more deeply.
Paid subscribers have access to my monthly introductions to Korean books that have not yet been translated into English. In those posts, I summarize the key ideas, explain the cultural and historical context, and try to make these books accessible to readers who would otherwise have no way to encounter them.
I have already introduced many books through this newsletter, and I will continue to do so. Paid subscribers can also read the full archive of previous paid posts.
There was another reason for lowering the annual price, too.
This readership has become more global, and I have become more aware that money does not mean the same thing everywhere. For one person, $50 may be the cost of one casual dinner. For another, it may be a serious weekly expense. I want this work to be supported, but I do not want the price to become an unnecessary wall between readers and the stories I am trying to share.
For readers who are able and would like to support the work at a higher level, I have also opened the Founding Member option at $50 a year. There is absolutely no pressure. It is simply there for those who want to help make this independent research and writing more sustainable.
And if you subscribed at the previous annual rate and have any concerns about the new pricing, please do not hesitate to write to me. I want this to feel fair.
See You in September
This summer, I’ll keep reading, studying, writing, revising, thinking through the books, and reworking the podcast.
I’ll also be figuring out what kind of rhythm lets this newsletter keep going in a way that’s serious, sustainable, and alive, not just surviving on fumes.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for subscribing.
Thank you for making it possible for me to do this work at all.
I hope you have a gentle, generous summer, with good books, good walks, and at least a few ordinary days that turn out to be more precious than they first appear.
I’ll see you again in September.
Warmly,
Jiwon
"But while she still wants nothing more than my company, I want to be present enough to receive that gift."
Congratulations. Thank goodness you've discovered this sooner rater than later! Do it every summer until she decides she'd rather be with her friends. That day will come sooner than later :-)
And now that the annual is less expensive, I can upgrade. Many thanks for that offer.
Jiwon: brava! Have a well-earned break and create some wonderful undefinable moments with your daughter. If there's a payment option to buy you a cup of coffee I would like to do that.