South Korea has the highest rate of plastic surgery per capita in the world. But while violence was previously explored in literature through the masculine world of war, feminist authors are examining another kind of violence that is far more female. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardianīeauty and brutality have long been entangled in South Korean literature. Han Kang’s International Booker prizewinner The Vegetarian, like Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,follows a seemingly unremarkable woman, who withdraws from abuse inflicted by her father and husband into psychosis. Her novel is part of an emerging literary tradition, with titles including Ha Seong-nan’s Flowers of Mold, Jimin Han’s A Small Revolution, and Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist (to be published in English in May). “I wanted to talk about invisible, non-obvious violence and discrimination, often considered insignificant – which is difficult to bring up or even to be recognised by women themselves.”Ĭho is not the only South Korean author tackling gendered violence. Women of Kim Jiyoung’s generation live in a time where physical abuse and discrimination are illegal, yet violent culture and customs remain four out of five Korean men admit to abusing their girlfriends, according to the Korean Institute of Criminology, while aborting female babies remains common practice, says Cho. A bill against gender discrimination was even proposed in the book’s name. Female celebrities who mention the novel have been subjected to abuse male fans of South Korean all-female pop group Red Velvet burned photos and albums singer Irene when she said she was reading it. In one of the country’s most famous #MeToo cases, a junior prosecutor, Seo Ji-hyeon, quoted Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 while accusing her boss – during a TV interview – of sexual misconduct. Though it preceeded #MeToo by a year, Cho’s novel became a rallying cry for South Korean women when the movement took off there in 2018. Written by former screenwriter Cho Nam-joo, the book details the life of an “every woman” and the sexism she experiences in a deeply male-dominated society.

Months later, a slim novel called Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was published. Her attacker claimed in court that “he had been ignored by women a lot and couldn’t bear it any more”. I n May 2016, a 23-year-old South Korean woman was murdered in a public toilet near Gangnam station in Seoul.

Cho nam joo books