preoccupations

When her personality suddenly changes, as she was seemingly possessed by her mother and a deceased friend, Jiyoung’s husband Jung Daehyun decides to bring her to the psychiatrist. She recounts her life to this professional, reliving events from childhood, adolescence, marriage, and motherhood. She remembers: a grandmother who preferred a grandson; a male classmate bully whose behavior was excused as boys will be boys; a mother giving up on her dreams for her brothers; a male client and his inappropriate comments; and more. These repressed memories were relayed on her sessions with the psychiatrist who eventually diagnoses Jiyoung with postnatal and childcare depression.

Throughout the novel, it’s striking how the narrator narrates the story in an objective, clinical manner; they tell the story without commentary or opinion, not unlike a research article. They also augment the story with references to statistics and articles on women’s lives in Korea, (e.g. in 1982, the year Jiyoung was born, the ratio of male to female births was 106.8 to 100, and gradually increased in the succeeding years). The last section, “2016,” reveals that the narrator is Jiyoung’s male psychiatrist which explains the objective manner of narration. To him, Jiyoung is a patient, and it is a case study.

Though it follows the (outdated) binary of male rationality and female emotionality, I find the contrast of a masculine narration and a feminine protagonist satisfying. While the masculine as narrator tells the story, he does not fully overshadow the feminine voice of the subject of his narration. In fact, because the pyschiatrist’s voice doesn’t fully captured the story of Jiyoung, i.e. he isn’t able to relate her confusion, anger and loneliness, I sense these emotions in her silence as she struggled with the social norms and biases surrounding her sex. It is a loaded silence, like a gun filled with bullets ready to shoot.

However, I do acknowledge that there’s also an argument to be made that telling Jiyoung’s story from her psychiatrist’s perspective silences Jiyoung yet again.

Also, an important intimation of the story is how women built Korea. For example, Jiyoung’s mother worked in a factory to send her own brothers to school while she herself hadn’t graduated middle school yet:

“This was a time when people believed it was up to the sons to bring honor and prosperity to the family, and that the family’s wealth and happiness hinged upon male success. The daughters gladly supported the male siblings” (25).

If this was true of all Korean families back in the day, if sisters and mothers worked to send the men to schools, then it only means that these male professionals back then would not have reached their position if not for their female family members. However, in typical patriarchal fashion, a daughter’s “loving family would not be giving them the chance and support to make something of themselves” (26).

Finally, I think that Jiyoung recounting her story in the clinic of a psychiatrist is telling of how women can only tell their stories when someone will listen. Most men would not want to hear about periods, childbirth, childcare, sexual harassment, even if all these are a result of their privileged birth as men. While women can always express their mind, men still hold the upper hand in modern society. One thinks that after hearing the Jiyoung’s story, the psychiatrist-narrator will be more understanding of the woman question; however, his closing statement in the novel proves that liberation for women still has a long way to go*:

“Even the best female employees can cause many problems if they don’t have the childcare issue taken care of. I’ll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried” (163).

Still, the story of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is something worth listening to.

*and that men are shit!