In May 2016, a 23-year-old South Korean woman was murdered in a public toilet near Gangnam station in Seoul. Her attacker claimed in court that “he had been ignored by women a lot and couldn’t bear it any more”.

Months later, a slim novel called Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was published. Written by former screenwriter Cho Nam-joo, the book details the life of an “every woman” and the sexism she experiences in a deeply male-dominated society. Though it preceeded #MeToo by a year, Cho’s novel became a rallying cry for South Korean women when the movement took off there in 2018. In one of the country’s most famous #MeToo cases, a junior prosecutor, Seo Ji-hyeon, quoted Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 while accusing her boss – during a TV interview – of sexual misconduct . Female celebrities who mention the novel have been subjected to abuse; male fans of South Korean all-female pop group Red Velvet burned photos and albums singer Irene when she said she was reading it. A bill against gender discrimination was even proposed in the book’s name.

Four years after its original publication, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 has been translated into English. While Cho’s focus is on South Korean culture, the normalisation of violence and harassment in the book seems all too familiar.

“In the first draft, there were episodes of domestic violence, dating violence, and abortion, but eventually I deleted them,” Cho says. “This is because I wanted male readers to be immersed in this novel without feeling rejected or defensive. I cannot understand the hysterical reaction some men still have to this novel, despite my efforts.”

Women of Kim Jiyoung’s generation live in a time where physical abuse and discrimination are illegal, yet violent culture and customs remain; four out of five Korean men admit to abusing their girlfriends, according to the Korean Institute of Criminology, while aborting female babies remains common practice, says Cho. “I wanted to talk about invisible, non-obvious violence and discrimination, often considered insignificant – which is difficult to bring up or even to be recognised by women themselves.”

Cho is not the only South Korean author tackling gendered violence. Her novel is part of an emerging literary tradition, with titles including Ha Seong-nan’s Flowers of Mold, Jimin Han’s A Small Revolution, and Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist (to be published in English in May). Han Kang’s International Booker prizewinner The Vegetarian, like Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,follows a seemingly unremarkable woman, who withdraws from abuse inflicted by her father and husband into psychosis.

Han Kang, author of The Vegetarian. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Beauty and brutality have long been entangled in South Korean literature. But while violence was previously explored in literature through the masculine world of war, feminist authors are examining another kind of violence that is far more female. South Korea has the highest rate of plastic surgery per capita in the world. In The Vegetarian, two sisters are juxtaposed: the unconventional vegetarian of the title, and her older sibling, whose “eyes were deep and clear, thanks to the double-eyelid surgery she’d had in her 20s”; her cosmetic store’s success is attributed to “the impression of affability” that surgery has given her.

Plastic surgery is another way of improving chances of achieving social recognition, no different from wearing make-up Elisa Shua Dusapin, author

“[In Korea], plastic surgery is another way of improving chances of achieving social recognition, no different from wearing makeup or dressing appropriately for a job interview,” says Franco-Korean author Élisa Shua Dusapin. “A friend told me the other day that she’d been turned down for a job on the grounds that these days, ‘surgery is affordable; it’s up to the individual to make every effort to show themselves in the best light possible’.”

Dusapin’s debut, Winter in Sokcho, translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, is narrated by an unnamed woman working in a guesthouse where one guest is recovering from plastic surgery. “I could see the wounds weeping as the skin was exposed,” she observes. “Her eyebrows hadn’t grown back yet. She looked like a burn victim, the face neither a man’s nor a woman’s.” In spite of such a graphic deterrent, the narrator’s mother, aunt and boyfriend all attempt to convince her to have operations of her own.

Frances Cha, whose debut, If I Had Your Face, will be published in July, wants her novel to dispel western misconceptions about the reasons South Korean women go under the knife. “It bothers me when Korean women are dismissed as frivolous or vain,” she says. “I wanted to explore the very practical reasons why women [have plastic surgery], and how it can change your life. It can be life-threatening, and if it’s not life-threatening it’s so much pain and recovery – not a decision that is undertaken lightly.”

There’s a word in Korean that has no direct English translation: han. Cha defines it as a “resentment and anger that’s built up over being unfairly treated”. “A lot of women in my life have that. Mothers-in-law tend to have it because they were daughters-in-law and were mistreated by their own mothers-in-law. It’s been a very vicious cycle historically,” Cha says.

In novels such as Ch’oe Yun’s There a Petal Silently Falls and Park Wansuh’s Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, female authors have explored the violence, psychological and otherwise, inflicted after conflicts such as the 1980 Gwangju massacre and the Korean war. “Violence is a big theme in Korean culture in general, it’s not just women. The ‘han’ is more skewed to women. I think the violence – because everyone is on such good behaviour in polite society – is a release of all the pent-up emotions of every day,” Cha suggests.

‘There is a harshness, a hardness, a violence’ ... Élisa Shua Dusapin, author of Winter in Sochko

Sales of Korean fiction overseas have exploded, and female authors are now outnumbering males in translation. While Cho stresses that there are many excellent contemporary male authors, more women are being nominated for Korean literary awards at a time when “feminist stories are coming more to the forefront globally”.

“During the recession, many novels were about the pain and anxiety of fathers and young men,” Cho says. “Recently, readers love stories about the lives of older women, books that focus on the social life and concerns of female workers, express sympathy between female colleagues, friends, and neighbours … themes that weren’t considered as a subject of literature are now covered.”

Dusapin rattles off a list of contemporary Korean writers who she admires: Lee Seung-u, Kim Yi-Hwan, Han Kang, Kim Ae-ran, Oh Jung-hi, Eun Heekyung.

“There is a harshness, a hardness, a violence that at the same time is very sensual [in Korean writing],” she adds. “A coldness that masks a burning inner rage. In a society where it is considered unseemly to express one’s opinions loudly in public, literature is perhaps the only place where voices can speak freely.”

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org