This was super interesting and totally fuelling my obsession with all things Korean at the moment. It does not really read like a novel, more like a biography, essayistic in style and with lots of facts and figures. Harsh at times, the things women are put through, yet I am not surprised. Just because a country manages to pull itself out of being a developing country to one of the biggest economic powers in the world in the span of a generation does not mean that equality and society really moves at the same pace. Highly recommend.

Absolutely fascinating insight into life in Korea as a woman; even now. I could feel my anger levels rising as I continued through the book. Just deal with it, accept your lot in life - crazy. Though we see Jiyoung at various stages in her life, I didn't feel like we knew her well at all, even by the end of the book.

I devoured this book in one sitting; I'd liken it to Convenience Store Woman for its readability and quirky writing style and definitely recommend it.

I devoured this book in a day. Such fascinating insight into Korean society and the everyday misogyny faced by girls and women there. The book is split up into periods of Kim Jiyoung’s life (with some insight into her mother’s childhood too), showing her experiences as a young girl at home, then school, college, working life, motherhood, and along the way we get insight into the experiences of the girls and women around her. It’s extremely powerful.

There are footnotes throughout that help to show the realness of the everyday sexism Kim Jiyoung faces, all backed up with facts and studies. Yet it is still extremely accessible and relatable. No matter where you’re from or what level of misogyny you’ve experienced, all women will be able sympathise and perhaps empathise – I certainly found the grandmother’s treatment of her grandson compared to her granddaughters familiar…

I’ll be telling everyone about this book.

Many books have been written about gender inequality and misogyny. But perhaps none in the style of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. Cho Nam-Joo’s novel’s titular character’s name literally means Jane Doe in Korean, and it’s a powerful story about the place of women in South Korean society.

Kim Jiyoung is an everywoman but one who dares to question the treatment meted out to her by men and women alike that serves to perpetrate the deep-rooted gender biases in South Korean society. Jiyoung’s description of her childhood is a vivid picture of the ingrained preference for males. Her younger brother gets the best of the food made at home, and new clothes, toys, and books while the girls have to make do with hand-me-downs. The situation only becomes worse as Kim Jiyoung progresses through each stage of her life.

I wouldn’t classify this book entirely as a novel. It felt like watching a docudrama, which is part fiction and part fact. Statements are backed up by references from various newspapers and other sources, which adds to the clinical feeling that pervades the book. But it doesn’t take away the small jolts of shock that you constantly receive at the extent of bigotry that is present in Korean society. Sure, women are dealt the bad hand all over the world but it’s only when you read about it in an intimate narrative such as this that it gets under your skin. By giving those links and references, Cho Nam-Joo shows just how real these problems are. For example, hidden camera pornography is such a widespread issue that the South Korean government had to crack down hard and threaten perpetrators with five years of jail time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-4...

I found the book to be unsettling, a feeling heightened by the realism that Cho Nam-Joo infuses with the journalistic slant. It’s a unique way of storytelling and I find that the blend served very well to highlight the issue at hand.

A big thank you to NetGalley for giving me this copy for review!

A fictional account of a 35 year old Korean woman, Kim Jiyoung – exploring her childhood, adolescence, through to marriage and motherhood. Kim Jiyoung’s life is that of a typical Korean female – always always inferior to the male, from young boys given the better portions of food, male students prioritised in the lunch queue, and male employees preferentially promoted.

Even in UK society, far more progressive than that of Korea (with many notations and facts backing up the Korean portrayal), as a woman of a similar age, the situations are realistic and recognisable. Fascinating, yet sad that still in this day and age, things are the way they are.

A story of sexism and discrimination in Korean society. The short book follows a fictional female character from birth to motherhood highlighting issues faced by modern women in South Korea. It’s a quick and interesting read, and an insight into culture and society there.

I would have preferred it more if it were a real life account I think. It was detached in the narrative, and I found the beginning and ending of the book quite strange. I didn’t understand the reasoning behind the type of depression she had - in the way she became different people. Also the therapist at the end didn’t really add anything to the story I felt, and just added to the general feeling of annoyance this book gave me.

However it was an interesting and insightful shorter read. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my thoughts on this book.

