Review of I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha

*I Have the Right to Destroy Myself* by Kim Young-ha (1995). Published by Harcourt.

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

For the longest time, I’ve had an interest in Korean literature. I started professionally publishing my own writing when I was sixteen years old, but I’ve been reading all of my life. After winning a prestigious scholarship to study Korean in high school, I kind of fell off of Korean studies in college, but then had a rebound in college when I did my master’s thesis on colonial and postcolonial Korean women’s literature.

That said, I read a lot of Korean literature. If you’re a more dedicated follower of my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I cover a lot of Asian literature in general, but there’s a focus on East Asia. It’s just a byproduct of my graduate training and all, but I do want to diversify my reading lists in 2025.

I first read I Have the Right to Destroy Myself in college, when I bought a Kindle copy. When I lost my job and had nothing to do, I spent a lot of time scrolling through all of the books I acquired throughout the years on my Kindle, as well as my physical collection so I decided to revisit this one after so many years.

Let’s get into the review! I know intros can be really long, and they’re not the main event on these blog posts.

As our narrator wanders Seoul, two brothers get involved in a love triangle, evoking moral questions.

This is a book written and published in the 1990s, and a fair warning before you go into it: it’s a short reading, clocking in at just over 110 pages total, but I found this novel really reflects the attitudes of patriarchy in Korea. It’s very much a masculine book and reeks of male privilege in some parts, especially as some might call our nameless narrator as sexist.

There’s also some deeply disturbing content for some included in this novel, but I wouldn’t say the novel is bad at all because of it. It’s also a critique of Korean society at the time, which if you’re not aware of Korean sociopolitics, then that aspect of the novel might fly over your head.

I feel like we really needed to get that out of the way before continuing. Our narrator is someone who wanders the streets of a rapidly modernizing Seoul, and he aids and suggests to others that are struggling to commit suicide. Suicide is a way to end it all for them, and this is where the title of the book comes in.

Over the course of the novel we get to see this, and his rather sexist attitudes through how he sees and confronts women, but we also learn about two brothers. They’re simply called C and K, and there’s a big conflict brewing between them.

Turns out they’ve fallen in love with the same exact woman, and they’re not up for sharing. Considering the narrator is someone who purposely goes out seeking people looking to kill themselves, which is a form of being a predator in itself, I think you can kind of guess where this novel is going—someone is going to end up hurt. Whether it’s the woman, or the brothers, you’ll have to read to find out.

But it’s all about the journey of getting there. I mentioned earlier that this is a short novel, and it certainly jams a lot of content and themes into the small amount of time it has. I found this novel to be quite existentialist at its core, which some might find a bit harder to get through, especially considering the subject matter.

I will also say: not everything in this novel comes to a neat little conclusion that you can tie up in a bow. If you’re looking for a solid, concrete ending, you’re simply not going to get that with this book.

Overall Thoughts

This isn’t a book for everyone, that’s for sure. I think if you read the synopsis alone you might find yourself a little shocked, and it feels surreal. That level of surrealism feeds into the dreamlike nature of the book, and we find ourselves taking our time wandering through the scenes.

Anyways, I found it to be a thought provoking book. I like to look at it through the lens of Korean society, history, and culture, and I find the fact this was published in 1995 to show how these ideas were quite pervasive throughout colonial and postcolonial Korean literary history. It’s very much seeped in the notion of han.

I say go pick this one up if you’re interested and can handle the subject matter. I found it to be quite worth revisiting, and I’m glad I picked up a copy. It might be hard to read in one sitting, despite the short length, because of its subject, so maybe plan to split it up into segments while you’re reading.

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