Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

By Cho Nam-Joo Translated by Jamie Chang

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the South Korean sensation that has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born at the end of the twentieth century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression that are relevant to us all.

Riveting, original and uncompromising, this is the most important book to have emerged from South Korea sinceHan Kang’s The Vegetarian.   

“This is a book about the life of a woman living in Korea; the despair of an ordinary woman which she takes for granted. The fact that it’s not about ‘someone special’ is extremely shocking, while also being incredibly relatable.” Sayaka Murata, author of Convenience Store Woman

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.

Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.

Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.  

Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.

Kim Jiyoung is mad.

Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.

Kim Jiyoung is every woman.

'This witty, disturbing book deals with sexism, mental health issues and the hypocrisy of a country where young women are “popping caffeine pills and turning jaundiced” as they slave away in factories helping to fund higher education for male siblings.' The Independent

'A treatise and a howl of anger […] it describes experiences that will be recognisable everywhere. It’s slim, unadorned narrative distils a lifetime’s iniquities into a sharp punch. The books demonstrates the unfairness of the female experience and the sheer difficulty of improving it.’ The Sunday Times

Cho Nam-Joo

Cho Nam-joo is a former television scriptwriter. In the writing of this book she drew partly on her own experience as a woman who quit her job to stay at home after giving birth to a child. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is her third novel. It has had a profound impact on gender inequality and discrimination in Korean society, and has been translated into 18 languages.

Raves and Reviews

“Cho’s clinical prose is bolstered with figures and footnotes to illustrate how ordinary Jiyoung’s experience is.... When Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was published in Korea in 2016, it was received as a cultural call to arms.... Like Bong Joon Ho’s Academy Award-winning film Parasite, which unleashed a debate about class disparities in South Korea, Cho’s novel was treated as a social treatise as much as a work of art.... The new, often subversive novels by Korean women, which have intersected with the rise of the #MeToo movement, are driving discussions beyond the literary world.”

- Alexandra Alter, New York Times

“[Kim Jiyoung] laid bare my own Korean childhood ― and, let’s face it, my Western adulthood too ― forcing me to 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. . . . 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 to become something ― or someone ― else.”

- Euny Hong, New York Times Book Review

“Cho Nam-joo’s third novel has been hailed as giving voice to the unheard everywoman. . . . [Kim Jiyoung] has become both a touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender and a lightning rod for anti-feminists who view the book as inciting misandry . . . [The book] has touched a nerve globally . . . The character of Kim Jiyoung can be seen as a sort of sacrifice: a protagonist who is broken in order to open up a channel for collective rage. Along with other socially critical narratives to come out of Korea, such as Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, her story could change the bigger one.”

- Sarah Shin, The Guardian

“Cho Nam-Joo points to a universal dialogue around discrimination, hopelessness, and fear.”

- Annabel Gutterman, TIME

“In this fine―and beautifully translated―biography of a fictional Korean woman we encounter the real experiences of many women around the world.”

- Claire Kohda Hazelton, The Spectator

“Cho deploys a formal, almost clinical prose style that subtly but effectively reinforces the challenges Korean women like Jiyoung endure throughout their lives in multiple contexts―familial, educational, and work-related. . . . Kim Jiyoung effectively communicates the realities Korean women face, especially discrimination in the workplace, rampant sexual harassment, and the nearly impossible challenge of balancing motherhood with career aspirations.”

- Faye Chadwell, Library Journal

“Following the life of the titular character from her mother’s generation through her own childhood, young adulthood, career, marriage and eventual 'breakdown,' the book moves around in time to subtly uncover how patriarchy eats away at the psyches and bodies of women, starting before they’re even born.”

- Sarah Neilson, Seattle Times

“Chilling.”

