Two 33-Year-Old Women: Minka Stoeva and Kim Jiyoung Across Space and Time

Abstract: Comparative analysis is conducted between the Bulgarian film “A 33-Year-Old Woman” (1982) and the Korean film “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” (2019), as well as the Korean novel (2016) on which it was based. The focus is on the parallels and the differences between the artistic realizations of the protagonists which share the same age, the same gender, the same parent status (mothers of daughters). I explore how images were constructed which claim common validity for certain social and historical conditions. The aim is to identify the common and the specific phenomena and processes depicted in two different and distant cul¬tures in two different historical periods in two completely different socio¬po¬litical systems (Bulgaria in 1981/1982 and South Korea in 2015/2016) through works of narrative art that have provoked exceptionally broad social response and debate. Intercultural issues are seen through the prism of feminist discourse in two dif¬ferent periods. The tumultuous public reactions to the three works of art prove their artistic relevance and their high historical value as documents of their own time. Keywords: comparative analysis, contemporary Korean literature, Bulgarian cine¬ma, Korean cine