I read this book with an increasing sense of disbelief and anger, as Nam-Joo charts the life and experiences of Kim Yijoung, an ordinary woman of South Korea, struggling to exist in a hugely paternalistic and belittling society. Little wonder that this book has been such a touchstone in South Korea for women since its publication in 2016. Working as a mirror to society, the ordinariness of Kim’s existence from childhood to womanhood is delineated by the instances of sexism, chauvinism and subjugation that women endure in a society so completely controlled and dominated by the actions and needs of men, and the way that these needs, and their perceived ‘superiority’ are so routinely put before those of women. As a single Western woman with all the freedoms that this affords me, I felt myself growing increasingly enraged and frustrated by the denial of freedom and visibility of Kim herself. The writing is clipped and sharp where small explosions occur within the sedate pace of the book overall, and made all the more powerful for it. An eye-opening and necessary read.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows the Korean woman of the title from her birth until the present day. We're introduced to Jiyoung in the present day where, at 33, she's hospitalised after having a breakdown, and the author then recounts her life story which gives us the background and context as to how this has happened.

Cho Nam-Joo gives readers a heck of a lot of examples of incidents of institutionalised sexism and misogyny which have cumulatively impacted so greatly on Jiyoung and her psyche - men are considered superior to women in almost every way in Korean society, and Jiyoung is subject to inappropriate behaviour from colleagues, teachers and fellow students, skipped over for promotions and settles into a life of domesticity, despite being a promising student at university and having no desire to quit her job to raise her daughter.

While I wholeheartedly support the message behind this book - that the traditional patriarchal Korean society is having severe impacts on the mental health of women, even in the present day - the way it's presented doesn't make for a particularly great or overly engaging novel. The narrative is pretty much exclusively disconnected example after example of oppression Jiyoung faces - I've seen other readers describe it as list-like, enumerating the injustices women face in Korean (and global) society and I'd have to agree.

I'm kind of on the fence with this one. While I'd impel readers to give it a go to gain an insight into the oppression women face in Korea, I'd give caution about the detached narrative style - which won't be for everyone.

Thank you Netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

This book is different to many others that I have read but I really enjoyed it
You may need a pile of tissues when reading it
A great book

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. It gave me some insight into how women are treated that side of the world. It's so amazing how people become despondent when they have girls but the daughters are usually the ones who care more for their parents than the sons.

This book is a good read and I will look out for more books by this author.

This book is sexism through a Korean lens. While parts of this story are particularly relevant to Korean women, I suspect that many women would identify with Jiyoung, her life and her decisions. It shows how ingrained sexism can be in a culture and refers to facts and figures to show how it manifests in Korea. A nice quick read, but great, and one I would recommend.

"She said she’ll never forget how proud she felt when she presented a bouquet of flowers as a welcome-back present to one of her subordinates, who returned from a year-long childcare leave for the first time in the company’s history.

‘Who is she?’ Jiyoung asked.

‘She left a few months after that.’ "

82년생 김지영 by 조남주published in 2016, was, and indeed still is, a publishing sensation in Korea, selling over a million copies, the first novel to do so since 엄마를 부탁해 (tr. Please Take Care of Mom), and catalysing a national debate on sexism, particularly in the workplace. I read the novel the week that the fertility rate in Korea fell below 1, the lowest in the 36 countries measured in the OECD (see https://www.ft.com/content/16505438-c96c-11e9-a1f4-3669401ba76f)

The English translation from Jamie Chang is due out next year (thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC). It will be interesting to see what UK/US readers make of it – it isn’t as feelgood or so universal as Please Take Care of Mom, and not as powerfully visceral and literary as The Vegetarian, the two big K-lit breakout novels to date, but an important book nevertheless.

The novel opens in Autumn 2015, introducing us to Kim Jiyoung as she is now, and her mental breakdown (which has echoes of The Vegetarian), before returning to 1982 and her birth.

"Kim Jiyoung is thirty-three years old, thirty-four Korean age. She got married three years ago and had a daughter last year. She rents a small apartment on the outskirts of Seoul with her husband Jung Daehyun, thirty-six, and daughter Jung Jiwon. Daehyun works at a mid-size IT company, and Jiyoung used to work at a small marketing agency, which she left a few weeks before her due date.

Jiyoung’s abnormal behaviour was first detected on 8 September."

The novel then returns to 1982 and her birth taking us through her birth, childhood, education, entry into the workplace and marriage.

The name Kim Jiyoung is intended to present an everywoman persona

(I wrote the novel) to show women’s shared worries,” Cho said, pointing out that Kim Ji-young is ordinary in every way. There is nothing exceptional about the character.
(from an interview in 2018 when the novel reached 1 million copies http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20181128000683)</blockquote>and the author has her protagonist pretty much experience every form of discrimination present in the society of the time, ranging from selective abortion of the 3rd child if the fetus was female and the family already had two girls ("this went on throughout the 1980s and in the early 1990s, the very height of the male-to-female ratio imbalance, the ratio for the third child and beyond was over two-to-one") through to spycams in the women’s toilets at work.

