Baek Ji-yeon pushes back on 'no kids, no aging' comments about Kim Hye-soo

Photos of actors Kim Hye-soo, 56, and Uhm Jung-hwa, 57, who are widely admired for their age-defying looks, often draw comments suggesting they look so youthful because they never had children. Broadcaster and former announcer Baek Ji-yeon, 62, addressed the trend and shared her take.

On Monday, Baek posted a video to her YouTube channel titled "If you don't get married or have kids, you don't age — truth or myth?" in which she discussed the relationship between childbirth and aging in women.

Baek said the topic came up when a producer she knew announced their marriage. "They say women age faster after marriage," she said, adding that she had been noticing a wave of online posts along the lines of "See, if you don't have kids, you don't age."

She explained that unlike men, women who marry typically shift from a life focused on themselves to one that demands they manage housework, both sets of parents, childbirth, child-rearing, their spouse and financial pressures all at once.

"A lot of research has been done on this," Baek said. "When I looked up the data to see if it was actually true, I found that marriage adds eight years to a man's life — thanks to his wife — and five years to a woman's." She also cited a study of 730,000 people in the United States showing that married men diagnosed with cancer had a mortality rate 20 percent lower than their unmarried counterparts, a gap attributed to spousal care.

"When a man gets married, he gains a personal health manager," Baek said. "When a woman gets married, she gains someone to manage."

Baek noted that even in dual-income households, women still shoulder a disproportionate share of domestic work. She cited Ministry of Statistics data showing that in couples where both partners work, husbands spend one hour and 24 minutes a day on household chores while wives spend three hours and 32 minutes.

However, Baek was quick to add that the picture is not entirely bleak for married women. "Does that mean marriage and having kids is just a loss for women? No," she said, before citing a study of 620,000 Asians that found people who had never married faced a 62 percent higher risk of death than those who had. She also referenced research showing that women who had never given birth faced a 43 percent higher mortality risk.

Drawing on all of these findings, Baek said that seeing glamorous photos of Kim Hye-soo or Uhm Jung-hwa's toned abs might make some women feel inadequate, but "it's not about whether you had a baby or not." More than gender, marriage or childbirth, she said, "what matters is who you live with and how." She advised that finding a partner — husband or wife — who shares the burdens of childbirth, parenting, caregiving and the daily grind with warmth and mutual encouragement is what leads to a longer, healthier life.

"The conclusion is not 'you must get married and have children' or 'you must not,'" Baek said. "You are the author of your own life. It's up to you."

Baek joined MBC as a staff announcer in 1987 and became the first and youngest woman to anchor MBC's flagship newscast, "News Desk." She left MBC in 1999 and has worked as a freelance broadcaster since. She married in 1995 and had a son, but later divorced. She remarried in 2001 and divorced again in 2007, raising her son on her own. Her son married the second daughter of Chung Mong-won, chairman of HL Group, in 2023.

paq@heraldcorp.com