Jiyoung’s painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons “family planning” birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child - to put them first.

Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her - from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist - a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women - alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. A 30-something-year-old “millennial everywoman”, she has recently left her white-collar desk job - in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time - as so many Korean women are expected to do. In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person. A New York Times Editors Choice SelectionĪ fierce international best seller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Kim ji young book review