LADIES, TAKE YOUR TIME is a biomedical science fiction novel about how the lives of older women in a small city change with the unveiling of a surgery that promises to restore and amplify their youthful vigor. Author Park Moon Young, winner of multiple Korea SF Awards and the first-ever Cubic Note Short Story Award, blends imaginative science fiction with real-world issues to craft a story that explores what might happen if the social hierarchy were flipped on its head and elderly women were suddenly the most powerful demographic in the world.

As the novel opens, Noh Bogeum, a former comedienne who left Seoul to settle down in the quiet city of Yeongcheong following her retirement, watches a group of older women dancing in the town plaza. One of the participants in these free dance classes for the city’s many middle-aged and elderly residents, Seong Manok, has been trying unsuccessfully to convince Bogeum to join. Believing that she’s managed to recruit Bogeum, Manok introduces her to another woman in the classes, Ma Jongeun. Someone remarks on the fact that the women’s names contain the characters for gold (geum), jade (ok), and silver (eun). It seems they were fated to be friends.

Though the women are all in their sixties, their golden years have not been so golden thus far. Bogeum is lonely, and she often reflects on her former career, her memories of which are bittersweet when she recalls how her opportunities had begun to narrow as she aged. Manok is unhappy in her second marriage but unwilling to divorce again, so instead, she takes up an affair with her husband’s full knowledge and much to the disappointment of her daughter and her friends. Jongeun, meanwhile, feels as though she’s in a “loveless family,” with her husband absorbed in his work, her short-tempered son having cut his studies abroad short to get married, and her daughter-in-law Yoo Guhee still feeling like a stranger to her. Along with the other older women in Yeongcheong who work hard to run businesses, support families, and maintain lackluster marriages, Bogeum, Manok, and Jongeun are truly feeling the burden of being women of a certain age.

One day, rumors begin to circulate around the city about an experimental surgery seeking to recruit women between the ages of 65 and 75 from Yeongcheong for clinical trials. The surgery, developed by a Yeongcheong native who has spent years researching the technology in Japan, promises to completely revitalize older women’s bodies. Advertisements for the surgery feature a catchy jingle that includes the lyrics, “Ladies, take your time,” leading people to name the surgery accordingly. Public opinion on the procedure is divided, with some arguing that it goes completely against nature and others insisting that it offers older women a chance to reclaim a sense of agency over their bodies. Either way, when the time comes for eligible women to sign up for the clinical trials, Bogeum does.

Of the trio, Bogeum is the only one to elect to have the surgery. Manok is not yet eligible, while Jongeun is staunchly against it. Though her opposition is initially related to her belief that the surgery is unnatural and in defiance of God and nature, Jongeun finds her views called into question after a shocking interaction with her son and daughter-in-law. Jongeun overhears them arguing about the surgery and other such procedures that Jongeun’s son views with disdain, including gender-affirmation surgery. Guhee, meanwhile, argues that the option to elect to have surgery—whether the Ladies Take Your Time surgery for elderly women or gender-affirmation surgery for transgender people—is a human right regardless of anyone’s personal opinions on the matter. In the heat of the discussion, Jongeun’s son lashes out with a racist tirade that startles Jongeun into finally feeling a sense of kinship with her daughter-in-law.

Meanwhile, post-surgery, the elderly women of Yeongcheong are stronger than ever. Suddenly, neighborhood patrols made up of women who have had the procedure are thwarting would-be criminals with their superhuman strength. No longer dependent on men to protect and provide for them, the older women in the city are divorcing en masse. The surgery sparks more debate than ever before about women’s rights and autonomy over their bodies. As Bogeum acclimates to her newfound strength and vigor, she wonders what she can do with this second chance at youth and ends up leading the Palm Tree Brigade, a group of elderly women who have undergone the Ladies Take Your Time surgery and aim to use their power to protect the city of Yeongcheong. Unfortunately, their good deeds are met largely with complaints from some members of the community, who view the post-op women as menaces and abominations.

One night on a walk, Bogeum comes across a couple in the midst of a heated argument about the woman’s request for a divorce. Bogeum is content to ignore them, not wanting to meddle and draw more negative attention to herself. However, when she hears the woman being physically attacked, Bogeum intervenes in what turns out to be an altercation between Jongeun’s son and his wife Guhee. Following this incident, which leaves everyone a little worse for wear and Jongeun’s son with a shattered nose, the public lambastes Bogeum and again denounces all the older women who have had the operation. At the same time, even as she remains firmly against pursuing the surgery herself, Jongeun is grateful that someone had the strength to defend her daughter-in-law. She takes the opportunity to quietly assist Guhee with moving into her own place and proceeding with the divorce.

At the end of an eventful year, the original trio reunite at long last when the dance classes resume in the town plaza the following spring. Though the three women have dealt with their own realities and process of aging in different ways, they have all come to learn the important lesson that no one is ever too old or too young to start living their life to the fullest. Bogeum makes her peace with the end of her career in comedy and looks forward to the rest of her new life in Yeongcheong with her new friends. Manok reflects on her wants and needs and realizes that romantic relationships are not the only way that a woman can find the fulfillment she seeks. And Jongeun is able to use the wisdom she has gleaned from all these years she has spent as a devoted wife and mother to her indifferent husband and son to help the next generation of women to avoid the same fate. Ultimately, the novel’s ladies learn to slow down, take their time, and reflect on what matters, both to them personally and in the grand scheme of things.

The novel is a timely tale that imagines the outcomes of some of the most hotly debated issues in Korean society today, including feminism and women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and an aging population increasingly becoming the victims of elder neglect and abuse. Park Moon Young considers the utopian possibilities of advances in biomedical science and changes in the existing structure of society for women and the elderly. Readers who found The Power by Naomi Alderman to be a clever and engrossing take on feminism and the subversion of the patriarchy, as well as readers who found themselves rooting for older women who defy societal expectations as in Gu Byeong-mo’s The Old Woman and the Knife (tr. Chi-Young Kim), will delight in Ladies, Take Your Time, a thought-provoking story that imagines a world where the most vulnerable among us gain the power to take back their lives, their bodies, and their time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Park Moon Young is a writer, illustrator, and comic artist. She is the author of multiple books, including the Korea SF Award-winning titles The Land of the Mantis and Women of Earth, the dystopian sci-fi thriller Color Field, and the speculative short story collection The Tiger in the Room. An active member of SFxF, a project group that researches the intersections of science fiction and feminism, as well as a member of the Science Fiction Writers Union of the Republic of Korea, Park lives and writes in a small, southern town in Korea while raising her two cats.