Abstract
This paper examines the subversion of the transmission of trauma and a response to loss reliant upon memories in Shin’s novel Please Look after Mom. Drawing on Hirsch’s theory of postmemory and the sociological theory of compressed modernity, I argue that the novel operates as a postmemorial work in its portrayal of a society that closely reflects the civilizational condition of compressed modernity, bridging the distance between an intimately familial narrative and collective affiliative experience. Despite this, the actual transmission of trauma experienced by the surviving family after the disappearance of the mother subverts the productive process of postmemory. I argue that a lack of historical evidence prevents the surviving family from engaging in the intergenerational and productive process of postmemory. Instead, the self-reproach that the surviving family engages in suggests a form of remembrance and response to loss more akin to, but still unrepresentative, of Freud’s melancholia. Ultimately, the family’s response to loss is one that defies categorization in its inability to achieve an intergenerational transmission of trauma or embody a narcissistic self-indulgence due to the indeterminate nature of So-nyo’s disappearance.
Please Look After Mom by Shin Kyung Sook portrays a modern South Korean family as they reckon with the sudden disappearance of their mother, So-nyo. As Chi-hon, the eldest daughter; Hyong-chol, the eldest son; and the father search for So-nyo’s physical presence, they each return to their individual memories of their time with her as a means of connecting with her spiritual presence and confronting their limiting understanding of the woman they only knew as “Mom.” While the novel itself can be considered a postmemorial work, one that positions readers as witnesses of So-nyo’s traumas, the narrative’s lack of historical evidence and the surviving family’s consequent reliance on individual memories subvert the structures of intergenerational reconnection defined by postmemory.
Postmemory is defined by Marianne Hirsch as a structure of intergenerational memory where the transmission of the traumas of the previous generation are mediated by modes of historical evidence, allowing those of the contemporary generation to identify with and better understand those experiences. The medium of historical evidence, including but not limited to photography, written recollections, and personal belongings, establishes a distance between past and present, allowing those in the present to extract meaning and develop connection without internalizing the traumas of the past as their own. In Please Look after Mom however, there is a distinct lack of historical evidence, which I argue prevents the surviving family from engaging in the process of intergenerational remembrance suggested by postmemory.
Ultimately, those that engage in postmemory develop a stronger, more intimate understanding of the traumas that their ancestors faced, and are themselves affected as a direct result of those inherited traumas. Yet while the novel may fit the structure of a postmemorial work, the children do not experience any enlightenment towards the traumas that So-nyo faced. Rather, there is only a deeper understanding of how much they truly lost, as the family realize that they have not only lost their mother in the physical sense, but their understanding and perceptions of her as well.
As such, I argue that the unfulfilled intergenerational transmission of trauma suggests both a form of remembrance and response to loss more similar to that of Freud’s concept of melancholia. While introduced prior to the theories of postmemory and rememory, melancholia tackles the more internal and one-sided psychological responses that the surviving family undergoes, characterized by “an identification of the ego with the abandoned object” (Freud 248), rather than an intergenerational, multi-party transmission of trauma. One who experiences melancholia experiences an internalization of the lost object, growing so intensely committed and attached to that loss that they damage parts of their own ego for its sake. This devolves into a self-inflicted pattern of self-reproach and an inability to reconcile with reality that distinguishes melancholia from the process of mourning that operates with a clear separation between the ego and the lost object. Yet even as the surviving family engages in the self-reproachful processes of melancholia, discrepancies remain between the nature of their grieving and the “narcissistic” element of melancholia that I seek to explain through the sociological theory of compressed modernity.
In this paper, I seek to demonstrate the novel’s position as a postmemorial work, arguing that its relationship with readers and depiction of a post-industrial, urbanized South Korea shaped by the consequences of compressed modernity establish a familial-affiliative relationship. I then expand upon the novel’s lack of historical evidence and the consequent subversion of postmemory in the family’s remembrance of the past. I will finally aim to depict the connections between the surviving family’s memories and the self-reproachful process of melancholia, ultimately arguing that an indeterminate reality prevents the family’s response to loss from truly embodying the narcissism that is characteristic of melancholia. Through this paper, I hope to portray the surviving family’s response to loss as one that defies categorization and reflects the uncertainty and inconstancy of a rapidly urbanizing and modernizing society.
