South Korean hit novel about young mother Kim Ji-young strikes a chord among women across Asia

Kim Ji-young is a young married mother in South Korea with an infant daughter and a lonely life. She spends most days alone with her child. Her parents live hours away and her husband puts in long days at the office. As she settles into life as a full-time mum, Kim, a kind of South Korean everywoman, is gradually overcome by the stress caused by the expectations society has of her. She resents her mother-in-law’s assumption that she will spend holidays cooking for relatives instead of relaxing. And even though she only reluctantly gave up her job, she is resented by men who see stay-at-home mothers as leeching off their husbands. She is also wary about speaking up, knowing that women in her position are expected to quietly comply. Kim is fictional, but for many women in East Asia, her story sounds all too real. She is the protagonist of Kim Ji-young, Born in 1982, an unexpected South Korean hit novel that is stirring the gender debate across the region. The book, published in Japan this month, was originally released in South Korea in 2016 but has been gathering steam with releases in other markets including Taiwan, where it is also a bestseller. It has now sold more than a million copies in South Korea. Many readers, mostly women, have been drawn to the story because they see in it a reflection of their own lives and struggles to balance family and career. The book has also prompted a backlash from some men who say it is a distortion of life in South Korea. In South Korea, ‘mum cafes’ are a source of support – but also a platform for vitriol Fuelling the fervour are testimonies of celebrities, including members of K-pop sensations BTS and Girls’ Generation, who have spoken publicly about having read the book, giving Kim Ji-young a level of exposure few works of literature enjoy. Its release also comes amid the emerging #MeToo movement in Asia, with more women speaking out about experiences with gender-based discrimination. Park Hye-jin of Minumsa Publishing, the editor responsible for the book, said Kim Ji-young has uncovered a latent demand for stories about the struggles women in Asia face in balancing professional ambitions with the responsibilities of life at home. “Before, feminist literature was generally thought of as a minor theme with a small audience, but this book found a big audience and resonated with many readers by accurately depicting their reality,” said Park at her office in Seoul. She called the novel a game-changer in South Korean publishing. “The wave of popularity is caused by the fact that women in Taiwan and Japan have similar experiences with gender discrimination as South Korean women.” Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all high-income countries that are, to some extent, still informally governed by traditional norms of gender and family. An English translation is in the works and Minumsa has also signed contracts for Thai and Vietnamese translations. “East Asia is ripe for this kind of storytelling,” says Nancy Snow, a professor of diplomacy at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. “And this story is powerful for coming in the first person, from someone who has this kind of experience.” In South Korea, the book is a microcosm of a loaded, gender-based debate that has been bubbling for years. In the most misogynistic corners of the Korean-language internet, full-time mothers are called “parasites” and disparaged as living lives of leisure off their husbands’ earnings and the largesse of taxpayer-funded social programmes. ‘Obscene and racist’: South Korea bans online book about Filipina bar girls At the same time, working mothers lament shouldering what they see as an unfair portion of child-rearing responsibilities, which limits their advancement opportunities at companies where late-night work and after-hours socialising are common and often necessary for promotions. In Japan, however, the novel’s popularity comes despite improvements in gender relations. “Companies are offering more childcare leave to women and they’re paying more attention to women’s needs, so a lot of mothers are having an easier time leaving work for the day,” said Kumiko Nemoto, a professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies and author of Too Few Women at the Top: The Persistence of Inequality in Japan. “People are taking into account how mothers are really under pressure to do everything at home and at work.” When men and women read this book, they’ll probably come away with different opinions, but if we talk, we can come to understand each other more Lee Seon-mi, 35 In Taiwan, Kim Ji-young has far exceeded expectations, staying on bestseller lists for three months after its release in May 2018 and keeping steady sales since, said Jane Wu, editor at Azoth Books, which published the novel there. “We were a little worried that Taiwanese readers wouldn’t sympathise with this work because women have higher social status in Taiwan,” said Wu. “When we published it here, female readers shared that throughout their lives they had encountered the same injustice, discrimination and harassment as Kim Ji-young.” Some readers, like South Korean Lee Seon-mi, who is single and 35, hope the novel will help bridge the gender gap. “When men and women read this book, they’ll probably come away with different opinions of it, but if we talk, we can come to understand each other more,” Lee said. “And understanding is the basis for solving social problems.”