So slim that this volume is more novella than novel, this read is deceptively simple and yet packs in a wealth of social commentary about South Korean gender issues. This is a translated book, but happily the writing still does come across as having a Korean flavour, with its flat, fact-dense and information-rich style. In a wonderfully compacted way – though there is a lot more telling than showing particularly at first – we learn Jiyoung’s background. She is 33 when we first encounter her, 3 years married to Jung Daehyun (36), and with one daughter, Jiwon. They live on the outskirts of Seoul. Jiyoung’s age is significant because the author wants to track the changing gender constructs in Korean society over these decades, via her life.
It was a given that fresh rice hot out of the cooker was served in the order of father, brother and grandmother, and that perfect pieces of tofu, dumplings and patties were the brother’s while the girls ate the ones that fell apart. The brother had chopsticks, socks, long underwear, and school and lunch bags that matched, while the girls made do with whatever was available. […] It didn’t occur to the child Jiyoung that her brother was receiving special treatment, and so she wasn’t even jealous. That’s how it had always been. There were times when she had an inkling of a situation not being fair, but she was accustomed to rationalising things by telling herself that she was being a generous older sibling and that she shared with her sister because they were both girls. Jiyoung’s mother would praise the girls for taking good care of their brother and not competing for her love. […] The more the mother praised, the more impossible it became for Jiyoung to complain.
p15
We get excellent background on Jiyoung’s family too – her father was a civil servant, who was laid off earlier than he expected, and her housewife but enterprising mother (Oh Misook) helped him invest in property as well as set up various businesses, one of which – a porridge shop – finally found some degree of success. Oh Misook came from a traditional agricultural family; at 15, she went to Seoul to join her elder sister in factory work. Their money supported their two elder brother’s educations ; the elder brother attended medical school and worked in the university hospital and the 2nd became a police chief. The brothers then supported the youngest brother in teacher training college, and Oh Misook along with her family, were proud of the brothers for bringing honour to the family, for their success and for providing for the family.
Oh Misook and her sister realised only then that their turn will not come: their loving family would not be giving them the chance and support to make something of themselves
p26
so they self-enrolled and worked days and studied nights to earn their middle school diplomas. She wanted to be a teacher, but as she tells her daughter, Jiyoung,
“I had to work to send my brothers to school. That’s how it was with everyone. All women lived like that back then’” (p26).
“’Now I have to work to send you kids to school. That’s how it is with everyone. All mothers live like this these days.’ Her life choices being Kim Jiyoung’s mother, Oh Misook was regretting them. Jiyoung felt she was a rock, small but heavy and unyielding, holding down her mother’s long skirt train. This made her sad. Her mother saw this and warmly swept back her daughter’s unkempt hair.
p27
We follow Jiyoung as a little girl in school, timid, intimidated by boys who sometimes bullied her, discriminated systematically against through her life and in all her roles, as student, daughter, sister, wife, etc. She is a very ordinary girl and woman, as Cho probably intends – to track the ‘average South Korean woman’ – if one such can exist – through these decades, where women were still very much subordinated to men, not withstanding the creation in 2001 of the Ministry of Gender Equality. Jiyoung finds many things do change for the better for women, but even more do not change. For example, when getting married officially, she learns that she has to sign away the right for her child to use her surname. Her husband does not force her, but he reasonably indicates he prefers his surname to be used, and also that given societal norms, people may be suspicious of what is wrong with the child if she takes her mother’s surname rather than her father’s. Jiyoung concedes, but with some not fully (self-) acknowledged reservations.
After graduating from school, and after many many failed applications and frustrating interviews where she is discriminated against over and over as a woman, Jiyoung finds a job at a marketing agency that she enjoys. She is recruited along with another woman and 2 other men. The men are fast tracked and placed on promising development projects; the women are not, on the grounds that the company expects them to go off on maternity and therefore does not plan their long-term career at the company. Jiyoung also experiences other forms of work gender discrimination – harassment from male clients, unequal pay, etc. Once married, she comes under pressure to have a son – as countless women have before, and worldwide. When deciding with her husband whether or not to have a child, Jiyoung lists all the things she has to put on the line:
“youth, health, jobs colleagues, social networks, career, and future” and found in comparison her husband’s list of potential losses “such a trifle compared to the way her life could be thrown off course”
p124
The novel tracks the individual’s story against the backdrop of mainstream Korean society. There is a lot implied as well as explicitly stated, which gives the bare bones of the story much depth and resonance. The entitlement of men (and boys) in a deeply patriarchal society is clearly so entrenched they are largely unaware of it, and unaware of the depth, penetration and impact of their entitlement on women. The novel ends on an ironic note – the psychiatrist who treats Jiyoung for her disassociative disorder as a result of postnatal and childcare depressions, whom himself has a brilliant wife who has also sacrificed herself to play her gender-allocated roles and is clearly frustrated, finds he has to replace a female colleague who is trying to get pregnant, and ends the novel saying,
“I’ll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried”
p163
Ending on such a note is a clear message from Cho that she is not sanguine about women’s equality for Koreans anytime soon.
This was a very good read overall, and I would be glad to have access to any other of this author’s novels, or indeed, any more good novels from Korean writers, even if in translation. They are windows into such a different world, not entirely unfamiliar, but still a fresh voice on the global literary scene.
Fascinating review, but sad… I had not known anything about gender discrimination in S. Korea.