Compressed Modernity and its Consequences
The rapidly urbanizing state of South Korea can be explained with the phenomenon of compressed modernity to better understand the effects that South Korea’s rapid economic development had on the society within Please Look after Mom. Termed by Chang Kyung Sop, a professor of sociology at Seoul National University, compressed modernity describes the civilizational condition that South Korea experienced after its rapid transition from a poor agrarian society to an advanced industrial economy (“Compressed Modernity” 31). This transition, or perhaps more accurately, explosive growth, occurred within a highly compressed period during the second half of the twentieth century in which the total GNP increased 238-fold between 1960-1995 (“Compressed Modernity” 33) amongst other changes.1
Such explosive and compressed growth was centered in urban environments, but while urban sectors flourished, rural families grew increasingly diminished in both tangible impact and social influence.2 These rural-urban disparities, alongside a flourishing urban socioeconomic environment, contributed to a rural-urban exodus concentrated in both the most productive and most educated group, as young, able-bodied adults left their rural hometowns in pursuit of opportunities promised via urban life. In the past decade alone, around 600,000 young South Koreans in their early 20’s have left their rural hometowns for Seoul and its surrounding urban cities in pursuit of higher education and lucrative job opportunities (Park, 2023). Such a phenomenon, built off of already existing rural-urban disparities, has further contributed to that divide by simultaneously fueling the development of the urban state and depleting rural sectors of their future workforce. This has resulted in a demographic distribution divided across urban and rural lines, with a growing proportion of rural households within an overall dwindling rural population having only elderly couples and singles, while urban populations are unproportionally large.3
Postmemory: Its Structural Applications to Please Look after Mom
Please Look after Mom is set in a South Korea society fully immersed in the consequences of compressed modernity, as its opening scene plunges readers into a disaster only possible within such an urbanized, intergenerationally-separated civilization: So-nyo has disappeared in the subway station while traveling from her rural village of Cheong-up to visit her children in Seoul. As Chi-hon, Hyong-chol, and their father panic in the face of this disaster, the brief moment in the present soon gives way to a deluge of memories scattered across time and space. Through these achronological and sporadic memories, readers are introduced to a family deeply affected by the consequences of compressed modernity, as all of the children live in Seoul while their elderly parents live by themselves in Cheong-up.4 Following the disappearance of So-nyo, the surviving family is plunged into memories of when she was still present in their lives, both re-explorations of a past that no longer exists and attempts to connect with the woman they spent so much time with yet understand so little about.
The novel’s reliance on memories as a means of connecting with the past and the previous generation welcomes an analysis of the novel through the lens of memory studies. While scholars in the field have categorized several different genres of memory, Please Look after Mom offers an intimately personal experience that reflects the collective experience of compressed modernity, aligning strongly with the familial-affiliative connection achieved by postmemorial works.
Distinct from mere recall, postmemory is shaped by the second generation’s attempt to connect with the previous generation’s traumas through “imaginative investment, projection, and creation” (“Generation” 107). Hirsch describes postmemory as a structure of intergenerational transmission of trauma that strives to reactivate and reembody more distant sociocultural experiences through individual and familial narratives. These individual structures of mediation that are experienced in an intergenerational vertical manner, occurring between children and parents within a family, are termed “familial”, whereas the intra-generational, horizontal relationship that familial experiences have with unrelated contemporaries is termed “affiliative” (“Generation” 115). Through familial works that are embedded in shared experiences or broadly compelling structures of mediation, postmemory bridges the distance between the familial and affiliative. This allows postmemorial works to evade the distinction between indirect and direct experiences by allowing a larger contemporary audience to engage in the experiences of the previous generation, even if they share no personal relationship with one another. While portraying a fictional family, Shin incorporates the collectively experienced consequences of compressed modernity into her characters’ memories. These memories are communicated to readers through the polyvocal structure of the novel, as each character engages in their individual memories of their past within dedicated chapters. Within these different focal views, Shin utilizes different pronouns to refer to each character: Chi-hon’s and the father’s perspectives are narrated through the second-person, Hyong-chol’s through the third-person, and So-nyo’s through the first-person. Shin’s use of the second-person point of view for Chi-hon and the father is notable, as the directed and involved nature of the pronoun “you” involves readers in the emotional processes that the characters undergo in their belated reflections of their treatment of and attitudes towards So-nyo. For example, a scene from the father’s chapter depicts the father reflecting on his neglect and mistreatment of So-nyo.
