Abstract
Many will remember 2016 as a year when gender-based conflict escalated, often manifesting as devastating hate crimes and violence against women. This issue drew widespread attention, particularly among Korean women. Advocates called for action to end gender inequality while redefining a women's rights agenda. In this context, the book, Kim Jiyoung, born 1982, originally published in Seoul in 2016, significantly impacted the feminist movement in Korea. The book details how prevalent and widely accepted sexist oppression is in the Confucian Korean society. Jiyoung's story encourages Korean women to begin sharing their experiences, which has fostered a more extensive solidarity among them. Most importantly, this story helps Korean women see the intricate connections between their socially constructed gender identities and internalization of oppression that has silenced them for years. This new understanding emboldens them to speak out against sexism by initiating the country's #MeToo movement.
This book has many impressive strengths. Through a narrative of a Korean woman named Jiyoung, the most common name for girls born in the 80s, this book details everyday misogyny experienced by Korean women. These details successfully demonstrate the sexist culture in Korea, both behind closed doors and in public domains. It also demonstrates how women have learned to comply with gender norms through a cycle of socialization that begins as early as birth. Some western feminist approaches explain women's issues through the lens of the nuclear family, but this book actively incorporates collectivist cultural values. This distinction is important because Korean culture considers the family rather than the individual a basic unit of analysis. This incorporation of culture not only shows the added challenges Korean women face in achieving autonomy, but also implicates different solutions to propel further changes in the Korean feminist movement. In using the voice of a Korean woman with a common name, the book additionally appeals to similarities among Korean women. This strategy helps female readers easily identify with the main character, so much so that replacing Jiyoung with their own names would still have the same impact. The discovery that they are not alone empowers women within themselves as well as for other women. This aspect of the book provides a stimulus for the new beginning of Korea's feminist movement, emboldening many Korean women to take a stand in shaping their country's future for the better.
Although this book illustrates the width and breadth of sexism in Korean society, it fails to delve deeply into the consequences of sexism. For example, the author talks about a family registry system called “hoju” that previously required all family members to register their name under their relationship to their father. That system was abolished in 2005, and its termination was hailed as a victory for many Korean women. However, as the author indicates, only a small number of female-headed families came forward under a new system of registration because of the stigma around unconventional family structures. The book explains the reasons behind this occurrence but not the consequences of it. For instance, the new legislation forces unwed mothers to reveal their unmarried status, often pushing them further into marginalization and isolation. Integrating such consequences into the narrative would help readers draw more accurate pictures of the reality in which Korean women live.
Another weakness in Jiyoung's narrative is a failure to incorporate intersectionality. Jiyoung was raised in privilege—in a normative middle-class family structure with income from both parents who dedicated themselves fully to creating a trajectory of success for their three children—which easily translates into power, resources, and opportunities inaccessible to many Korean women. Engaging in extensive discussions about the intersectionality of social identities would have served as a more powerful catalyst for a feminist movement in Korea. On a similar note, many of the gender issues in this book revolve around the path of marriage and motherhood. This decision unintentionally eliminates certain groups of women who cannot join this path while reinforcing the patriarchal ideology that epitomizes domination, conformity, and exclusion, the very ideas that the Korean feminist movement has long opposed. In any effective feminist movement, recognizing the diversity of women's experiences is paramount.
The book, Kim Jiyoung, born 1982, has awakened many in Korean society with implications for the country's feminist movement going forward. The movement is criticized by various women's groups for forcibly applying western feminist concepts to the Korean context, but this book shows that gender inequality rooted in long-held Confucian ideology presents unique obstacles and consequences. The book also shines light on how one can easily commit “sins of omission” by applying a narrow definition of women and centralizing their experiences in the feminist movement. If we are to demonstrate the importance of the feminist movement, we must acknowledge experiences of all women—including those whose stories have been shared the least, and even positioning their stories at the center of the movement. Their stories will have the power to bring positive change in Korean society, as did Jiyoung's story. While the book is a definite step forward for the Korean feminist movement, I hope that future books will honor diverse women's perspectives, discuss intersectionality in depth, and explore the consequences of sexism to make even bigger strides in the fight against sexism.
