Please Look After Mom

Chapter 2 switches to third-person singular. Hyong-chol, the eldest son, hands out flyers at Seoul Station, near the clock tower where his mother used to wait for him to pick her up. Chi-hon is also handing out flyers with Hyong-chol, and though people crumple his flyers without a second look, Chi-hon’s commanding voice finds more success with passersby.

Hyong-chol recalls that his mother always resembled a war refugee because she carried so much stuff strapped to her body and in her hands. A woman takes a flyer and mentions that she saw someone matching So-nyo’s description (at least the eyes) wearing blue plastic sandals and suffering from a deep, festering cut on her foot. The wound was so bad that flies kept following the injured woman. This was around the Yongsan 2-dong office building. Hyong-chol doesn’t understand why his mother would be in Yongsan, but then suddenly realizes that the building is where he worked over 30 years ago.

Hyong-chol, who is now in his 50s, is the marketing director for an apartment building development company. He recently pitched a novel idea that resulted in him selling every unit he was responsible for, so he became the so-called golden child of the office. His accomplishments anger his coworkers because he didn’t go to a top university but is still successful. He normally spends his weekends shuttling the CEO and other higher-ups of his company around town.

When Hyong-chol first heard his mother was missing, he thought everyone was making too big a deal out of it. It’s now been over a month since his mom’s disappearance and, though swamped with work, he’s helping in the search effort. Hyong-chol placed an ad in the paper, but the family hasn’t received any calls. They have received several calls and leads from the flyers, but those turned out to be mostly dead ends or prank calls.

Hyong-chol decides to search Yongsan alone and meet up later with his sister. On his way to the building, Hyong-chol recalls how worried his mother always was about Chi-hon, who would cut off communication with the family whenever she was writing a book. Their mother would beg Hyong-chol to visit Chi-hon to make sure she was alive. Sometimes, while checking on her, Hyong-chol would find a young man visiting Chi-hon (Chi-hon later reveals this man to be Yu-bin, her boyfriend). Chi-hon always promised she would contact their mother, but never followed through. Because of this failure, Chi-hon wonders if her mother’s disappearance is punishment for being careless.

Hyong-chol also feels guilty. He thinks back to last fall when Chi-hon told him their mother had a stroke; Chi-hon had to show him the brain scan just to get him to care. She then angrily reminded him that their mother always felt guilty about Hyong-chol. As he stands in front of his old office building, the place where he also slept because he couldn’t afford to live anywhere, he hopes the sightings of his mother are all wrong. His father said she was wearing beige sandals when she disappeared, though Hyong-chol knows his mother used to wear blue ones because her feet hurt after a threshing accident. Hyong-chol wonders how his mother could find this old building but not be able to find one of her children’s houses.

The narrative flashes back 30 years. Despite Hyong-chol being the smartest in his high school class and most likely to get into a good school, he somehow failed his college entrance exams. Because he wanted to make his mother proud, he took the first job offered: work at the Yongsan 2-dong office in Seoul. When an opportunity arose to apply for law school, Hyong-chol needed his high school certificate. He asked his father to give the certificate to someone on a train bound for Seoul, but So-nyo brought the certificate personally. A stranger took pity on So-nyo and walked her all the way to Hyong-chol’s office building right before the citywide curfew went into effect. Hyong-chol lived in the building’s night duty room, and since his mother had nowhere to go until the next train, she stayed with him in the small, cold room. So-nyo insisted sleeping by the wall so that Hyong-chol wouldn’t feel the cold, and as they nodded off to sleep, she told Hyong-chol that she loved watching him grow into a strong, handsome man. Hyong-chol determined to make a good life for himself so that his mother would have a nice place to stay when she visited.

In the present, Hyong-chol visits his first apartment and asks several teenagers if they’ve seen So-nyo. Though initially hesitant, two teenagers mention they saw a woman with a hurt foot wandering around. As Hyong-chol continues his search, he regrets allowing work to consume him to the point that he forgot about his mother, breaking yet another promise: He was supposed to pick his mother up from the station on the day she disappeared, but he’d visited the sauna instead due to a hangover.

We see a sequence of flashbacks. When Hyong-chol was younger, his mother left suddenly because Hyong-chol’s father brought home a younger woman one day. So-nyo refused to live with the other woman, and Hyong-chol decided to become a prosecutor so that his mother would once again live with the family. While his mother was gone, Hyong-chol ensured that his siblings didn’t eat the lunches the younger woman prepared for them. One day, Hyong-chol’s mother tried to make him promise to eat the other woman’s food. He refused, but he said he would become a successful prosecutor, study hard, and eat if So-nyo returned home. So-nyo, happy at her son’s determination, marched back home, pushed the younger woman aside and took her rightful place. Soon after, Hyong-chol’s father and the younger woman moved into another house together.

