In Cho Nam Ju’s Kim Ji Young, Born 1982, the already heartbreaking feminist novel compelled a greater sense of empathy in me as I saw a direct reflection of my mother inside. An eerily similar crossover between the main character, Kim Ji Young, and my mother, Lee Hwa Sook, essentially came down to their views and experiences of being a young woman in South Korea. Siblings to one older sister who gave up everything to take care of her and one younger brother who never knew when to stop taking, Kim Ji Young and Lee Hwa Sook always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the way in which society treated men and women differently. By telling the story of Kim Ji Young in an almost mundane but detailed manner, the reader truly sees Kim Ji Young as a real person in their life, a woman whose story has been told time and time again, yet now bears no ‘shock-factor’ due to the fact that it was- told time and time again. In the novel and in reality Kim Ji Young and Lee Hwa Sook must constantly yield to the men in the story because they’re ‘younger’, ‘going to the military soon’, or ‘won’t need maternity leave’. This book questions, why is it that men are so prioritized in Korea? Cho builds the novel up so that the reader feels all the anger, empathy, and helplessness at the same time watching Ji Young get mistreated chapter after chapter so much that she adopts a psychological illness in which she wakes up with a different persona. One morning she begins to wake up in her own body, but she completely engulfs a different woman’s identity, down to their speaking, acting, and even their memories. Now the people in her life must confront Ji Young and her struggles that have been weighing her down all her life. Cho does a wonderful job of using small snippets of Ji Young’s life to get her message across but the most telling part of the novel comes down to the last chapter where her condition is analyzed by the doctor – a male doctor. Without spoiling, the most I can say is that it made me feel everything yet nothing at the same time. It had me continuously replaying moments of the life of a fictional woman, who just seemed so real in nature. And perhaps she is. Kim Ji Young, Born 1982 is not just a story, but a mirror of real women, resonating its message in every reader regardless of their gender.
Opening line: “Kim Jiyoung is thirty-three years old, or thirty-four in Korean age.”
Favorite line: “I’ll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried.”
Why I like it: Alongside the story, the novel also displays statistics about gender inequality in Korea. By using exact numbers it creates a greater impact and brings out the absurdity that Korean women tend to brush over as “the norm”. Every chapter I am able to learn new things such as the fact that in Korea, men’s national registry numbers begin with a 1 and women’s begin with a 2, something I had never given a second thought to until it was explicitly pointed out by Ji Young.
Read if you like: Pachinko, A Little Life, The House on Mango Street,