The girls got their own room, as per their mother’s plan. Mother had set money aside, without telling father, to furnish the girls’ room. She put two new sets of desks and chairs by the sunny window and a new closet and bookcase by one wall, and gave them each a new sleeping mat, blanket and pillow set. On the opposite wall, she hung a large map of the world.
‘See this here? This is Seoul. It’s just a dot. A dot. We all of us are living in this tiny, cramped dot. You may not get to see all of it, but I want you to know: it’s a wide world out there.’
Blurb:
Kim Jiyoung is …
… a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.
… a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.
… a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.
… a model employee who gets overlooked for promotion.
… a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.
… has started acting strangely.
… depressed.
… mad.
… her own woman.
… every woman.
Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a powerful novella that combines fiction and facts (in footnotes) to tell the story of a South Korean woman in her thirties — from 1982 up to the mid-2010s. What we encounter is a staggering gender discrimination, notably in a society that purports to be modern and progressive.
Just a girl…
We follow Kim Jiyoung’s path from early childhood — being the second eldest and ‘just another daughter’ — to her mid-thirties, being married and having had a baby just a year earlier. A girl.
Her whole life revolves around being ‘just a girl.’ Being the other daughter (that should have been a son), being harassed at school because ‘the boy likes you’, later being harassed after school (probably because that boy ‘liked’ her, too…), growing into an adult woman who performs as well as her male peers and still is not considered for a scholarship, a promotion, and sometimes even a job. Because being a woman in a misogynist society means being a second-class citizen — a lot of times at least. At the time we first meet her, she’s sliding into a mental breakdown following the birth of her daughter and leaving her job to take care of the baby.
Since Kim Jiyoung’s mother, Oh-Misook, had it even harder and knows exactly how it feels to be treated like nothing more than a walking womb/childbearing servant, she develops a remarkable inner force and entrepreneurial spirit, being the driving force in her family’s growing success. One could say she is the head of the family — but one probably wouldn’t as long as South Korea is sticking to its patriarchal roots.
While being a successful businesswoman, she also does her best to take care of her daughters, Kim Jiyoung and her older sister, making sure they get a room of their own instead of sharing their living space with their grandmother, and an excellent education. In this sense, though she still reproduces well-known stereotypes at various times throughout the novella, she is doing her best to provide her daughters with a more promising future, different from her own upbringing.
So much to learn
I didn’t know that South Korea is still such a deeply patriarchal society. Though I caught a glimpse into Korean society when reading Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, I did not recognize just how misogynistic it is. I’ll definitely have to find some additional books by female authors from/writing about South Korea. If you know interesting stories, let me know in the comments — thank you 🙂
Some issues — like the gender pay gap, poor career opportunities, especially for mothers, and the general male dominance in the public sphere (think manspreading, mansplaining, and a multitude of possibilities for harassment) — are well-known to women all over the world. In some places, it’s even worse, while in others it’s less obvious. But this does not mean we should not talk about it. Write about it. Make it known. I’m grateful to Cho Nam-Joo for writing such an interesting, educational, and excellent novella about the current day situation of young women in South Korea. I would have never known that a country that seems to be at the forefront of technological advance still lives under a misogynist rock that treats women like second-class human beings.
Have you read the book? What are your thoughts?
Thanks for stopping by. Take care and read you soon! 🙂