And there's no sense of irony about this either.
The lack of irony and self-awareness is indeed the worst part of her work, I believe.
It was both particularly bad and particularly obvious in Analogue: When *Mute did comment on *Hyun-Ae translation of 남존여비 she could as well be commenting on the developer's take on Joseon. Which is kind of sad. She had a chance to be clever about it and make the story about, well, Joseon. If anything, Joseon can be seen as a five hundred years long debate on the nature of Confucianism, and as a five hundred years long experiment on both its application and its life cycle. Having the main character and player act as a both a witness to the daily lives of, and the relationships between, the people of Joseon and arbiter to the clash between the perspectives of both an insider and an outsider over the way in which they both read those slice-of-life accounts would have been quite clever. Instead we get a game about feminism, and a statement on how Joseon was actually far worse than the way in which she did represent it in the game. Her bibliography? Half a dozen books.
I find it kind of sad. I actually kind of like her work: She's able to write effective and emotionally involving slice-of-life vignettes, she does some meta commentary without going overboard with it, her focus on interpersonal relationships and social networking is something I enjoy quite a bit, and there are some quite clever elements here and there. Yet she seems to be completely oblivious to this, and there is something so deeply wrong about her complete lack of insight on her own perspective and the irony of her own behaviour that makes all the good and clever bits seem wasted. I believe she could do some very good things if she were to drop the statements and the agenda and focus instead on using slice-of-life vignettes, social networking, and meta commentary as the core elements of the story instead of just the means through which the story is presented.
It's kind of like she's introspective about everything but herself, which is... Let's just say she did waste a good opportunity to learn something and better herself by dismissing five hundred years of philosophical and ideological development as 'MYSOGINY!' If you want to be feminist about Confucianism you have to begin by declaring your own right and duty to become a model Junzi without abandoning your feminity. Instead she throws a tantrum and shows neither introspection nor morality nor sense of duty nor sense of truth, and she kind of comes along as the very reason 남존여비 was there to begin with.
It always comes to a complete lack of self awareness: One of the female characters in the slice-of-life vignettes actually did that, obtaining both the respect and appreciation of her husband by showing him her ability first to learn the very topics he had to learn about to take the government officer's examination, then turning out to be better than him in some of those topics, and then using what she had learned to assist him on his duties.
It's like she's so blinded by her agenda she's not even conscious about the implications of the very things she writes about. >.<U
In a way she's just like the 'pale bride': A modern girl that comes in contact with Joseon, suffers culture shock, believes herself to be better than everyone, throws tantrum after tantrum, passes judgement on everyone because they don't understand her, and then commits character assasination on a massive scale. What is truly tragic is that it seems to go over her head.