At school, boys got to eat lunch first were more likely to be chosen as class monitors and suffered fewer rules about their uniform. In 1982 when she was born, it was common practice for prospective mothers to check the sex of the foetus and to abort any females “as if ‘daughter’ was a medical problem”. Her story reveals how the systemic oppression of women she experienced from childhood, is deeply ingrained in South Korean culture. Jiyoung begins to see a psychiatrist, his records of their conversations about her life forming the bulk of the novel. Her husband is bemused initially but when she outrages his parents by her behaviour, he decides it’s time for action. Without warning, she begins to exhibit an alarming change in behaviour, taking on the personalities of other people (some of whom are dead) and speaking of herself as if she were someone else. It’s an issue seen through the lens of one woman - Jiyoung, a 33-year-old mother who lives in an apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. In Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, Cho Nam-Joo offers a chilling indictment of the discrimination and misogyny experienced by women in South Korea.Ĭho Nam-Joo said she wrote the novel to stimulate a public debate about the struggle of women in her country against sexism and misogyny.
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