Please Look After Mom

Translated from the Korean by Chi-young Kim, Please Look After Mom (2008) by Kyung-sook Shin is an international work of best-selling fiction. When 69-year-old So-nyo Park goes missing one Saturday outside Seoul Station, her disappearance sets in motion a desperate search not only for where So-nyo might be but for who So-nyo was to her shocked and confused family members. One by one, So-nyo’s family comes to terms with the fact that they didn’t know So-nyo as well as they thought. Told in first-, second-, and third-person from the perspectives of different family members—including So-nyo—the novel addresses themes like the link between the past, present, and future; the trauma of having no closure; and traditional values versus modern values.

The first woman awarded the Man Asian Literary Prize, Shin publishes widely and has written many other acclaimed novels. Please Look After Mom, for which she won the Man Asian, is her first novel to appear in English. This study guide references the Vintage Contemporaries 2011 translation.

Please note that the study guide contains references to emotional abuse, death, and other traumatic events.

Plot Summary

When an elderly couple visits Seoul to celebrate their joint birthdays with their children, the 69-year-old matriarch, So-nyo Park, accidentally separates from her husband in a crowd at Seoul Station. So-nyo has several illnesses and, unbeknownst to the family, is no longer capable of remembering even her name. She disappears, and though the family searches for her, they will never see So-nyo again.

The family searches for So-nyo around Seoul. Hyong-chol, the eldest son, places an ad in the paper, and the family makes a missing-person flyer they hang up and pass out around town. The goal is to find Mom, and then to look after her.

The novel contains four chapters and an Epilogue—each one narrated by a family member. The narrative makes use of heavy flashback and memory recall to flesh out So-nyo and her family’s past.

Chi-hon, So-nyo’s eldest daughter, is a writer who regrets having spent her life writing, being angry with her mother, and largely ignoring her family. Chi-hon was the first person to realize that So-nyo had an illness she hadn’t disclosed to the family. When Chi-hon has her mom tested, she learns that So-nyo suffers from severe headaches after having a stroke she never told anyone about. Chi-hon admits to herself that she has never thought of her mother as a human being, but as an object simply fulfilling the role of Mother.

Hyong-chol also regrets forgetting about his mother. As he searches around Seoul with Chi-hon, he wonders why he feels so guilty about So-nyo’s disappearance. He once made a promise to become rich and to take care of So-nyo, but he forgot this promise as time passed. Now, he feels he won’t ever get the chance to apologize. Flashbacks show how much So-nyo sacrificed for Hyong-chol to prosper and how strong So-nyo had to be when her husband temporarily left her for another woman. The chapter also highlights So-nyo’s thinking while lost by suggesting that she tried visiting each of the 12 neighborhoods in which Hyong-chol once lived.

So-nyo’s unnamed husband delves into what they endured during the Korean War, including the death of his younger brother Kyun, a death that most likely traumatized So-nyo irrevocably. So-nyo’s husband was insensitive to her illnesses and largely ignored her.

The plot twist comes when So-nyo narrates the last chapter. She is now a spirit who hasn’t yet found peace (meaning that she has died but no one has found her body). So-nyo wants to visit all her children but their homes look so alike that she can’t tell them apart from those of strangers. She can only find her unnamed youngest daughter’s home and the home of her secret best friend Eun-gyu Lee. So-nyo feels sorry for her youngest daughter, who is following in So-nyo’s self-sacrificial footsteps by devoting herself to family. So-nyo then visits Eun-gyu, a man no one in her family knows, who was the one person to keep her afloat in difficult times. Eun-gyu is in the hospital, and has what seems like dementia—So-nyo’s disappearance has traumatized the old man. So-nyo visits her old home and remembers how happy that home made her. She then sees her dead mother who embraces and cradles So-nyo’s bruised body.

In the Epilogue, Chi-hon visits Rome nine months after her mother’s disappearance, saddened that her mother is still missing. In the Vatican, Chi-hon finds a rosewood rosary, which So-nyo asked her to purchase should she ever visit the smallest country in the world. Chi-hon kneels before the Pietà while thinking of her mother. The novel ends with Chi-hon asking Mother Mary to please look after Mom.