Before she went missing, you spent your days without thinking about her. When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her. Habit can be a frightening thing. You spoke politely with others, but your words turned sullen toward your wife. Sometimes you even cursed at her. You acted as if it had been decreed that you couldn’t speak politely to your wife. That’s what you did. (121)
The active, direct nature of his sentences reflects the agitated nature of the self-criticism the father engages in, yet despite this being an internal monologue, the second-person narration presents the self-criticism as a rebuke of the readers themselves. There is no passive voice or tangents in his self-criticisms, as the father fully embraces the flaws in his actions and lists them one after the other. As such, readers do not get the opportunity to distance themselves from these criticisms and instead must face the intensity of the father’s emotions as if they experienced them themselves.
Yet while the father’s actions may not represent the readers’ actions, and even while readers lack the connection with So-nyo that the father had, they have their own relationships with their family members to reflect on. Postmemorial works incorporate deeply relatable affiliative structures or characters as sources for witnesses to project their own experiences and relations onto through imaginative projection, and as specific as the relationship between the father and So-nyo are, it reflects the collective experience of familial relations. In witnessing the mistreatment of So-nyo and the father’s regret and self-criticism, readers can envision their own loved ones being in So-nyo’s position to reflect on the instances in their own lives where they may have mistreated their loved ones just like the father did. The intimate, individual experiences of the father are not merely shared to readers via the second-person narration, but through their elicitory nature that can produce both affective change and personal introspection as readers reflect on their own relationship with their loved ones. Readers are thus emotionally connected to the individual and internal experiences of the characters.
The novel further establishes a familial-affiliative connection through its setting shaped by the consequences of compressed modernity. Chi-hon’s memories depict the juxtaposition of her current urban lifestyle, one predominated by her pursuits as an international author, with her occasional visits to her rural hometown. The memories of her childhood depict nostalgic and characteristically-rural imagery through the detailed portrayals of food, nature, and countryside customs, such as the rows of “glazed clay sauce-jars on the ledge in the backyard” (15) that would hardly be seen in the spatially limited environment of Seoul.
Yet these nostalgic images are paralleled by the irrefutable impacts of modernization on Cheong-up and the depictions of the rural-urban disparities associated with compressed modernity. Walking with So-nyo along a path to her mother’s house that Chi-hon “had completely forgotten about” (45), they come across the village where So-nyo had been born in, now merely an empty plot of land. All of the village’s inhabitants had moved away, and nearly every house had been torn down — South Korea’s dwindling rural population and infrastructure in full display. So-nyo can only stand and stare at the bare plot of land where her mother’s house once stood and her own childhood memories were formed, her thoughts and emotions concealed but implied. Chi-hon reacts by merely wrapping her arm around her mother’s waist and asking her to come to Seoul with her — an act of both pity and resignation, seemingly acknowledging the losses accrued by compressed modernity but responding by encouraging So-nyo to move on and adopt an urban life.
Ultimately, Chi-hon’s memories of her rural past portray an intergenerational relationship strained by the urban-rural dichotomy and the loss of a tangible past exacerbated by the rapid urbanization associated with compressed modernity. In seeking to reckon with So-nyo’s disappearance, the surviving family is instead confronted by all of the loss surrounding them, as the places which they once called home no longer exist or are tainted by modernization. Such an experience closely reflects the increasingly urbanized landscape of South Korea, in which thousands of South Koreans leave their rural lives for Seoul, and thus frames a familial narrative within a collective experience shaped by the societal structure of compressed modernity.