For a while, So-nyo treated Hyong-chol like the man of the house. He never had to do chores like his siblings so that he could focus on studying. In the fall, however, his father returned and his mother took him back. Later, when Hyong-chol accepted his first job, his mother felt hurt because she had wanted him to become a prosecutor, but her mood softened after a while. When he was 24, So-nyo brought Chi-hon to live with him in Seoul. From that point forward, So-nyo always apologized to her son and kept her head lowered. Hyong-chol noted that his mother’s eyes “looked like those of a cow, guileless and kind” (95).

In the present, since he hasn’t found his mother, Hyong-chol calls Chi-hon and they agree to find the Sobu market someone reportedly saw their mother patronizing. Hyong-chol grows annoyed because every call he receives somehow indicates that his mother is in a neighborhood he once lived in but he can never find her once he arrives. After realizing he’s lived in 12 different neighborhoods, Hyong-chol also remembers that the Sobu market is near the street where he bought his first house in Seoul.

On the way to the Sobu market, Hyong-chol recalls arguing with his wife over Full Moon Harvest celebrations. More and more Koreans are leaving the country instead of celebrating ancestral rites, and Hyong-chol’s wife mentions that even their kids want to go on vacation like other kids. Hyong-chol grows angry because his wife mentions this with Hyong-chol’s father in earshot; he thinks his wife isn’t as concerned about his mother’s disappearance as she should be.

In the taxi with Chi-hon, Hyong-chol sees his sister shove her hands into her pockets after they briefly quarrel and recalls why she does this. When they lived together in his first house, she hit Hyong-chol in the face while he was sleeping. When he got angry, she went back home, but then her mother brought her back to Seoul to apologize. Chi-hon refused until her mother began crying. From that point forward, Chi-hon would stick her hands in her pockets whenever Hyong-chol raised his voice or whenever they went to sleep. Chi-hon has recently been apologizing for things that she would never have apologized for before their mother’s disappearance.

Back when the children all lived in the country, So-nyo would remove all the doors from their house in preparation for Full Moon Harvest. She’d clean the doors and then repaper them with maple leaves that Hyong-chol would get from their aunt’s house. This memory causes Hyong-chol to mimic his sister and stick his hands in his pockets. He realizes that their mother’s disappearance is forcing him to remember things he forgot long ago.

Chi-hon and Hyong-sol search the Yokchon-dong neighborhood for the Sobu market. The neighborhood has changed so much since they lived here in Hyong-chol’s first house that they initially can’t find the market. When they do, the pharmacist who called them explains that he woke up one morning and saw a woman eating stale food from the trashcans. He also noticed her festering wound and cleaned it for her. When he went inside briefly to call the police, she left. Though Hyong-chol doesn’t want to believe that their mother is the woman whom the pharmacist described as disoriented, desperate, and bloody, the pharmacist mentions that the eyes of the woman he helped and those of the woman on their flyer are the same. He also mentions the blue plastic sandals.

After searching the neighborhood with no luck, Hyong-chol tries finding his old house. While doing so, he remembers how happy his mother was at his success the first time he brought her to the house. She had her own room, though she slept in Chi-hon’s room while there. Before leaving, she gave Hyong-chol money for a nameplate. This memory prompts an older memory: Back when he and his siblings rented rooms, their mother would visit and bring food stuffed in her clothing. She’d then leave at night to return home, always saying, “I’m sorry, Hyong-chol” (113), because she felt she couldn’t help him succeed and because he now had the responsibility of being both mother and father to all his siblings. By the time their mother got off the bus near home, it would be near midnight, and she’d walk the rest of the way in the dark.

Hyong-chol and Chi-hon meet up in a park, neither having found a lead. Chi-hon determines to marry her boyfriend Yu-bin once they find their mother, and their conversation leads to the rosebushes they had at the Yokchon-dong house. During a visit, their mother bought these bushes to plant in the front yard. The decision surprised Hyong-chol because he never knew his mother liked roses (the family assumed she only liked planting things like potatoes that would provide sustenance), and because she planted the roses so that people walking by might see their beauty.

The siblings get drunk. Chi-hon shows Hyong-chol her notebook with resolutions, and laments that none of her resolutions are about their mother. When Hyong-chol goes home, he sees unwashed dishes in the sink. This angers him, so he awakens his wife and confronts her. Hyong-chol thinks she’s insensitive for sleeping while his mother is missing. He also accuses his wife of not caring about the disappearance and being selfish. As he begins throwing things, his father yells at him and takes him to another room. His father implores him not to quarrel: So-nyo is a fighter and will be fine. Hyong-chol’s father has decided to return home. Hyong-chol cries as he thinks about his mother’s life: She always thought she was holding Hyong-chol back, but Hyong-chol feels that he held her back by not keeping his promise to make her happy. He says sorry and sinks to the floor.