Surveilance - the ultimate crime Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam - Joo

Fans of literature know that Orwell imitated Zamyatin Yevgeny's We when he wrote 1984 and I told you before dear reader, that I was not impressed by Orwell's masterpiece at all. in 2016 a South Korean author named Cho Nam-Joo released her story to the world and titled it 1982 referring to the year the heroine of the story; Jiyoung was born. From the onset the reader wonders weather Jiyoung is kind of her. The story caused quite the uproar in South Korea at the time, the reason being (according to my thought) unexplored cultural trauma resulting in misogynistic culture (or woman hate culture). What do I mean? Allow me dear reader to explain my theory on the matter:

Korea was also subject to colonialization. "Unlike many other countries in Asia, Korea was colonized not by Western imperialist powers in the late 1800s and early 1900s but by Japan, an Asian imperialist power, in the first half of the twentieth century. Japan fought China for dominance in Korea in 1894-95 and annexed Korea in 1910." (borrowed from the internet)

As I recently learned in my exploration of the "Mother Wound" colonialization inevitably leads to cultures that favor the male, or the father (Discovering the inner mother B. Webster). Imagine once more the four rings on water after the stone was cast and a culture or people colonized, the first innermost ring being 1. personal (interpersonal and family, next of kin) then 2. cultural (experiences in society) then 3.  spiritual (affecting our world view and sense of self spiritually in relationship to a higher power) and then 4. planetary (the way we treat the earth). Now you can imagine that for some places on earth and in  times of history perhaps the planetary dimension has been at the core of a culture and violence has affected people and lands differently through these rings if you will so that what once was at the center might later be pushed to the periphery such as nature. Eventually as rings on living water they blend into one and it really doesn't matter, oppression is oppression. But unlike Orwell, Cho Nam-Joo has a point, oppression is not gender neutral. In the story of Kim Jiyoung born 1982 we naturally begin the exploration from her personal experiences. 

She's a new mother, her first child being two years old (never mind that they count age in two ways in Korea) however Jiyoung starts to present exceptions to her character that worry her husband. Jiyoung starts behaving like other women, making impressions of being her mum, her husbands ex-girlfriend, her friend and so on. It's not quite clear why she does this, but having become a mother is suspected as one cause, perhaps she's into post-natal or "child caretaking depression" she's sent to see a psychiatrist and hence the story unravels. 

We learn about her early childhood, adolescence early adulthood and marriage. All throughout Jiyioung is described as a sensitive being, even into adulthood she remains a person of innocence and good will but her up brining is shadowed by legitimate fears from the elementary school bully boy's to misogynistic female teachers, to college mates and then colleagues at work by whom she experiences sexual harassment and is constantly unfavored because of her sex.  

"Her first obstacle in school life was the 'pranks of the boy desk-mate' that many schoolgirls experienced. To Jiyoung, it felt more like harassment or violence than pranks." The boys ate their school lunch first, at home the baby brother had his own room while the sisters shared one. Female babies were also frequently aborted. The experience of a society where men are favored and excused left girls and women with a shared but unspoken reality that the men didn't seem to grasp, because after all, it was "normal". While reading this book I felt both as a invisible member of Jiyoung's family and a colleague at her work, there was a familiar feeling, I felt like I, as a woman could relate even if I didn't grow up in that society. 

Though the girls in the novel grew to be women and did share a kind of codex there was a disconnect in the sense that they didn't really collectively question the "normal" even though it felt unfair. Some of the girls had a realization that things were just supposed to be this way and some of the elder women where openly cynical about it. Perhaps Jiyioung with her sensitive character wouldn't have been able to start a riot. Through the story the narrator refers to real articles and changes in law and policy concerning gender equality but the reader is introduced to this deeper enigma: 

What if gender equality doesn't mean identical rights, but that the freedoms and conditions of life for women and girls should be evaluated and reforms should stem from real life experience and not imagined needs of others? How to un-colonize the mind or at least mend the wounds? 

The idea that the earth is female is not new, and I'm not claiming it to be true. Yet if we claim that all structures are man-maid, one would ask, didn't the women participate in making them? The Bible teaches that there is also sin by omission meaning that compliance is grave if the system is corrupt, yet it is only those who suffer in the system who wish to change it, or those who recognize that some are suffering and hence are moved by compassion to act. 

This novel is a collective call to act, it tires to evoke also a male audience and invites in to share in the problem: a South Korea that prefers boys creates a dangerous society for women even if policies have changed realities hasn't and this is the point of the book.  How we understand matters of equality matters. 