The novel’s framing within collective experiences and subsequent familial-affiliative connection thus reflect postmemory’s characteristic as a generational structure of narrative transmission rather than an individualized identity position (“Generation” 114). Experiences and emotions are not localized within any one family member, but can be transmitted across generational and spatiotemporal divides through the novel’s utilization of broadly understood structures. Chi-hon’s confrontations with modernization’s erasure of her past or the father’s belated regret for his mistreatment of his wife are both individual experiences. Yet their depictions of collective experiences, such as rapid urbanization and strained family dynamics, can transcend the walls of familial intimacy and resonate with readers, regardless of their generation or cultural location. Indeed, even readers not connected with South Korea, but who understand the experiences of living in a society shaped by the familiar consequences of compressed modernity, can empathize and identify with the challenges faced by the family. Just as broadly public, affiliative structures shape the individual experiences of the novel’s family, that family’s experiences elicit affective changes and memories in affiliative readers. Thus, the novel blurs the distinction between what is considered personal and stranger, immersing readers in a specific familial narrative that is more relatable than it is foreign and engaging in the reciprocal familial-affiliative relationship of postmemory.
Symptoms and Silence: The Subversion of Postmemory
While Please Look after Mom as a novel and in its relationship with readers reflect the familial-affiliative structure of postmemory, the actual transmission of trauma within the novel subverts the process of transmission described by postmemory. Hirsch emphasizes the importance of historical evidence, primarily photography, as a means of facilitating the distanced, yet productive, reconnection between contemporary and previous generations. She argues that photography offers the contemporary generation opportunities to access the lives and traumas of the previous generation as a “uniquely powerful medium for the transmission of events that remain unimaginable” (“Generation” 117), without overwhelming or replacing the lived experiences of those viewing it. Hirsch notably utilizes Margaret Bourke-White’s photograph of the liberation at Buchenwald and its incorporation into a personal family portrait in Maus to argue about the power of publicly available photography and its depictions of collective traumas to shape the contemporary generation’s understanding of the previous generation’s traumas (“Generation” 123). Previous analyses made of different creative works through the lens of postmemory, such as Koh Dong-yeon’s analyses of the South Korean documentaries My Father’s Emails and Dear Pyongyang (Koh 2019), demonstrate additional epistolary means of reconnecting with the previous generation, such as through the discovery of old diary entries, letters, or recorded videos.
Please Look after Mom differs from these other postmemorial works in its lack of tangible forms of historical evidence. There are no photographs of So-nyo, no written letters or diary entries, or any physical traces of her left behind for the family to process. Even the buildings where the surviving family once shared memories with her have been changed, either belonging to someone else or being renovated over. However, an intergenerational relationship and connection with past traumas can be facilitated by the second generation’s interactions with the previous generation’s behaviors as well, including their physical health.
The connection between lived traumas and poor physical health is well-supported by scientific research, as the development of traumatic memories “represents a major vulnerability through repeated environmental triggering of the increasing dysregulation of an individual’s neurobiology” (MacFarlane 2010). These physical symptoms in turn can serve as expressions of a traumatic past, and become what Eva Hoffman terms the “language of the family”, a highly intimate form of expression where the past breaks through “in the sounds of nightmares, the idioms of sighs and illness, or tears and acute aches” (Hoffman 2004).
Yet when Chi-hon comes face to face with one of So-nyo’s symptoms by pure coincidence, both her and readers can only perceive them as signs of poor health, independent from the still-unknown traumas that So-nyo experienced. Visiting her childhood home, Chi-hon comes across So-nyo lying on the floor and clutching her head, “frowning so intently that her face was gnarled with deep wrinkles” (21). After painstakingly convincing her mother to visit a physician in Seoul, Chi-hon learns that So-nyo had suffered a stroke a long time ago, receiving a purely physical explanation for So-nyo’s symptoms. The surprising discovery of So-nyo’s headaches, something that started long ago with a previously undisclosed or unacknowledged stroke, was an indication that So-nyo struggled with more than she revealed. But Chi-hon fails to perceive any connections between So-nyo’s headaches and the likelihood of a traumatic past, and instead approaches them as a confrontation with how much her mother has changed, staring at the “dark sunspots on the back of her hand” and admitting that she “could no longer say [she] knew Mom” (Shin, 24).
