<Please Look After Mom> by Kyung-Sook Shin
엄마를 부탁해 – 신경숙
It’s been a week since Mom went missing.
Just that.
Yes, this Korean bestseller starts with a line just like that. I was astonished to read this because I’ve seen dogs missing, heard about my roommate misplacing her lipstick, but no, Korean moms never go about missing. There is something about Asian moms, but more particularly Korean moms, that make them so… how should I put it, unconquerable and indomitable. A Korean mom would get up early in the morning, prepare breakfast for her husband and kids, go round asking questions about their children’s future colleges, and always putting her kids before herself. I mean it when I say this: always. She is always around the house, waiting for her custard beloved children to come home from school.
This is why this very line was is an eye-opener and to some extent scandalous to some people. As I said, Korean moms never go missing.
The fascination regarding this novel revolves around a family’s futile search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of subway station in Seoul and has not reappeared. The story is told from an urgent voice of the daughter and other family members, who have previously not appreciated her presence – omnipresence, must I add – before the incident. To them, mom’s disappearance was sudden as summer lightening, and like the thunderclap that follows, sadness came only later. As the children go through their recollections, they find that their mom had done nothing for herself. She led a sacrificing life for her kids yet did not have a real identity in the house. But now that she’s gone, we feel her emptiness bigger than ever; because she’s our mom. And we can’t help but wonder, why did she go through all this? What made her do all this for her children?
Mom says that her child’s success and happiness is the silver lining behind her clouds – the uncouth and uneducated youth that predetermined her ill-fated life. So she goes putting pieces of meat on our spoon, insisting that she is not hungry. We as Korean kids have luxuriated ourselves with their love, and have taken this for granted. However, the wonderful comforts of mom ironically elicit the most uncomfortable truth: then who takes care of mom? Who takes care of her wounded heart when dad brings his girlfriend home and leads another woman into the household. Who would understand why she forgives her husband for the sake her children. Who would ever ask why she takes everything in silence. Hence the title, please look after mom.
After he found his place in the city, Mother would arrive at Seoul station looking like a war refugee .She would walk onto the platform with bundles balanced on her head and slung over her shoulders and in her hands, the things she couldn’t otherwise carry strapped to her waist. It was amazing that she could still walk.
Here’s the magic of this novel – giving insight into the Korean world that at first glance appears alien to the Westerners, yet at heart it’s about our mom scrimping and saving to improve the lot of her children. But it also shows how a mighty figure that we once thought as indomitable can easily disappear into the thin air. Our mom fades away because no one cares for her; no one knew that she was working at an orphanage in her spare time and her husband did not care when she was no longer seen from the subway station. She too was a girl, daughter – a woman – before a wife and mom.
On the last note, let me just point out that the original English version of this novel in London was “Please Look After Mother” but was later published as “Please Look After Mom” in the States. Notice the big difference between Mother and Mom.
jen park 