I arrived in Korea from my native U.S. at exactly 32 weeks pregnant. I traveled literally the last day my midwife would allow it, not that she’d have much say now that I was going to be approximately 8,300 kms away. We clutched her handwritten note granting me permission to travel as we checked in at Sea-Tac International Airport, in case the airline, upon observing my giant belly, refused to allow me to board for fear that I’d birth my baby reclined in seat 10A.
We had no such issues and, perhaps due to my excessive and neurotic obsession with water-consumption, I was barely even swollen when we touched down 11+ hours later at Incheon. After a day or two of rest and internal clock readjustment, I set out to explore my new home. My first few days wandering around led me to a few possible conclusions about pregnancy in Seoul. I – or more accurately, my belly – was stared at each time I left the apartment and I noticed very few other pregnant women. I thought perhaps a) there really weren’t that many pregnant women (given that South Korea has the lowest birth-rate in the developed world this seemed like a reasonable conclusion), or b) women did not leave the house when they were pregnant (thus the stares).
After a few more days of wandering I discovered that there were in fact quite a few pregnant women around, I just hadn’t been able to see their bellies under the shapeless tent-like maternity get-up they were sporting combined with the very small (by Western standards) size of their pregnant bellies. My pregnant sisters were in fact everywhere, hidden in plain site. Upon realizing how my skills of observation had initially failed me, I decided I needed to do some investigating of what pregnancy in Korea was all about. What follows, for your information and reading pleasure, is what I learned through both experience (read: trial and error), and through hard-hitting and in-depth (read: rude and invasive) questioning.
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