Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (Korean: 82년생 김지영) is a novel by Cho Nam-Joo. A former scriptwriter for TV programs, Cho took two months to write the story as according to her, the title character "Kim Ji-young's life isn't much different from the one I have lived. That's why I was able to write so quickly without much preparation." Published by Minumsa in October 2016, it has sold more than 1 million copies as of 27 November 2018, becoming the first million-selling Korean novel since Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mom in 2009.
The storyline centers on a housewife who becomes a stay-at-home mother and later develops depression. It focuses on the everyday sexism the title character experiences from youth.
Contents
Internal division
The book has six chapters, each one narrating a different stage in Kim Jiyoung's life. The stages are as follows:
Autumn, 2015
Childhood, 1982–1994
Adolescence, 1995–2000
Early Adulthood, 2001–2011
Marriage, 2012–2015
2016
Plot
The novel opens with a young South Korean woman experiencing a strange problem, Kim Jiyoung is fully impersonating other women she knows, and does not seem self-aware of the fact. Her husband is concerned and she is taken in to get psychiatric help.
The narrative then backtracks, and tells us the story of the life of Kim Jiyoung including a short family history, her birth, growing up and an adult life. The book presents not only the ordinary but trying hardships the eponymous character had to go through from her early childhood, but also covers the experiences of other women that she knew. It shows the discrimination and social judgement the women faced, their thoughts and feelings on it, and how they responded.
Kim Jiyoung is the second daughter of a family with two daughters and one son, the youngest. A key theme is the strong preference for sons in her society, which touches and affects even those who personally do not strongly agree with the prejudice. Jiyoung’s mother felt under strong pressure to have a son from her in-laws, and so kept having children until she had a son. She also tacitly allows those around her to privilege her son at the expense of herself and her daughters, while disagreeing with this custom whenever she becomes more consciously aware of it. The mother-daughter relationship is explored in depth in this book, as is the relationships between mothers and fathers, and among siblings.
Jiyoung does well at school despite stress in her home over finances, harassment by a boy playing “pranks” on her and an incident of stalking she faces while going to and from cram-school. She dreams of becoming a journalist at first, but then her interests turn to marketing while in college and she follows that career path. While she struggles to get any employment at the end of college she becomes more and more aware of the difference in how male students exactly like herself, or less qualified, are being encouraged, supported and hired while she and her fellow female students are lucky to trade down for lesser roles and get jobs in their field at all. Just before graduation she does manage to find employment and takes to it, relatively happy with the outcome. Work becomes important to her and she finds a female mentor among the upper level professionals there who takes her under her wing and is doing her best to make the workplace better for women than it was when she first started.
Feminism
Cho Nam-Joo says that it was her intention to "make this into a public debate".
"I thought of Kim Jiyoung's character as a vessel that contains experiences and emotions that are common to every Korean woman."
She stresses that the hardships the Korean women have to go through need to be discussed publicly and the sexual harassments and discrimination they encounter should be taken seriously. Kim Jiyoung is not entirely fictional as it contains statistical data "so that its message wouldn’t be dismissed as a made-up account of one woman’s experience". Cho collected the sources she needed and finished a book within 2 months.
Her wish of evoking a public debate came true. The book turned out to be an international bestseller and in 2018 it became a part of the feminist campaign in South Korea as well as the "Escape the Corset" and #MeToo movements. It also inspired the 4B movement. According to Cho Nam-Joo, the Korean women still experience sexual abuse and inequality but not as often as they did in the past. Since they started to protest and speak up the situation began to change, though very slowly. Cho also said she believed the situation of women would not get any worse.
Reception
The book gained attention in early 2017 after readers posted reviews of the book on social media. In May 2018, after the floor leader of the Justice Party's Roh Hoe-chan gifted the book to President Moon Jae-in with a message that read "Please embrace 'Kim Ji-young Born '82'", the book's sales shot up. It has sold more than 1 million copies as of November 2018. But despite the novel's popularity and timely message on sexism in Korea, controversy still arose when Red Velvet member Irene shared during a fan meet that she had read Kim Ji-Young. Male fans began berating the K-pop idol, going as far as burning and cutting up Irene's photos.
Among the celebrities who appreciated the book were also: RM of BTS, Soo-young of Girls’ Generation and Yui Yokoyama of AKB48.
In 2020, the novel became longlisted for the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature and the French Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature.
Film adaptation
In 2019, the book was adapted into a film with Jung Yu-mi and Gong Yoo taking the lead roles.