Kim Ji-Young born 1982

The patriarchy is one of the biggest roots that pull all the women’s legs to stick with the suffering, the roots that are hard to take off, the roots that traumatized women for a very long time. Even from their husbands or from their fathers.

You might have heard about ‘Kim Ji-young born 1982’ the book that portrayed the point of view from ‘Cho Nam Joo’ the writer, the mother, the wife, the housewife, the daughter-in-law, and the one who suffered from the patriarchy. Kim Ji-young born 1982 was made into a movie that most Korean men hate, they even broke up with their girlfriends who watched this movie or threatened the female idols who read and recommended this book. Just look how fragile the patriarchy is.

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(male fans attacked Irene, Red Velvet from reading Kim Ji-young born 1982)

In Korean society, women are much inferior to men. They have been suppressed for a long time but recently, the campaign and the fight for women's rights have just begun. And this book is another medium that exposes the story of gender inequality widely. The book is portrayed from Kim Ji-young’s perspective. The ordinary woman who was born and raised in an ordinary family, married and be the ordinary housewife but who knows that that ordinary circumstance in her life is the beginning of this story.

One day, her husband found that she was abnormal, she seemed to be a different person, she acted like different people that she had known in her life such as her mother, her senior, and even the little kids. The book told about how she was raised in the gender inequality world. When she was a little kid, Jiyoung and her sister could not eat the food as well as her brother ate, could not fight despite being threatened by men, or could not find a job because of the idea that Men are more diligent than women.

For me, who was born and raised in Thailand is also related to this story even if I am not treated by the inequality family, but if you ask me have I ever suffered from the patriarchy, the answer would be yes. All the women are suffering from this idea. The idea that a woman has the duty of just being a good wife to a husband and a good mother to a child. 

I like how Cho Nam Joo told the ordinary story in her life but can make me think of what I have met in the past and realized how the normal things I have been told to do is inequality. For example, don't go out at night, don't wear short pants because I might get sexual harassment. Or even being taught to do housework in order to grow up to be a good wife for a husband although housework is not merely a duty of women.

This book is like a mirror of society, any woman who reads this book will feel like she sees herself in it. Some people don't even know that what they find is being pressed by just being a woman, but after reading this book they realize that I am Kim Ji-young. Because all of us are Kim Ji-young.