If anything, Jiyoung’s generation suffered from coming of age while Korea was transitioning from a traditional society, with women staying at home, to a modern one, with women allowed and expected to build careers, but without support in the workplace allowing them to realistically do so:

"In 1999, the year [her elder sister] turned twenty, new legislation against gender discrimination was introduced, and in 2001, the year Kim Jiyoung turned twenty, the Ministry of Gender equality was formed.

But in certain pivotal moments in women’s lives, the ‘woman’ stigma reared its head to obscure their vision, stay their hands and hold them back. The mixed signals were confusing and disconcerting."

You will note the rather dry tone, and the use of facts and figures to back up Jiyoung’s story. Indeed the novel even – see the next quote – uses footnotes, given it at times a rather academic tone.

One recurrent theme relates to maternity leave – and the fact that (as the opening quote suggests) it is or at least was almost unheard of for someone to return to work afterwards. Jiyoung’s female supervision, who features in the opening quote of my review, relates a story from a previous company:

"She spotted a pregnant woman in the company dining hall and asked the people at her table how long the company’s childcare leave was, and none of the five, including one department head, knew the answer because none of them had ever seen an employee go on childcare leave.

She couldn’t picture herself at the company ten years down the road, resigned after some thought, and her boss grumbled, ‘This is why we don’t hire women.’

She replied, ‘Women don’t stay because you make it impossible for us to stay.’

The percentage of female employees who use childcare leave has increased from 20 per cent in 2003 to more than half in 2009, and four out of ten still work without childcare leave. [11] Of course, there are many women who have already left their jobs due to marriage, pregnancy or childbirth, and have not been included in the statistical sample of childcare leave. The percentage of female managers has also increased steadily but slightly from 10.22 per cent in 2006 to 18.37 per cent in 2014, but it’s not even two out of ten yet. [12]

References:
[11] Yun Jeonghye, ‘Current use of Parental leave and Its Implications’, Report on Employment Trends, July 2015.
[12] 2015 Reports on Employment and Labor, Ministry of labor, pp. 83– 84."

But it isn’t all dry – I loved this interview anecdote when three female graduates are interviewed together by a panel:

"The last question came from a middle-aged male trustee who’d been sitting at the end of the table and nodding without a word up until that point. ‘you’re at a meeting with a client company. The client gets, you know, handsy. Squeezing your shoulder, grazing your thigh. you know what I mean? yeah? How will you handle that situation? let’s start with Ms Kim Jiyoung.’

Jiyoung didn’t want to panic like an idiot or lose points by being too firm, so she shot for the middle. ‘I’ll find a natural way to leave the room. like going to the toilet or getting research data.’

The second interviewee asserted that it was clearly sexual harassment and that she would tell him to stop right away. If he didn’t, she would press charges. The male trustee raised an eyebrow and wrote something down, which made Jiyoung flinch.

‘I would check my outfit and attitude,’ said the final interviewee, who had had the longest to think of an answer, ‘to see if there were any problems with it, and fix anything that may have induced the inappropriate behaviour in the client.’

The second interviewee heaved an audible, baffled sigh. Jiyoung was chagrined by the answer, but regret set in as she thought the third woman’s answer probably got the most points, and hated herself for thinking that."

Who got the job? ….. The male candidate of course!

And much is redeemed by the powerful final section of the book, which explains the dry tone of the novel so far and what it is we have just read, as well as providing a rather devastating final line.

Recommended.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a novel about a normal South Korean woman and the reasons why she starts acting strangely. Jiyoung's life story isn't anything unusual: the second daughter born to a family who wanted a boy, made to share a room with her sister while her younger brother has his own, a good student tormented by boys and male teachers at school, goes to university but doesn't get put up for internships, and who is expected to give up everything else to become a mother. The book charts that life, up until the present day when, with a young daughter and a husband, she seems to have a breakdown. What has caused this to happen to Kim Jiyoung, and is her story more than just one person's life?

The novel is being marketed as a sensation in South Korea now translated into English, and it is clear why is so: this is a book that uses the story of one woman to look at misogyny and systematic oppression on a large scale, raising important points using the everyday details of life. The narrative is fast-paced and descriptive, going through the stages in Jiyoung's life and showing how they aren't exceptional, but also feel in many ways inevitable, even without knowing that she ends up a depressed mother. Society has given her certain paths to take, and even her fighting against the rigid walls of these paths is contained, decisions both hers and not hers at all. These themes aren't surprising, but the style of the narrative works to show how everyday it is and how it can wear women down.

