This woman's story serves as the best "values test" for couples.

A South Korean woman named Lee Ji-hye sat there, seemingly on the verge of death.
She had an ordinary appearance, wore an inconspicuous black suit, and had unremarkable long black hair. She pursed her lips and placed her hands awkwardly in front of her.
Behind her, many people were saying things like: “Girls who are too assertive won’t attract any boys!” “Isn’t wearing a short skirt just for show?” “Zhi-zhi, do you know you got into the company because of your looks?” “Children really do need their mothers to take care of them.”
These words permeated her life from age 1 to 90. She could die at any time, as long as her stress level reached 100, or her social, emotional, self-esteem, and adaptability dropped to 0.
Lee Ji-hye comes from a game designed by South Korean board game designer Kwon Soo-in – “Lee Ji-hye’s Survival Game”. The game ends when Lee Ji-hye dies, so players must carefully manage her various stats to prevent her from dying suddenly at some point in her life.
“Lee Ji-hye’s Survival Game is themed around feminism, but games with this theme are generally difficult to make. So I hope that players can experience women’s lives during the game, even if it’s indirect,” Kwon Soo-in told our reporter.
Players take on the roles of Lee Ji-hye’s family and friends, but when helping Lee Ji-hye make every choice, players feel as if they have become Lee Ji-hye, experiencing the obstacles that an ordinary woman faces in her life.
01choose
17-year-old Li Zhihui was taking a bus to school. On the bus, she felt an uncle touching her buttocks from behind. Li Zhihui tried to move away, but it was difficult because there were too many passengers on the bus.
The action that Li Zhihui should take is as follows:
1. Get off at the next stop.2. While counting how many stops until I get off, I endured the pain.3. Turn around and glare at your uncle behind you, then argue with him.4. Ask a friend nearby for help.
In a game where one of our reporter participated, all three players, being women, reached a consensus on almost every issue. However, they fell into a heated debate over this particular choice. Some empathized with Li Zhihui, asking whether a 17-year-old girl would have the courage to resist a sexual harassment in a situation that could potentially lead to physical conflict. Other players argued that Li Zhihui should bravely resist a sexual harassment, and that option 3 was the more reasonable choice.
Faced with this question, the group members engaged in a heated debate. Player Xiaobai initially chose option 2, but in the final vote, she chose option 3.
In her later sharing, she explained her reasons for doing so. “The reason I initially chose option 2 and silently endured it was not because I thought it was the right choice, but because I also experienced sexual harassment on a bus when I was 17, and I chose option 2 back then.” Xiaobai seemed very cheerful, not at all like a girl who would silently endure it.
“I still remember what I was wearing that day. I had my hair in a ponytail, wore jeans and sneakers, and a blue tracksuit. Nothing could have been more conservative, but I still encountered a pervert. My mind went blank, and I didn’t know what to do. I could only silently endure it until the two girls in front of me seemed to notice something was wrong and gave me their seats. Only then did it end.” Xiaobai continued, “So my initial choice was 2, but I changed my mind after discussing it with my teammates. I hope that if I could go back to being 17, I would have the courage to face the person harassing me, and I also hope that the other people on the bus can give me support. So I also hope that Li Zhihui can make a brave choice.”
In Xiaobai’s opinion, if Li Zhihui had been a little braver, perhaps all the problems in her life could have been easily solved. However, in this game, Li Zhihui only lived to be in her thirties before dying. The game ended because Li Zhihui’s “adaptability” attribute dropped to 0, and her “sociality” attribute was also close to 0.
Starting over, Xiaobai and her teammates adopted a different approach—they analyzed which choice would affect which of Li Zhihui’s stats and tried their best to find a balance.
Is it better to let Lee Ji-hye become a warrior against the world at will, or to make her compromise when necessary—including but not limited to enduring little boys lifting her skirt, agreeing with the boss’s dirty jokes at the dinner table, and giving up her career and ideals to become a full-time housewife?

Sometimes you have to choose silence or withdrawal to prevent compliance from dropping. However, if compliance remains unchanged, sensitivity sometimes “compensates.” So, a common scenario in games is that when making a choice on a question, players will cautiously ask the host, “Is he/she dead?”
This time, Li Zhihui successfully lived to be 90 years old, but compared to the satisfaction of winning the game, this victory felt somewhat aggrieved.