It is only in the father’s chapter, many pages after Chi-hon’s, that readers learn of the sheer extent of So-nyo’s symptoms and traumatic experiences. The father delves into his past mistreatment of So-nyo, revealing the wide range of physical symptoms that far exceeded the mere headaches that Chi-hon and the readers initially witnessed. Early symptoms of dementia, recurring bouts of indigestion, chronic insomnia, breast cancer, extreme grief: memories of So-nyo’s poor physical and psychological health flood the father’s mind and the reader’s eyes, communicating both the decades of challenges that So-nyo endured and their bodily remnants. So-nyo’s symptoms, including her headaches, were not merely coincidental, but were connected to the traumatic incidents in her life. The suicide of So-nyo’s brother-in-law, Kyun, was one such incident, leaving So-nyo in physical and emotional agony as she “rip[ped] out her hair and grab[bed] at her chest in grief” for days following Kyun’s death and developed insomnia and post-trauamatic nightmares for years after. Only after So-nyo’s disappearance does the father reflect upon these traumatic incidents and the pressure that “might have pushed [his] wife toward her pain”, only then realizing that “Kyun might have [had] something to do with [So-nyo’s] headaches” (100).
Yet despite the relationship between So-nyo’s symptoms and her traumatic past, Chi-hon’s interactions with So-nyo’s headaches do not facilitate any form of intergenerational transmission of trauma that the “language of the family” may suggest, as Chi-hon does not even interpret the symptoms as bodily expressions of past traumas. Several reasons may be suggested for this disconnect, with the most notable being the lack of prolonged engagement with So-nyo’s symptoms. Chi-hon only comes across her mother’s headaches by coincidence, when visiting her rural hometown — an act that was not often repeated. In her interviews with children of Holocaust survivors, Nadine Fresco examines the role that symptoms may play in facilitating the intergenerational transmission of trauma and describes the symptomatic nature of trauma. To the children, the symptoms were all they had access to, as the past lay behind a “screen of words” that only concealed the truth, and the “forbidden memory of death manifested itself only in the form of incomprehensible attacks of pain” (Fresco 1984). Through sustained and repetitive interactions with their parents’ symptoms, the children grew to perceive them as signs to work backwards from to better understand that forbidden past, and rather than desensitize them, these interactions allowed for a heightened curiosity into the events that preceded the symptoms.
This repetition and interaction stands in contrast to the relationship that Chi-hon had with So-nyo’s symptoms, one of scarcity and distance in which Chi-hon could only come face to face with So-nyo’s poor health by returning to her rural hometown. Once Chi-hon returned to Seoul and embarked on her literary ambitions, So-nyo’s symptoms faded into Chi-hon’s subconscious mind. Chi-hon was never positioned to repeatedly witness their intensity and frequency, preventing a heightened curiosity into So-nyo’s past that Chi-hon could have explored had So-nyo still been alive.
Only after So-nyo’s disappearance did Chi-hon choose to reexamine the symptoms in her memories. The father’s chapter reveals how familiar the father is with the traumas So-nyo experienced, yet, in a way reflective of the novel’s separation of narrators and perspectives, there is little to no communication of those traumas to Chi-hon. The father briefly mentions that So-nyo also suffered from sinus emphysema, shocking Chi-hon, yet all other symptoms and the traumatic incidents are kept to himself. Initially, this lack of communication reflects the characteristic of postmemory, in which explicit retellings of the past are rare and the past is instead guarded by those of its generation. However, the foundation of postmemory relies on the children’s initial awareness of their parents’ experiences with trauma. In Fresco’s interviews, where the children could interact with their parents’ symptoms to connect with their past, they were aware of the presence of a “forbidden memory” — certain words could not be said, certain actions could not be performed. It was the specific connections to the Holocaust that they were unaware of.
