Cho Nam-Joo
Cho Nam-joo 조남주
Cho Nam-joo (조남주) is a South Korean novelist whose work became popular alongside the spread of feminism in Korea and the growth of the global #MeToo movement. Her bestselling novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was inspired by her own experience dealing with the disruption to her career as a broadcast writer caused by childbirth. The effect of motherhood on her professional identity increased her awareness of the limitations faced by working women, and her early works feature the perspectives of women across ages and occupations, and the difficulties they face in their workplaces and relationships. Despite the feminist themes in her works and their association with social movements that bring awareness to women’s issues, she rejects being labeled a feminist writer or any accusations that she has merely latched onto a trendy topic. Rather, she aims to bring the “critical mind” of her daily life into her work.
Translated Titles by Kim Soon
The runaway bestseller that helped launch Korea's new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny. In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul, Kim Jiyoung, a millennial "everywoman," spends her days caring for her infant daughter. Her husband, however, worries over a strange symptom that has recently appeared: Jiyoung has begun to impersonate the voices of other women-dead and alive, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, Jiyoung's concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist, who listens to her narrate her own life story-from her birth to a family who expected a son, to elementary school teachers who policed girls' outfits, to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women's restrooms and posted the photos online. But can her doctor cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?
In her signature sharp prose, Nam-Joo returns with this haunting account of a neglected housing complex in the shadows of Town: a former fishing village bought out by a massive conglomerate. Town is prosperous and safe - but only if you're a citizen with "valuable skills and assets," which the residents of Saha Estates are not. Disenfranchised and tightlipped, the Saha are forced into harsh labor, squatting in moldy units without electricity. Braiding the disparate experiences of Saha residents - from the reluctant midwife to the unknowing test subject to separated siblings - into a powerful Orwellian parable, Nam-Joo has crafted a heartbreaking tale of what happens when we finally unmask our oppressors.
Kim Soom
Kim Soom 김숨
Kim Soom (김숨) is a South Korean writer whose prolific career spans twenty-five years. She has published approximately one book per year since 2005. Kim describes her drive to write as an “impulse”, leading her books to have topics as diverse as the sources of her inspiration. For instance, while learning about the restoration of stone Buddhist sculptures at Gyeongju National Park to write a story about the subject, she met an expert on restoration of a different sort—that of shoes. This led her to write the 2016 novel L’s Sneakers, which dealt with the life of Lee Han-yeol, a university student who died in the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1987. Kim’s interests have shifted over time, initially focusing on family relationships, then moving to retellings of historical events. Also published in 2016 was her novel One Left, the fictionalized story of one of the “comfort women” relocated and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Second World War. Citing her interest in the “tales of the uprooted”, she would return to this topic in future works, as well as other periods of Korean history with similar themes.
Translated Titles by Kim Soon
Published in Korea in 2016, this is the first Korean novel devoted exclusively to the subject of comfort women. The book tells the story of a woman from the day she was taken from her home village by the Japanese and forced into a life as a sex slave at a "comfort station" in Manchuria. Finding her way back to Korea after the war, she hides her past even from close family members, her feelings constantly colored by shame and nightmares. She never publicly reveals her past, but as the last self-reported comfort woman lies on her deathbed, the protagonist is driven to meet this woman and tell her that there will still be "one left" after her passing.
A poet reflects on the lives of the different generations of women around her as she contemplates her own divorce from a socially-engaged photographer; her feelings are complicated by the ethics of public/private, art/life divisions, as well as the country’s contemporary history.