"Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" by Cho Nam-Joo (Review)

The year is 2015. It’s autumn, and Kim Jiyoung lives in Seoul with her husband Jung Daehyun and her one-year-old daughter, Jung Jiwon. It is around this time that Daehyun observes Jiyoung exhibiting strange behavior. While Daehyun is having breakfast, Jiyoung opens a window, letting the cold air inside the house, and impersonates the voice of her mother. Initially, Daehyun thinks Jiyoung is joking around, but then the behavior gets stranger. At one point, Jiyoung impersonates a college friend who’s recently deceased; the odd behavior alarms Daehyun.

The behavior escalates during Chuseok, a harvest holiday where families gather to give thanks to their ancestors. Jiyoung, Daehyun, and Jiwon travel to Busan to visit her in-laws and celebrate Chuseok. Jiyoung and her mother-in-law shop and prepare food for the harvest holiday. When her mother-in-law puts Jiyoung on the spot and asks if preparing the food was too much for her, she impersonates her mother’s voice again. Jiyoung, as her mother, scolds her mother-in-law for working her into exhaustion. She turns her attention to Daehyun, admonishing him for spending time with only his family and not her own. The behavior troubles her in-laws, driving Daehyun to send Jiyoung to meet with a male psychiatrist. 

Told from the perspective of Kim Jiyoung’s doctor, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 chronicles a woman’s everyday struggle with endemic misogyny. The novel is broken up into six sections, each detailing Jiyoung’s experiences common to every woman. When Jiyoung reaches adolescence, she experiences dress code double standards. While the dress code favors boys, the girls face a stricter dress code. Girls must wear a round-neck undershirt with their blouse, and their skirt must be longer than their knees. In the summer, the girls are not allowed to wear t-shirts or spaghetti straps. In the winter, the girls are not allowed to wear socks with their tights. The dress code makes the girls uncomfortable, as noted by Jiyoung experiencing cold feet during their winter. Reading about Jiyoung’s experience with a strict dress code reminded me of my own experience. I attended a school where students wore uniforms. On non-uniform days, it was the girls who were heavily monitored for their attire. It was the girls who were sent to the office for wearing clothes that did not abide by the rules. It was the girls who were reprimanded by teachers and staff to cover their shoulders. The dress code being enforced teaches girls that they are viewed as bodies first and people second. 

Though the novel is a work of fiction, Cho Nam-joo provides footnotes and statistics, which illustrate that Jiyoung’s experiences are not individual but a widespread pattern. South Korea, for example, holds the largest gender wage gap among the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, earning 63 percent of what men earn. Yet, I’d like to take some time to focus on the novel’s ending. While Jiyoung’s fate is left uncertain, Cho focuses our attention on the psychiatrist. The novel ends with his own female employee resigning due to her pregnancy. He promises to hire an unmarried replacement because it's convenient to him. Yet, hiring an unmarried woman illustrates the psychiatrist’s complicity but also allows the systemic issues to persist.