- Rebecca Deczynski, Domino

“Already an international best-seller, television scriptwriter Cho’s debut novel has been credited with helping to ‘launch Korea’s new feminist movement.’ The fact that gender inequity is insidiously pervasive throughout the world will guarantee that this tale has immediate resonance, and its smoothly accessible, albeit British English vernacular–inclined, translation by award-winning translator Chang will ensure appreciative Anglophone audiences. Cho’s narrative is part bildungsroman and part Wikipedia entry (complete with statistics-heavy footnotes).... Cho’s matter-of-fact delivery underscores the pervasive gender imbalance, while just containing the empathic rage. Her final chapter, “2016,” written as Jiyoung’s therapist’s report―his claims of being “aware” and “enlightened” only damning him further as an entitled troll―proves to be narrative genius.”

- Terry Hong, Booklist [starred review]

“The book’s strength lies in how succinctly Cho captures the relentless buildup of sexism and gender discrimination over the course of one woman’s life. . . The story perfectly captures misogynies large and small that will be recognizable to many.”

- Kirkus Reviews

‘An all-too-familiar tale of a smart woman being slowly crushed by constant, inescapable sexism […] beneath the analytical detachment is a rolling rage that compellingly captures Kim Jiyoung’s frustrations’ 

– Daily Mail

‘Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is a novel of education, in more ways than one. Riffing with the bildungsroman form, Cho has created a heroine who, as her life progresses does not so much develop as unravel. The author’s particular achievement is in blending political and stylistic concerns in a cool tone carefully captured in Jamie Chang’s translation. […] In a culture which places the importance of the category “woman” over that of the individual “person”, we are invited to see Kim Jiyoung’s identity-erasing “insanity” as radical protest. Cho’s moving, witty and powerful novel forces us to face our reality, in which one woman is seen, pretty much, as interchangeable with any other. There’s a logic to Kim Jiyoung’s shape-shifting: she could be anybody’

– Daily Telegraph

‘A ground-breaking work of feminist fiction’

– Stylist

‘A touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender […] The character of Kim Jiyoung can be seen as a sort of sacrifice: a protagonist who is broken in order to open up a channel for collective rage. Along with other socially critical narratives to come out of Korea, such as Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, her story could change the bigger one’ 

– Guardian

‘A treatise and a howl of anger […] it describes experiences that will be recognisable everywhere. It’s slim, unadorned narrative distils a lifetime’s iniquities into a sharp punch. The books demonstrates the unfairness of the female experience and the sheer difficulty of improving it.’

– The Sunday Times

'Enthralling and enraging'

– Sunday Express

'Jiyoung is no raging feminist, rather a passive vessel, which makes her eventual breakdown all the more powerful, while the calm, matter-of-fact prose style adds to the reader’s growing sense of disquiet.'

– Metro

'All the more harrowing for the dry manner in which it is told'

– i

'To read the book is to imagine being a restive, aggrieved millennial and to trace her path through everyday misogyny.'

– New York Review of Books

'I loved this novel. Kim Jiyoung’s life is made to seem at once totally commonplace, and nightmarishly over-the-top. As you read, you constantly feel that revolutionary, electric shift, between commonplace and nightmarish. This kind of imaginative work is so important and so powerful. I hope this book sells a million more copies.'

– Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot (shortlisted for The Women's Prize)

'After reading Kim Ji-young, Born 1982, I started to think about things in a way I hadn’t thought about them before. It reminded me of the unfair treatment I had experienced being a woman and I felt like I was caught off guard.'

– Soo-young, member of Girls' Generation

'A book with unique implications; I was so impressed.' 

– RM, BTS

'Written with unbearably clear-sighted perspective, Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 possesses the urgency and immediacy of the scariest horror thriller — except that this is not technically horror, but something closer to reportage. I broke out in a sweat reading this book.' 

– Ling Ma, author of Severance

'A fierce and powerful look at modern day Korean society through the lens of a refreshingly new protagonist.  Born in 1982, Kim Jiyoung wins us over with her tolerance and strength. She is every one of us who has been invisible.'

– Weike Wang