Yet as Chi-hon continuously confronts her limited understanding of So-nyo, she realizes that her perceptions of So-nyo were always attached to her role as a mother. From her childhood memories of So-nyo breeding silkworms and brewing malt to support her family (52) to examining the dark sunspots on her hands after finding her collapsed from a headache, Chi-hon’s interactions with So-nyo and the revelations she has are related to the labor that she performed as a mother. Unlike the children in Fresco’s interviews, there is no “forbidden memory” that Chi-hon is aware of but can not access. There can be no attempts at understanding So-nyo’s traumas or achieving a transmission of trauma through physical symptoms if there is no awareness of the existence of possible traumas to begin with. Thus, the father’s silence becomes a barrier not just towards the children’s accessing of So-nyo’s traumas, but of the children’s awareness of their presence in the first place.
This lack of communication is a direct interference to the transmission of trauma from parent to children, and represents another instance where the structure of postmemory is subverted. Hirsch argues that traumatic experiences of the past are rarely ever explicitly detailed to those of the contemporary generation; rather, children receive the behaviors and symptomatic expressions as remnants of those traumas and utilize what they witness as a means of connecting to the past (“Surviving Images” 12). While Chi-hon and Hyong-chol never witness So-nyo’s symptoms beyond the headaches, the father, being the only member in the immediate family knowledgeable of them, serves as a living vessel for So-nyo’s story. There are multiple instances in which the father and his children speak to each other after So-nyo’s disappearance; even if the father did not detail So-nyo’s story, he had opportunities to open a conversation about the ailments that So-nyo suffered from. He could have been the bridge connecting his children to their mother — the postmemory generation to the previous generation — by transmitting the experiences of their mother that had never been shared. Yet in his phone calls with his children, no mentions about her past arise. The father provides no inklings of So-nyo for the children to grasp onto, further exacerbating the lack of historical evidence available to them.
A characteristic of postmemory is the lack of explicit stories and the silence or shielding of traumas by the previous generation. Indeed, the father’s lack of communication can initially seem to fit within the structure of postmemory. However, the foundation of postmemory relies on the children’s initial awareness of their parents’ experiences with trauma. In the interviews conducted by Fresco and in Maus, which Hirsch heavily analyzes in her development of postmemory, the children were all aware that their parents had lived through the Holocaust: it was the specific experiences and memories from the Holocaust that they were kept unaware of. When Chi-hon and Hyong-chol are not even aware that So-nyo suffered in her life in ways beyond their immediate observations of her as a mother, the structure of postmemory has no foundational awareness to be built upon. There can be no attempts at understanding So-nyo’s traumas or achieving a transmission of trauma through physical symptoms if there is no awareness of those traumas to begin with, thus shaping the father’s silence as a barrier not only towards the children’s access of So-nyo’s traumas, but of the children’s awareness of those traumas’ presence in the first place.
While Chi-hon’s relationship with So-nyo’s symptoms and the father’s silence contribute to the disruption to postmemory, the most significant disruption comes from So-nyo’s own destruction of her physical belongings. In the final chapter, narrated by So-nyo herself, she reveals burning nearly all of her belongings, feeling that the day when she “wouldn’t be able to recognize anything” was arriving (202). From the underclothes Hyong-chol bought for her with his first paycheck, to the cotton blankets that her mother had made for her, So-nyo burned or broke everything that she had ever used and that she believed would not be of use to her children.
The destruction of these objects eliminated any possibility of the children reconnecting with their mother by interacting with tangible remnants of her past. Physical belongings belonging to one’s ancestors, in a way similar to photography or diary entries, have an element of performative indexicality to them that can shape the way those of the contemporary generation can reconnect with those of the past. Margaret Olin’s concept of the “performative index” states that photography can serve as a source of intergenerational connection through interaction and identification rather than mere resemblance, as viewers of a photograph project their own desires onto it to draw value and develop an affective connection (Olin 2012).
While not photographs, the belongings of a deceased loved one can share the same affective relationship with the postmemory generation. So-nyo’s belongings could have been sources of imaginative reinvestment and projection for the children, allowing the children to not only remember So-nyo, but reimagine their relationship with her through the memories that such belongings may have triggered. Objects such as the blankets from So-nyo’s mother are physical connections to generations preceding So-nyo’s that could have given the children a lens through which to perceive So-nyo as someone more than than merely their own mother — perhaps as a child, interacting with her own mother. Just as one may cling to the used clothing of a deceased loved one, the children could have clung onto objects from So-nyo’s past as remnants of just “Mom,” but So-nyo as a daughter and a child herself. Ultimately, however, no such objects exist. They only have the memories of So-nyo to utilize as a surrogate for her presence.
