Elle's Reviews > Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

One of my Top Ten Books of 2020!

I’ve been saving this one for a time when I could handle the impending rage-read. I don’t think anyone is ever really going to be “ready” for this kind of patriarchal bitchslap, though, so I’m just gonna wade into it.



I’d also like to take a moment to apologize to my Kindle, which I shook, tossed and slammed in frustration so often whilst reading that it’s probably going to take out a restraining order against me. I didn’t know so much unspoken fury could live in such a small book. It’s not even 200 pages.

This novella starts at the end, where we meet Kim Jiyoung as an adult. She’s married and has a young daughter, but is slowly losing her mind. We observe her from an outside perspective, through whispered discussions between her husband and in-laws. Then the story takes us back to the beginning, when Jiyoung was born in 1982. Following her from childhood, through adolescence into adulthood, what’s striking isn’t how distinct or special she is, but how ordinary. Her life, with all of its mundane injustices, is instantly recognizable to every woman that’s reading. They’re Korean characters in a Korean setting, but much of the experiences are universal.

“The world had changed a great deal, but the little rules, contracts and customs had not, which meant the world hadn’t actually changed at all.”

I feel like if I tried to summarize all of the things this book touched on, this review would be longer than the text itself. But suffice to say that Kim Jiyoung, and the women she represents, have had the decks stacked against them from the beginning. From the first moments of her life, where her mother apologized to her mother-in-law for having a daughter, to the subtle and blatant ways boys were coddled and favored while girls were shoved into the background in childhood, is it really any wonder what kind of adults they became?

It’s positively sinister what we convince ourselves is normal. What we convince ourselves we want and choose, as if the societal expectations put on us from birth aren’t nudging us one way or another. It makes me angry and it makes me sad. Worst of all it makes me doubt my own feelings and motivations. This type of realization has the potential to be completely debilitating. And the fact that Jiyoung would be only ten years older than me is seriously fucking with my head. This isn’t a Black Mirror episode, this isn’t a dystopian futuristic novel; it’s here and now.

Honestly, the most devastating part for me was the footnotes. Any time the author referenced a statistic about Korean gender imbalance, she attached the relevant study. It’s one thing to cite these numbers, but the inclusion of the data to back them up just reinforces their stark existence. Plus, I can’t help but wonder if she felt compelled to do so because she expected male readers to doubt her words and experiences. Women don’t really need to have these facts proven to us; we’ve lived them.

My favorite thing about this book was how much it pissed people off. The controversy it stirred in Korea when first published just demonstrates how much discussions on these topics are overdue. As of 2016, South Korea was the worst ‘developed’ nation to be a working woman. (And btw, this isn’t an opportunity to dunk on another country for being ‘worse’ at something than us, because it’s not like America is known for it’s generous parental leave policy.) Famous Korean women who said they read the book were lobbed with criticism, while their male counterparts mostly escaped scrutiny. The actress cast as Jiyoung in the movie adaptation was bombarded with hate online. By trying to rebuff critique, the misogynist parts of society only succeeded in proving Cho Nam-Joo’s points.

Like that article on The Lily that’s been circulating the past couple of days has pointed out, most of the onus for maintaining the status quo falls on the men who let it happen. Whether it’s Ginetta Sagan, “Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor”, or Lizzo, “Why men great ‘til they gotta be great?”, it’s clear these aren’t cases of isolated ignorance—it‘s systemic and widespread. Men need to speak up for women when it matters, even when nobody else is watching.

Basically, listen to Rihanna:



**For more book talk & reviews, follow me on Instagram at @elle_mentbooks!