Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was published in 2016 during a wave of feminist activity in South Korea. The book became a widespread point of discussion and controversy due to its depictions of discrimination, harassment, and everyday misogyny. In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Cho Nam-Joo pointed to two events that prompted renewed activism: a brutal 2016 murder at Gangnam train station, and prosecutor Seo Ji-hyeon’s trailblazing participation in the #MeToo movement.

The Gangnam Station murder was an explicitly misogynistic attack against a randomly chosen woman in a public restroom. Police depicted the attack as the action of a disturbed individual. But many women saw it as a symptom of widespread and normalized misogynistic attitudes in Korean society. While police rejected the idea that the murder was a hate crime, women’s rights activists rallied to draw attention to violence against women.

Activist Tarana Burke coined the phrase “me too” as a way for female victims of sexual harassment and assault to show solidarity and highlight the societal prevalence of sexual violence. In response to a groundbreaking New York Times report on serial perpetrator Harvey Weinstein—a powerful Hollywood producer—actresses starting with Alyssa Milano used the Twitter hashtag #MeToo to publicize their experiences of harassment and assault in the film industry. The movement spread to other industries and forced numerous powerful men to resign from their jobs and, in some cases, face criminal prosecution. The movement spread to South Korea when a lawyer named Seo Ji-hyeon told a television interviewer that she had been groped by a government prosecutor. Women across Korea were inspired to speak out about their experiences of workplace sexual harassment.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 documents both major acts of sexual violence and smaller-scale daily humiliations that contribute to exhausting, unequal labor conditions for women. The novel also presciently highlights the vulnerabilities women face in restrooms. The spy camera episode presaged the Hyehwa Station Protest against real-world incidents of hidden cameras installed in women’s bathrooms for pornographic purposes.

In Korea, as in the United States, recent women’s rights activism has been met with a backlash. Groups in both nations have appropriated social justice terminology to paint men as the real victims of modern social changes. The novel foresaw this reactionary attitude. For instance, when Kim Eunsil confronts the head of the company over the bathroom spying, he is more concerned with the reputations of the male perpetrators than with the exploitation of the female victims. In the face of accusations, many men behave as though long-delayed scrutiny somehow violates their rights.