Without historical evidence, the children can not reconnect with their mother through the mechanisms of postmemory. Postmemory is described as a productive process, one that allows those of the contemporary generation to shape a future informed and mediated by their understanding of the past (“Surviving Images” 10). Yet the children’s efforts to search for and connect with their mother are more retrospective and stagnant than they are generative. Indeed, even after several months of searching for their mother and living within their memories of her, Chi-hon can only admit to her sister that “I just don’t get Mom. Only that she’s missing” (174).
Memories and Melancholia
The intergenerational transmission of trauma that postmemory achieves implies a bridging of the distance between generations, engaging multiple parties in its processes as the second-generation inherits the previous generation’s memories. Yet the remembrance depicted in Please Look after Mom is a strictly individual process, as each character’s memories are sectioned into individual chapters and are rarely ever communicated to other family members. Thus, rather than a form of intergenerational remembrance, the family’s reliance on memories is portrayed as an internalized response to loss that results in a pattern of self-criticism closely aligned with Freud’s concept of melancholia.
Freud framed melancholia as a pathological response to loss, a condition defined by several presenting “symptoms,” most notably a “lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings” (Freud 244). This presence of self-reproach is what differentiates melancholia from the closely associated, but non-pathological process of mourning. In addition, while the catalyst and underlying cause of dejection are the same in mourning, those that engage in melancholia are oftentimes unaware of the underlying cause as it remains in their unconscious.
As the surviving family retreats into their memories to connect with their lost mother, the memories themselves become a form of self-reproach as they unfold as pointed revelations rather than reconnections. Their memories are more than repeated episodes from the past, but sources of belated insights into So-nyo’s individual humanity that were never acknowledged during So-nyo’s lifetime. For example, in remembering So-nyo’s yearly ritual of pasting maple leaves on doors, Hyong-chol asks himself if that was “the most romance Mom was able to experience in those days” (98), realizing that the previous chores that she engaged in were instead meaningful acts of self-expression.
When these seemingly straightforward realizations that took So-nyo’s disappearance to trigger are considered alongside the piercing observations of So-nyo made by strangers, they become sources of self-reproach that the children struggle to accept. Throughout the novel, Chi-hon and Hyong-chol pass out fliers to strangers and rely on sightings of So-nyo so that they themselves can hopefully reach her.
Name: Park So-nyo
Date of Birth: July 24, 1938 (69 years old)
Appearance: Short, salt-and-pepper permed hair, prominent cheekbones, last seen wearing a sky-blue shirt, a white jacket, and a beige pleated skirt.
Last Seen: Seoul Station subway (6)
Yet when hints do come in, they often delay acting upon them, taking six days to contact a pharmacist who reported So-nyo sitting outside of his apartment “eating sushi rolls from the trash” (100). Pointed questions asking them about their own mother — “Does she have dementia?” or “Is she deaf?” — are responded with vague dismissals: silence from Chi-hon and denial from Hyong-chol. Juxtaposed against the barebones flier that focused only on her most obvious appearance, the strangers’ descriptions of So-nyo suggest that the strangers themselves have a more developed understanding of So-nyo than Chi-hon and Hyong-chol do. As such, their belated insights into So-nyo transform into implicit forms of self-reproach, as the children can only criticize themselves for failing to understand the woman they spent their entire lives knowing more than strangers who had merely brief encounters with her.
Freud describes the cycle of self-reproach as an indulgent, narcissistic process, one that feeds into itself due to the melancholics’ attachment to the pain as a hollow substitute for the lost object itself and their refusal to redirect their attachment onto alternative objects. Freud even explicitly compares the behavior of melancholia to that of an “open wound” which draws itself towards investing emotional and mental energy into a lost object (Freud 253).
