Story of you, me and Kim Ji -Young

 Kim Ji-Young is a thirty-something woman in Korea. She had to give up on her job after her baby was born. The baby is now old enough to join a daycare center for a couple of hours now. Which means she can now look for a part-time job now. But that won't be easy in that economy and that society which still regards women second class,citizens.  This affects her mental health. 

Kim Ji-Young has been facing discrimination since the day she was born. Her mother had a sex-based abortion when she was pregnant with her third child. Her brother had toys and food to himself while she and her sister needed to share. When she grew up, her teacher told her the boy who teases her and makes her cry actually likes her leaving her wondering why would someone who liked her so much reduce her to tears! When she got her periods for the first time, she was told to hide it with all the might. When she was stalked by a boy, her father told her to wear decent clothes. 

When the sisters reached college, they were told to choose teaching as a career because it has fixed working hours which will not hinder their marriage and kids' lives. The job she quit did not come easy to her either. She really had to toil and work twice as hard as any man. 

I had always wanted to read something from Korea, the country with regressive beauty culture. As mentioned in the title, the protagonist, Kim Ji- Young is born in 1982. The book is divided into the parts that talk about her childhood, the time she went to school and college, her work , life, and finally her marriage. 

The country was going through massive economical and social changes in the 90s, the time Ji -Young went to school. In one incident, a bunch of girls from her class was arrested because they beat a flasher and got him arrested and then there is another wherein Ji-Young goes to an interview where she was asked what would she do if some groped her thigh in an official meeting. Even the answer ' I will leave the place and go to washroom,' could not get her job because the company was not at all interested in hiring women. 

Kim ji-Young, 1982 is a story of every woman who is fighting for her space in society in a hope that next-generation women do not face what they did.