02Male players
Player Su Lu, too, only learned to make choices slowly after experiencing rapid deaths at the beginning, in order to ensure Li Zhihui’s survival to the end. As a straight male chauvinist, the game’s content did not surprise him—whether it was the plight of women facing sexual harassment, the glass ceiling in the workplace, or the constraints of motherhood in the family.
But after changing the game’s rules, he suddenly realized that as a man, his subconscious choices were often black and white, while when he became Li Zhihui, he had to make more moderate choices. For example, when elders pressured him to get married, he couldn’t either forcefully argue back or directly agree; he might have to make an excuse to go to the bathroom or stall. Or, after childbirth, when faced with the conflict between his dream of becoming a writer and the responsibility of taking care of the family, he sometimes had no choice but to let Li Zhihui work part-time while taking care of the child.
After playing two rounds, Su Lu abandoned the scoring system and instead consulted the “answer book” of the story’s ending, discussing with the female player at the same table the choices Li Zhihui should make.
Su Lu said, “My choices regarding the questions were primarily based on my male identity, but in communicating with female players, I found that I could understand their choices to some extent. Rather than saying that this game educates through its ending, it’s more accurate to say that it achieves communication that is often hidden by gender identity in daily life by forcing both male and female players to think about their choices. In other words, I didn’t understand the game itself, but rather the opposite-sex person sitting next to me playing the game.”
However, many male gamers in China fail to understand this and instead believe that “this only happens in South Korea, and Chinese women have a much higher status.”
There were also male players who tried to understand Li Zhihui’s situation, yet they still “guided” her life with their male perspectives. For example, when a male classmate lifted Li Zhihui’s skirt, and the teacher only said it meant “he likes you,” player Wang Yi chose to tell Li Zhihui to “understand his feelings.” “You still need to see if the male classmate lifted her skirt maliciously. If so, you must seriously stop him. But if not, perhaps he just has a crush on Li Zhihui.”
When Li Zhihui was jokingly told by her uncle, “Your legs are so thick, they’re like elephant legs!” Wang Yi wanted Li Zhihui to “consider losing weight.” He thought that since others had said that, perhaps Li Zhihui was indeed a little overweight.
Wang Yi may still be understanding Li Zhihui’s life from a male perspective, and this is exactly what Quan Xiuren wants to change.

03“Values Detector”
“I think games can make players more immersive. For male players, many are unaware of how many times women face gender discrimination in their lives, and games can allow them to experience this more vividly. For female players, the important thing is that they can share and discuss this consensus or life experience,” Kwon Soo-in explained to our reporter.
From birth to age 90, Lee Ji-hye will face up to 32 life choices. Kwon Soo-in, a South Korean woman born in 1992, frankly stated that most of the things Lee Ji-hye encountered during her childhood and youth also happened to herself and her female friends.
When “Lee Ji-hye’s Survival Game” was released in South Korea, the novel “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” and the film of the same name sparked widespread discussion about the plight of women. This board game gained unexpected popularity after appearing on a variety show.
However, this also brought incomprehension and criticism. Some male netizens questioned: How can 32 choices all happen simultaneously in a woman’s life? This game is too extreme.
In response, Kwon Soo-in said, “Lee Ji-hye’s Survival Game is a typical woman’s story. You may not believe that women go through a lot of things like this, but most of the problems are women’s own experiences. If you don’t understand, it’s probably because you’re never interested in what the women around you go through.”
For Kwon Soo-in, men are never targets to be attacked, but rather teammates who can stand with women and change the world. Kwon Soo-in told our reporter that when discussing the marketing plan for the game, the male professionals she met with (40-50 years old, most with children, possibly daughters) listened to the game’s introduction without prejudice and offered some interesting marketing suggestions from a male perspective.
“For example, when the man says ‘Marry me,’ instead of making him say ‘I will make you happy for the rest of your life,’ it’s better to give him this game and let him answer each question. This is the most valuable gift for future family members,” Quan Xiuren said.
Su Lu agrees with this view, believing that “Li Zhihui’s Survival Game” is less a game like UNO or card games that brings players joy, and more a “values test” for couples. Especially for women, listening to their boyfriend’s choices in a specific situation might be more valuable than empty promises.

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This woman’s story serves as the best “values test” for couples.