The novel was a huge success in Korea, and was followed by a film which was controversial even before shooting had begun. When Korean star Jung Yu-mi announced that she would play Jiyoung, her Instagram account was inundated with vitriolic messages. People even petitioned the Korean president to stop the film going ahead.

For all the ruckus she has caused, Jiyoung is quite unremarkable. She is a mostly compliant and conscientious girl, intelligent without being brilliant, smart but not feisty. We follow her from childhood through her teenage years, into young adulthood, marriage and parenthood. Cho carefully constructs a picture of a young Korean woman who never puts a foot wrong.

Even as the Kim family's material fortunes rise in the 1990s, with Korea's increasing prosperity, little changes in terms of gender roles. Jiyoung is also able to go to university, unlike her own mother. But this counts for little in the face of a work culture which is utterly demoralising for women.

As a young graduate, Jiyoung suddenly becomes aware of the powerful forces around her. She cannot get an interview. She cannot get a job in the company of her dreams. Finally, she finds work in a small company, but is not paid the same as her male colleagues. She and her female co-workers are always given the most taxing clients. Management counts on female employees leaving to have a family anyway. So why tire out the male employees, who will be in it for the long haul, with the hardest projects? Always give the dud jobs to a woman, seems to be the unwritten rule.

Having succeeded in every aspect of her life, professionally and personally, Jiyoung realises that she is trapped in a labyrinth. "Conscientiously and calmly she was searching for a way out that didn't exist to begin with."

Told in a dispassionate style and peppered with stark statistics about gender inequality and the gender pay gap in Korea, the work often reads more like a report than fiction. It's as if Cho resisted the easy appeal of character flourishes in order to make the social story starker and impossible to resist. Kim Jiyoung is one of the most common female names of that generation. Cho presents her protagonist as a Korean everywoman.

When she bumps up against ubiquitous sexism and discrimination, Jiyoung displays disbelief, fear, avoidance and disappointment. She retreats rather than screams, shouts or kick up a fuss. But buried deep in her heart, she is stowing away a series of "repulsive, frightening experiences with males".

These experiences finally come to the fore during the Chuseok harvest holiday. Ever the dutiful daughter-in-law, Jiyoung shops and cooks traditional dish after dish with her mother-in-law, while her husband has a kip. Then she snaps, going into trances, mimicking a former classmate who died and her own mother. She finally stands up for herself, but does so only in the voice of her mother.

Her way blocked at every turn, Cho shows her unremarkable heroine continually lowering her expectations. Then, at the age of 34, a young mother at home with a toddler, she is so utterly ground down that the only way of moving forward is to regress and become a woman of an older generation, someone who was never promised education or a career. Jiyoung finally understands that she may work. But her professional life will always be more taxing, sometimes frightening and consistently less-well remunerated than that of her male colleagues, or her husband.

Jiyoung's daughter, Jiwon, is one when her mother has a breakdown. At the novel's close, it appears that change for Jiwon's generation will be slow and hard-won too. Her male psychiatrist, the novel's narrator, reflects on everything that his patient has gone through. In one breath, he accepts that women in Korea have had a raw deal. But when his reverie is interrupted by a female counsellor at his practice, who is resigning because she is pregnant, he vows that her replacement will be unmarried. Women really need to sort out their childcare, he grumbles.

This lament, in which women are always at fault, is echoed elsewhere in the book: followed home from cram school one evening, Jiyoung narrowly avoids being assaulted. Her father blames her for the near miss. Later, a pornography ring at her office is exposed and reported to police. Male employees at the company complain that their female colleagues are being too harsh on them.

In spite of everything we have seen about #MeToo, Jiyoung's story is still shocking. Australia might be doing better than Korea on gender equity scores. But much of the discrimination Jiyoung faces will be depressingly familiar to Australian women. Us too! I often thought, as I read this compelling book.