Please Look After Mom

The 69-year-old matriarch of a South Korean family, So-nyo Park, is missing. So-nyo arrived in Seoul to visit her children and celebrate her and her husband’s joint birthday but became disoriented in the crowd at Seoul Station. After her husband rushes toward their bus, he discovers after boarding safely that though So-nyo was standing next to him earlier, she hasn’t followed him. The elderly couple lives in the country, and the family worries because So-nyo has never navigated the bustling city without one of her children showing her the way.

It’s been one week since So-nyo’s disappearance. So-nyo’s family (her husband and five children) gathers at the residence of her eldest son, Hyong-chol, to determine a course of action. The family finally decides to make a missing-person flyer and post it throughout the city.

Chi-hon (one of So-nyo’s daughters) narrates the chapter in the second-person singular. Chi-hon is a novelist, so the family tasks her with writing the flyer’s details. As the chapter unfolds, Chi-hon reveals telling information about how the family treated So-nyo. This information comes from family misunderstandings in the present and Chi-hon’s childhood memories. Chi-hon misremembers the date of So-nyo’s birthday and her father must correct her.