For example, my country, Finland, is generous with maternity leave and benefits for mothers yet because females are expected to work and provide for their families like men, but what about the work that need to be done when the work day is done? Jiyoung ponders the same question, what of the 'work that sustains life' "non tried to calculate it's monetary value. Probably because the moment you put a price on something, someone has to pay" Finnish social security is not a payment to women for a job well done, it's like tossing coins on a beggar and yet expecting her to work, tirelessly and to make a career and to look good and to raise a family, and not complain, just to bite her lip, and be a man! No wonder women opt for sex-changes in this world, globally speaking, a woman is supposed to be a man and it's crushing. Minna Canth would have cried if she witnessed modern day "gender equality" in  Finland. I tried to google but didn't find any South Korean feminist heroine such as my own Minna, because feminism is a new thing in South Korea and this is also the feel I get when I read Jiyoung's story. 

After many failed attempts Jiyoung finally managed to secure a job at a big company, then she got married, was pressured to have a baby (her daughter) and consequently quit her job. Later when her friend from work came to visit her at home she told Jiyoung that a guy from the security company had put up a secret camera in the women's bathroom and had sold the videos on a porn site. Many of their male colleagues had watched and shared videos from that site knowing full well that these were videos of their female colleagues. 

I felt that this was the turning point in the story, the rim of the overfull glass if you will, and the news of this leaking to female staff caused the victims to go on sleeping pills and psychopharmaceutic treatments and into therapy and take time off from work (unpaid I suppose). The main crime was surveillance, the peeping tom's who would watch the bodies of women in bathroom stalls, these were also father's, brother's, son's to someone. It is said that men are visual when it comes to sexual lusts, they want to see, no wonder Job concluded in the Bible, Job 31:1-5

“I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze with desire at a virgin? For what is the allotment of God from above, or the heritage from the Almighty on high? Does not disaster come to the unjust and calamity to the workers of iniquity? Does He not see my ways and count my every step?"

I think, in a way that women having to be the surveilled embodiment in society ultimately defines them as "the other" or the outsider in the game, and so it's not very supriseing that the sensitive Jiyoung subconsciously gravitates in her psyche towards a kind of body-lessness being  when she goes into her period of supposed mental illness being then a "everywoman". In fact her illness is someway just a symptom of repression, having to be a target of surveillance and harassment her whole life, not entitled to what Virginia Woolf would have called "a room of her own" Cho Nam-Joo's  novel is definitely a groundbreaking feminist text, at least in South-Korea but I dare to say even globally.

In the history of humankind there has been symbols of feminism and signs of liberation, the second wave feminists in USA burned brassieres. I maintain that pole dancing is one type of a modern feminist signal and I intend to escort you dear reader, across this donkey bridge to understand why: The world is cold, like structures of steel, systems built by men but the female body is soft, like earth, prone to change, the masses, hills and curves like the land and changes brought on by life itself. A man may have an idea of what she is supposed to look like, when she's dancing the pole. But it is entirely up to herself if she wants to fit into that ideal or not (I'm assuming the pole dance is her entirely own choice as a form of art I suppose). One YouTuber with her own channel discussing pole said that most women who get into pole dance come to it from a trauma background. Well, I ask, what woman can grow up in this world without trauma response? However pole dance destroys the element of surveillance, she's in control. But it's also art and what propels a woman to dance around a pole of metal? -It is clear to me; it is like life itself a structure of steel and she dances softly around it forming her body against the unyielding material just like around the man made structures that she must exist within. 

The women in Jiyoung's workplace were being watched and taken advantage of, they were not allowed even the privacy of a bathroom break. That is the last straw that breaks the donkey's back so to speak, we've crossed the bridge, from infancy to childhood and into adolescence and adulthood and for Jiyoung and her friends it's been merciless, a world of intensifying harassment ushering women into a point where they no longer have the right to their own bodies. Perhaps this is why Jiyoung starts to impersonate other women, she is all women, yet she is no one. 

At the end Jiyoung's psychiatric doctor wraps up the story and reveals that he is due to his profession now intrigued and touched by this secret world of suffering among women, now that he has learned something of it by listening to Jiyoung. In the same breath he explains that he has a teenage son who due to the fact that he has two hard working parents has become unstable and violent. It is clear that the psychiatric doctor doesn't realize that growing up without the parents love creates poor character in men, and women. And so one asks, what is the core problem: it is a world without love. Subjugation is not love subjugation is force.