![]() ![]() As we accompany her through her childhood and schooling, and then onto her brief work career and finally family life, a picture emerges of someone living a limited life, surviving within the constraints of a society where women are expected to play a particular role. ![]() To find out the cause of her problems, though, we need to go back in time, and the rest of the book follows Jiyoung as she grows up. As her bewildered husband Daehyun drives her back to their own home, we wonder just what’s going on. It’s here that Jiyoung breaks down, insulting her in-laws by mockingly impersonating her own mother and criticising her in-laws for forcing her to spend time away from her side of the family. It begins in 2015, with our titular heroine, a thirty-two-year-old housewife with a young daughter, preparing for a visit to her husband’s family home to celebrate chuseok, the Korean autumn harvest festival. This time, though, her name is no secret – it’s even emblazoned on the book’s cover □Ĭho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (translated by Jamie Chang) is a book that struck a chord with the women of Korea right from its publication, going on to sell over a million copies and spawning a film adaptation. Once again, we’ll be meeting a woman whose life has been one of struggle in a society where the chips are stacked against her. ![]() ![]() This week’s first post looked at the treatment of a group of Korean women around the time of the Second World War, and today’s book covers a similar theme, albeit with a twenty-first century slant. ![]()
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