New Book Challenge and its First Book - "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" by Cho Nam-Joo

I started yet another book challenge, the third one for me. It is almost the same as my book travelling challenge, I will read books by authors from different countries but I don't need to travel to that country to read it for the challenge. With the corona pandemic still on and consequently me not travelling, but still wanting to expand my reading horizons, I decided that starting this challenge would be a good idea.

I will be doing this "Around the world in 195 books" challenge with a group of people from a book club on Facebook. It won't have a strict time deadline, we will be choosing one book a month for now. For January 2022 we already chose the country - South Korea. And the book is "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" by Cho Nam-Joo.

I already read the book, I must admit, it feels good to do something before the deadline. :)

And what a cultural immersion it was! It is not just about South Korea, but about the status of women in the country and how it changed through several generations.

The main character, Kim Jiyoung, is now 33, and the story tells about her childhood, teenage years, adolescence, and adult life as well as shares the stories of her paternal grandmother and her mother.

The grandmother had four sons, one of them being the father of the main character, who ended up taking care of his mother during her last years of life. What she said was: "I am glad I had sons, you need to have a son, he is a caretaker, he gives me a warm blanket and prepares food for me". But who do you think gave her the blanket and prepared food? His wife, of course, but it didn't matter, the achievements were considered all men's.

The mother of the main character was the fourth child out of five: two boys, two girls and a boy - in that order. At 14 she went to work at a factory, because the money was tight and she had to help the family get good education, wait for it, for the boys, all three of them! She worked in really hard environment to buy education, and not even for herself. Later her brothers or parents didn't help her with her education, she had to do everything on her own. When she got married, she had to apologize to her husband's mother that she gave birth to two girls and not a boy and when she finally gave birth to a boy, her mother-in-law treated him like a king, while the girls were treated as though they are lower quality people.

The mother always wanted to be a teacher but couldn't become one, because first she had to help her brothers to get a proper education and then after she got married and had three kids and a mother-in-law in her care, she didn't have time and money to get an education for herself. But being a clever woman, I got a feeling that she was way more clever than her husband, she managed to organise quite a successful business and managed to provide for her family and both her daughters had the opportunity to go to college thanks to her entrepreneurial skills.

As for the main character, Kim Jiyoung, we see how she is growing from kindergarten to school then through college and her first steps in a working world. We see how girls are mistreated both in kindergartens and in schools and in the society on the whole, how boys are always better - they are first to eat, their uniform is more comfortable, only boys can become class monitors... Male teachers allow themselves "accidentally" touch female students' breasts or bottoms, or raise their skirts "to check if their uniform is right", and it was considered normal, and if girls complained about this horrible behavior to their superiors, they were said that the girls were to blame themselves - apparently, they themselves behaved in such a way to provoke such attitude to them (!)

When Kim Jiyoung was graduating from college, and was applying to numerous companies to get a job, she got rejected even the right to go to an interview, and when she was finally invited for one, Jiyoung was asked what would she do if at a company dinner one of the male clients "casually" placed his arm on her thighs. She answered that she would find a way to go to the bathroom. To my mind, the answer was not bad, but Jiyoung didn't get the job, and was wondering if her answer to that particular question was the reason - was she supposed to let the client do as they want? And another interesting question - do they ask male candidates such questions?..

As we read further, there are more and more such controversial situations, where women are treated as toys, or lower quality people. And even though we see that the status of a woman in South Korea has changed from the times of Jiyoung's grandmother, it is still not even close to that of a man.

It was not at all an easy read, and it was not a typical book I usually read, perhaps if I hadn't started the challenge, I would never read the book at all. But I am glad I read it, it discusses very difficult issues which concern not only South Korea, but a lot of other countries. Moreover, when I was reading it, I could place myself in the Jiyoung's shoes. Of course, fortunately, I didn't grow up in such an unequal society as South Korea, but I also sometimes felt and still feel that I have certain responsibilities just because I am a female, which honestly makes me very angry and depressed. And somehow I am almost sure that whichever woman would read this book will feel somewhat similar. The question which I am asking myself after reading the book though, is how many men read the book and what do they think about it?

P. S. Some interesting but depressing facts and sayings from the book:

"Smart women are taxing".

According to some data gathered in 2014, working women in Korea earn only 63% of what men do.

"The head of the company did not think of female employees as prospective long-term colleagues. The reasoning behind giving the more high-maitenance clients to Jiyoung wasn't her competence; management didn't want to tire out the prospective long-term male colleagues from the start".

"Even the best female employees can cause many problems if they don't have the childcare issue taken care of. I'll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried".