' KIM JIYOUNG BORN 1982, 'KIM JIYOUNG, BORN 1982' IS MOST

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Cho Nam-Joo’s novel, written in an unemotional, almost clinical style, has sold more than a million copies & propelled a feminist wave in South Korea.Credit...Minumsa

KIM JIYOUNG, BORN 1982By cho Nam-Joo

I hated reading “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,” the debut novel by mang đến Nam-Joo, which is the opposite of saying that I hated the book itself. The story of a young stay-at-home mother driven khổng lồ a psychotic break, it laid bare my own Korean childhood — and, let’s face it, my Western adulthood too — forcing me to lớn confront traumatic experiences that I’d tried to chalk up as nothing out of the ordinary. But then, my experiences are ordinary, as ordinary as the everyday horrors suffered by the book’s protagonist, Jiyoung. This novel is about the banality of the evil that is systemic misogyny.

Upon its publication in South Korea in 2016, the book, which sold more than a million copies, had an “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” effect, propelling a feminist wave. It’s easy lớn see why.

The novel begins with Jiyoung having a dissociative episode. One day she wakes up not as herself but, to lớn her husband’s horror and confusion, as her mother — speaking và acting just as her mother would. Another day she claims lớn be a schoolmate who died in childbirth the previous year. As her psychiatrist later puts it: “Jiyoung became different people from time to time. Some of them were living, others were dead, all of them women she knew. No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t a joke or prank. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.”

We eventually learn about the sự kiện that triggered Jiyoung’s descent into madness. On her last day as a woman in her right mind, she is sitting by herself on a park bench when a group of young office workers mock her for having the audacity to lớn drink a cup of coffee in the middle of the day on her husband’s dime. They gọi her a “mum-roach” — a pejorative expression for an entitled woman of leisure.

In the original Korean, cho uses the term mum-choong, which isn’t quite “mum-roach”: The suffix choong is more generic, something lượt thích “creepy-crawly.” But I like the translator’s word choice; “roach” is redolent of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Jiyoung, like Gregor Samsa, feels so overwhelmed by social expectations that there is no room for her in her own body; her only option is lớn become something — or someone — else.

Of course, Jiyoung’s metamorphosis wasn’t brought on by any single incident. The seeds of her discontent were planted before she was born; she và her sister exist only because her parents kept having children (and one sex-selective abortion) until they finally produced a son. While the son gets the best of everything, Jiyoung & her sister are treated as failed rough drafts.

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Jiyoung’s life doesn’t get easier in adulthood. At her job at a kinh doanh agency, she finds she can’t even order food without mockery. When lunching with colleagues, she orders an inexpensive dish — soybean paste with rice — prompting a male client to điện thoại tư vấn her a doenjangnyeo, literally a “bean paste woman.” This snide colloquialism refers to an uppity young woman who eats the cheapest possible meals in order to lớn save up for Prada handbags và the like.

Even when she marries, quits her job and succeeds in producing a daughter, Jiyoung feels overwhelming social pressure to lớn be a sufficiently loving mother, which she likens lớn “religious dogma.” Her husband is supportive, but this almost makes it worse: He wants to help, but can vày nothing.

The husband’s helplessness is a deft cảm biến on Cho’s part, & makes an important point: If even a man can’t fight a man’s world, what’s a woman in Jiyoung’s position to lớn do?

Like “The Metamorphosis,” Cho’s novel is written in an unemotional, almost clinical style; by the end we realize it’s a case history narrated by Jiyoung’s male psychiatrist. It even includes footnotes lớn actual studies on gender inequality in South Korea.

At first, the footnotes were distracting. Then I realized their purpose was khổng lồ suggest the degree to lớn which the travails of Jiyoung, a fictional character, are grounded in fact. It’s South Korea’s dirty little secret that, despite its prosperity, technological advances and coolness factor, when it comes to lớn gender equality, it’s no Finland. As the novel points out, the Korean hoju system, in which children were registered exclusively under the patriarchal line, was not abolished until 2008. The consequences of this practice were serious: An illegitimate child was a legal nonentity, like an unbaptized child under old-school Catholic dogma.

Of course, it’s not just in Korea that such problems occur, which may be why “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” has been translated into more than a dozen languages và has become an international sensation. In South Korea, the book’s release led khổng lồ a powerful backlash. When the K-pop singer Irene, a thành viên of a band called Red Velvet, said in a March 2018 interview that she’d read the book, irate male netizens took to lớn social truyền thông to announce they were burning her photo.

Perhaps the novel’s international exposure will force South Korea khổng lồ have another reckoning with what it plans to bởi vì about its biggest elephant in the room. I expect threats just for writing this review.

The 10 different translated copies of the novel ″Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982″ (2016) written by author Cho Nam-joo

The most-sold Korean novel abroad for the past five years is "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" (2016) written by author Cho Nam-joo, according to lớn the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) on Tuesday. LTI Korea analyzed the sales of Korean literature that have been translated và published overseas from 2016 to 2020. Of a total of 658 Korean works that have been translated into 37 different languages, LTI Korea compiled the sales of 75 percent of them, or 492 books in 30 languages. Based on the sales analysis, "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" sold over 300,000 copies in 10 different languages. In particular, the book was a steady seller in Japan, selling more than 200,000 copies since its Japanese version was published in 2018. tác giả Han Kang’s novel “The Vegetarian” (2007) sold over 160,000 copies of its translation in 13 different languages. Sohn Won-pyung’s coming-of-age novel “Almond” (2017) saw sales of more than 90,000 copies in nhật bản and the thriller novel “The Good Son” (2016) by Jeong Yu-jeong sold over 20,000 copies in Brazil. Thirty-four books each sold at least 5,000 copies during the same period. Among the ones that were published in 2020, 16 of them each sold more than 5,000 copies within one year of their release. The German version of the novel “Diary of a Murderer” (2013) by Kim Young-ha won third place in the international category for the prestigious German Crime Fiction Award, or Deutscher Krimi Preis, in December 2020. It sold over 10,000 copies.

Here shows Korean bestsellers that have been translated into many different languages.

LTI Korea has also aimed lớn increase the number of translated publications: while there were only 127 books translated in 2017, 186 were translated last year alone. When including the translations sponsored by the Daesan Foundation, a cultural organization under Kyobo Life Insurance, more than 200 books are being exported every year. Bestselling novels lượt thích "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" và “Almond” have continued khổng lồ be translated into additional languages, & more và more books are seeing the spotlight, LTI Korea said. When LTI Korea takes on projects for translating Korean works, some of them are translated without being picked up by a publisher. However, LTI Korea revealed that recently, in approximately 80 percent of cases, overseas publishers reach out first và ask that a specific book be translated before the project is initiated. “This shows how much demand there is for Korean literature to be published overseas,” LTI Korea said through a press release. “It proves that even Korean literature is on its way to becoming ‘K-literature.’” BY SHIN MIN-HEE