Family violence trauma

Jungkook’s childhood trauma from domestic violence begins in a home where violence threatens both his mother and himself. He is not only a child subjected to his father Dong-hyun’s physical abuse, but also a witness who repeatedly tries to intervene. The novel returns to those experiences through memories that intrude into his adult life, connecting childhood fear and helplessness with later panic, anger, and difficulty accepting care.

Childhood in a Violent Home

In a memory set in Gangnam, Seoul, eight-year-old Jungkook tries to get free of his older brother Ye-jun, who is holding him back from rushing downstairs. Their parents are arguing in the kitchen, and the children fear that the conflict is escalating. Jungkook resents being restrained and wants the fighting to stop. When he reaches his father, he directly objects to Dong-hyun’s treatment of Min-ha. His attempt to protect her instead draws Dong-hyun’s violence onto him.

Dong-hyun throws a glass across the room; a shard strikes Jungkook in the face. Before the boy can respond, his father grabs him by the shirt and slaps him repeatedly. Fear and rage become tangled as Dong-hyun berates him for refusing to stay in his place. The scene establishes a cruel reversal: Jungkook’s impulse to defend his mother is treated as defiance, and his effort to resist the violence exposes him to it.

Another recollection, set in Seattle, shows the same household’s violence in a different form. After a miserable first day at a new school, Jungkook tells Min-ha that classmates mocked his accent. She stops cooking to embrace him and comfort him. The tenderness is abruptly interrupted when Dong-hyun arrives with Ye-jun; Min-ha becomes visibly panicked and returns to the stove. Dong-hyun questions Jungkook for crying, and the child retreats into silence. The shift from a mother’s reassurance to the father’s hostility makes home a place where comfort can be interrupted without warning.

The pattern culminates in a beating after dinner. Dong-hyun summons Jungkook upstairs, chokes him against a wall, and orders him to stay in his room. Later, he enters the child’s bedroom despite Min-ha’s attempt to stop him. He slaps Jungkook, removes his belt, tears his shirt, and strikes his back. Jungkook cannot move or fight back; his tears and pain give way to dark anger. Min-ha continues trying to intervene, while Ye-jun covers his ears in his room. After the beating, Dong-hyun turns his aggression on Min-ha, grabbing her by the hair and warning her not to intervene again. The episode shows the abuse as a household system: the children witness their mother’s danger, and attempts to protect one another are met with further violence.

Memory, Fear, and Adult Symptoms

Jungkook’s later life carries the effects of these events beyond the childhood scenes. Sunmi recalls that she first knew him as a quiet, discreet boy. When he once arrived at her home with a badly injured face, he claimed he had fought at school and that Namjoon had helped him; Sunmi believed him. Only when Jungkook ran away from home at sixteen and sought refuge with her did the extent of his situation become clearer. His father did not try to find him. Sunmi took him in immediately, and Jungkook remained grateful to her. She also worried about what surrounded him outside her home, including his contact with things a sixteen-year-old should not have been exposed to.

The past returns through sleep as well as recollection. During one episode, Shelby tries to wake Jungkook as he struggles in bed, his fists clenched and tears running down his face. He has stopped shouting, but remains caught in a distressing dream until she calls him awake. The scene gives his trauma a physical presence: even when he is not recounting the abuse, his body appears to relive fear that he cannot easily control.

The connection becomes explicit after another panic attack. When Shelby asks whether the episode was about his father, Jungkook confirms it without speaking, nodding and looking away. The attack followed a period of thinking about painful memories after he left the boxing room. His later disclosure to Shelby also links the childhood demons in his thoughts to his efforts to learn how to love and to his vulnerability to destructive impulses. He describes a return to the Ares Garden ring as occurring in a trance, with the old vice stronger than his intentions; seeing Shelby’s tear-streaked face makes him regret going back. The novel thus connects trauma to choices that recur, while distinguishing those choices from any simple resolution of the underlying pain.

Care, Trust, and the Limits of Recovery

The responses Jungkook receives offer a contrast to the coercion of his childhood. Sunmi gives him a place to stay when he runs away at sixteen, welcomes him without hesitation, and becomes someone he continues to appreciate. In adulthood, when Namjoon visits Sunmi after Jungkook has relapsed, she senses that something is wrong and listens as Namjoon explains his concern. These relationships make support possible, although they do not erase the history that Jungkook is struggling to face.

Shelby’s presence also develops through attention to boundaries and trust. At one point, Jungkook places a hand on her knees while she is crying, and she is seeking comfort; elsewhere, when she becomes anxious, he rests a hand over hers, and she calms. Their care is not interchangeable with professional help: Jungkook himself credits Shelby’s therapist with a central role in her improvement, rather than claiming to have caused it. That distinction matters in a narrative where both characters carry trauma and where closeness can help without making one partner responsible for curing the other.

Jungkook’s past is therefore presented as a recurring pressure on his present, not a single episode that ends when he leaves home. Childhood scenes establish the violence and his inability to protect those he loves; adult panic and disturbed sleep reveal how that history continues to surface. Sunmi’s refuge, Namjoon’s concern, and Shelby’s patient presence create alternatives to the household’s isolation and force. Yet Jungkook’s own account of relapse and regret keeps the trajectory unsettled: support can make telling and connection possible, while recovery remains difficult and ongoing.