This is a short book that makes powerful points about the institutions that contain South Korean women, and indeed women all over the world, using the lens of one character and her relatively usual life. It is both an insight into one country's society and a reflection of many others, and it is clear why it has been so popular.

I’m a sucker for translated fiction, particularly from/about East Asia, and after devouring Convenience Store Girl earlier this year, I’ve developed a particular fondness for short, direct and slightly quirky fiction. Given all this, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 seems perfect for me. A Korean bestseller about an ordinary Korean woman living in late 20th/early 21st century Korean society? I’m sold.

The book itself does not disappoint. Set largely chronologically, the book tells Jiyoung’s story until her mid-30s, largely focussed on the issue of sexism and gender imbalance in Korea. From her role within her family (a younger brother always receives prominence due to their gender) to her time at school, in higher education, the workplace and in marriage and homemaking, its an eye-opening look at how gender defines so much of what’s available and expected of a person in Korean culture and society. Footnotes, used to reference statistics throughout, help to tell this story and make it feel incredibly real and powerful, despite being fiction.

There do seem moments of progress throughout, but one of the real masterworks of the novel is the way that throughout progress seems to slowly, but surely, be made, until the concluding few chapters issue a gut punch which serve as a painful reminder of how much is left to change.

Part of the joy comes from the fact that Jiyoung is a very ordinary woman. There’s nothing particularly extra special about her, her situation and her story, but as a window into another culture it’s a very powerful tale and drives home how commonplace many of these issues still are in society (worldwide).

Would totally recommend as an eye-opening, very enjoyable and sharp novel, perfect for fans of Convenience Store Woman, that can be devoured in an afternoon, but left to consider for far longer.

I've watched the new wave of korean feminism from afar and cheered the women there on. This book brought home to me the divisions in korean society and why these women fighting for their rights are so important. I read this book in one sitting. I found the style and the voice compelling. Jiyoung's life story was very well told and the clear misogyny of korean and to different degrees most nations was illuminated fully. I _felt_ the injustices Jiyoung experienced a perfect demonstration of the injustices all women experience , however rich or poor they are born. A must read for young women - and their mothers and grandmothers.

I'm immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to read this wonderful book through an ARC from Netgalley and the publishers.

Kim Jiyoung starts on a similar premise to Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Jiyoung has quit her job to take care of a newborn, and the pressures and isolation of early motherhood are unravelling her - she speaks to her husband in the voices of other women - her mother, a dead friend - with no recollection or awareness, as if possessed. After she behaves inappropriately at her husband’s family gathering, chastising them in the voice of her mother, he sends her into therapy where she begins to dissect her life. The book then turns into a narrative of Kim Jiyoung from birth to motherhood, riddled with enough misogyny to make anyone crazy. The examples are numerous (and footnoted, with academic papers on gender inequality in Korea referenced) - her brother receives the lion share of their parents’ affections and investments, and unlike his sisters is never expected to help out in the house; the arrival of her period is treated with a quiet joy amongst her mother and elder sister, but also treated as a hidden shame - she feels she has done something wrong when her pad overflows; a male classmate menacingly follows her home insisting she’d been flirting with him, after which her father lectures her for the length of her skirt; she struggles to find a job after university because the best jobs either explicitly ask for or implicitly prefer male graduates; at work, she gets sidelined and is not resourced on good projects because the company prefers to invest in employees who will be there for the long haul (i.e. men who won’t take maternity leave); her loving husband speaks of mutual sacrifice when his parents pressure them into having a child, shaming Jiyoung for her perceived infertility, yet the sacrifice is minimally his and mostly hers. It is an accurately told, exhausting and infuriating collection of wrongs over a woman’s life. I would have preferred the book to spend more time on Jiyoung’s bouts of madness - women made sick and crazy by misogyny is a long-standing phenomenon (e.g. witchcraft) of which Jiyoung’s post-natal depression is a part, and it felt like a dropped opportunity for a fuller book.

“... you may not get to see all of it, but I want you to know: it’s a wide world out there.” Whilst this is a novel (as far as I’m aware), I feel it could probably be autobiographical for many Korean women - I (probably a little naively) was shocked to hear about how they are treated in comparison to men. A quick read (less than 200 pages), and pretty different from my normal reads - but what is netgalley for, if not to try new things? I enjoyed this more than I originally thought I would