Such a comparison to the unguarded, self-infecting nature of an open wound suggests both a self-inflicting and self-inflicted quality to melancholia, one that can be avoided just as bandaging an open wound can prevent reinfection and scarring. Freud’s focus on the narcissistic, self-indulgent element of melancholia introduces complexity to the discussion of its applicability to the family’s response to loss, especially considering the lack of historical evidence with which the characters can redirect their attachment onto. As mentioned in the discussion about the narrative’s subversion of postmemory, historical evidence such as photos or belongings can act as sources of imaginative projection which members of the contemporary generation can attach themselves to as mediums for their reconnection with lost loved ones. In a Freudian interpretation, historical evidence can serve as sources releasing the melancholic from their introjection of, or internal fusing with, the lost object by becoming external objects for which they can emotionally attach to.
While historical evidence may not be the only means of redirecting a melancholic’s object cathexis, its complete absence suggests a melancholia that is less of a self-indulgent and self-inflicted process but rather, a natural and unavoidable consequence. The family’s reliance on memories as a response to loss becomes less of the mind’s refusal to “willingly abandon [its] libidinal position” (Freud 244), but rather an inability to detach from So-nyo and accept a reality that is still uncertain. Not only do the family members lack any historical evidence to redirect their object cathexis to and undergo the more productive processes of remembrance that doing so can allow, but the reality they live in is one where no one but the readers know for certain if So-nyo is still alive or not. Conversations between Chi-hon and Hyong-chol quickly escalate into heated arguments as she accuses him of giving up on looking for So-nyo, and he bursts into a frustrated rage (229). Both are stuck in a space between progression and grief, attempting to re-adjust to their daily lives but still grasping onto the hope that So-nyo is still alive and waiting to be found. While Freud argues that “respect for reality” is how one can complete the process of melancholia, the surviving family’s respect for an uncertain reality is what continues to trap them into their emotional limbo and self-reproach. Thus, the surviving family’s response to loss is one that defies categorization in its inability to achieve an intergenerational transmission of trauma or embody a narcissistic self-indulgence due to the indeterminate nature of So-nyo’s disappearance.
So-nyo’s body is never found. There is no physical or emotional closure for the family, and in a society shaped by constant inconstancy where tangible remnants of the past are removed or changed in the pursuit of modernization, memories serve as the one unaffected representation of the past. Ultimately, in the final passage of the novel, Chi-hon can only conclude her search with a plea: “Please, please look after Mom” (237). Placed within a postmemorial work whose own transmission of trauma subverts the structures of postmemory, this plea is both rooted in the past as a belated regret specific to her family, and aimed towards the future as a warning for affiliative contemporaries. In a society shaped by the consequences of a compressed modernity, what is gained may soon be overshadowed by what is lost.
1 Statistical compilations from the 1990’s detail the remarkable economic and social achievements of this time, a few notable examples including a 238-fold increase of the total GNP and a 128-fold increase of the per capita GNP in 1960-1995 period. The country’s manufacturing and export industries flourished in the same period as well, with the total production of automobiles recording a 1,422-fold increase and total exports expanding by 3,813 times (“Compressed Modernity” 32). These statistics are only a few of the many changes the country experienced within a short period of time.
2 Factors such as state intervention, market distortion, and free trade with agricultural exporter countries prioritized urban industrial development over rural development (“South Korea Under Compressed Modernity” 89). Even as urban sectors prospered, that process in it of itself capitalized off of rural resources, such as through high-risk, illegal investments in farmland, distortion of circulation channels of farm products, and the destruction of natural environments, without feeding back into rural sectors (“South Korea Under Compressed Modernity” 88).
3 A study from 2018 (Kim et al. 2018), demonstrated that more older adults lived alone in rural areas (33.5%) than they do in urban areas (22.7%). As of 2023, the combined populations of Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi-do — the country’s major urban centers — consisted of more than 50% of South Korea’s entire population, despite covering merely 12% of the country’s geographic area (Lee 2024).
4 Such separation is not only representative of the geographic-demographic divide, but also reflects South Korea’s limited social welfare systems that encourage many elderly to either care for themselves or rely on family members for support. A social survey conducted by Statistics Korea in 2023 indicated that 76% of South Koreans above the age of 60 depended on themselves or their spouse for the cost of living, with only 11.9% relying on support from government or social institutions (Statistics Korea 2023).
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