Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

Cho Nam-joo was born in South Korea in 1978. She moved with her family to Seoul when she was a child. Cho loved to read as a child, though the libraries in the poor area on the outskirts of Seoul where she grew up were poorly stocked, and she could not afford to buy books herself. Cho attended all-girls’ schools through high school and went on to graduate from Ewha Womans University with a degree in sociology. She worked as a television writer for nearly a decade before leaving work to raise her child. She later returned to a career in writing. Her debut novel, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, was published in 2016 and was enormously successful. It has been translated into over 18 languages and sold over one million copies. The book’s publication happened alongside South Korea’s #MeToo movement and sheds light on the rampant gender inequality and misogyny at the heart of that movement, and it is credited with propelling the culture into a new wave of feminism. Cho currently lives with her family in Seoul.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is author Cho Nam-joo’s response to South Korea’s culture of gender inequality and was based largely on her own experiences—after leaving work as a television writer for several years to take care of her child, she struggled to re-enter the workforce. Today, South Korea’s inequality in the workforce is notably high among developed countries. Although the country’s pay gap has improved since the start of the 21st century, it is still among the worst ranked countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As of OECD data released in 2022, the gender wage gap in Korea is 31.2 percent, meaning that the median earnings of men was 31.2 percent higher than the median earnings of women. In general, Korean women work lower-paying jobs than men and are statistically less likely to be promoted to higher (and higher-earning) management positions. Meanwhile, the percentage of women in the workforce has increased in the decades since the Korean War. Prior to the Korean War, the employment rate for women was less than 30 percent. In an OECD survey released in 2018, the reported employment rate for women was 56.1 percent. Industrial segregation also contributes to gender inequality in the workforce. Meanwhile, although South Korea by policy offers 12 weeks of maternity leave and ranks at the top of OECD countries for paid paternity leave, culturally, it is frowned upon to take advantage of this legal protection.

Cho has published several novels following the success of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 in 2016. Recent books of note include Miss Kim Knows, a collection of short stories. Like Kim Jiyoung, Miss Kim Knows sheds light on the female perspective of life in Korean culture as it examines family, responsibility, and the pressure to find success and fulfillment in life. Cho’s novel Saha also examines similar social issues, but it takes the form of a dystopian mystery novel. Although Kim Jiyoung is a work of fiction, it also serves as astute social commentary on the state of gender inequality in contemporary South Korea and is credited with inspiring a new wave of feminism in Korean culture. Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea’s Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women’s Rights Worldwide by Hawon Jung (2023) is a work of nonfiction that offers insight into recent developments within South Korea’s ongoing feminist movement. Flowers of Fire and Cho’s body of work belong to a broader genre of  feminist writings, recent works of which include nonfiction books like Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit. Notable recent works of novels with feminist themes include The Vegetarian by South Korean author Han Kang, which tells the story of a homemaker whose ethical choice to stop eating meat wreaks havoc on her social and home life; and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, which follows the lives of 12 main characters whose lives intersect in different ways and examines themes of race, gender, class, and sexuality.