Seoul is presented as Jungkook Jeon’s birthplace, family homeland, and emotional point of origin, but never as a simple refuge. The city contains the memory of Busan, the violence of his childhood home in Gangnam, the grandparents he has not seen for years, and the father from whom he became separated after divorce. As a result, Seoul functions less as a neutral setting than as a map of what Jungkook remembers, what he has lost, and what he is still trying to leave behind.

Geographic and Familial Identity

Seoul enters the narrative through Jungkook’s family history. He tells Shelby Anderson Barnum that he is from Busan, lived in Seoul before moving to Seattle at the age of ten, and still sometimes regrets leaving Busan even though parts of that earlier life are painful to remember. The distinction matters: Seoul belongs to the period between his birthplace and his later life in the United States, linking Korean family memory to the displacement that followed.

Gangnam, specifically, is the setting of the childhood home where Jungkook and Ye-jun witnessed the violence between their parents. In the flashback, eight-year-old Jungkook is held back by his older brother while shouting grows louder downstairs. Ye-jun tries to prevent him from intervening because he knows what their father will do, but Jungkook breaks free and runs toward the kitchen. There he sees his father holding a glass of whisky in one hand and a belt in the other while his mother sits on the tiled floor. Seoul therefore carries the physical space of the family’s terror: the stairs, the kitchen, and the room where the brothers attempt to protect one another.

Seoul as a Site of Trauma

The Gangnam flashback establishes that Jungkook’s later anger is rooted in an earlier pattern of helplessness and resistance. He cannot accept remaining hidden while his parents fight, yet his attempt to intervene exposes him to the same threat directed at his mother. Ye-jun’s restraint is protective rather than indifferent, and Jungkook’s refusal to obey shows the conflict between safety and action that will recur in his adult life.

Sunmi Eun’s recollection adds a longer history to that childhood scene. When she first knew Jungkook, he appeared quiet and discreet until he returned with a badly injured face. He claimed that he had fought at school and that Namjoon Kim had prevented the situation from becoming worse, but Sunmi later understood that his father had beaten him. At sixteen, Jungkook ran away from home and sought shelter with Sunmi. His father did not search for him, while Sunmi welcomed him and allowed him to remain under her protection. Seoul thus becomes associated with both the origin of the abuse and the rupture through which Jungkook escaped it.

Memory, Return, and Separation

Seoul also survives through the absent people attached to it. Namjoon tells Jungkook that he is happy because he will visit his family in Seoul, including grandparents he has not seen for three years. The planned visit recalls a family network separated by distance and divorce, especially Namjoon’s father, who returned to Korea after separating from Sunmi. Seoul consequently represents reunion for Namjoon, while for Jungkook it remains a more conflicted destination, connected to relatives, national origins, and the violence he would prefer to forget.

The city’s emotional force is sharpened by contrast with later locations. Shelby comes from Los Angeles and misses it after moving to Ellensburg; Jungkook understands that homesickness because he sometimes misses Busan and Seoul despite the painful events associated with them. Both characters therefore carry cities as divided emotional objects. Place offers belonging, but it also preserves the circumstances from which they fled.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Seoul is primarily a remembered location rather than a continuously inhabited setting in the present chronology. Its appearances arrive through dialogue and analepsis, allowing the narrative to move from adult relationships back into childhood without treating the past as finished. The Gangnam house is not merely background: it explains why Jungkook reacts so intensely to danger, why Ye-jun’s protection matters, and why Sunmi’s home becomes a substitute space of safety after his flight.

The location also participates in the book’s larger idea of rebirth. The closing meditation describes renewal as allowing an old life to die, leaving the past behind, and moving toward a better future, while acknowledging that such change may take months or years and that each person must proceed at a different pace. Read against Jungkook’s history, Seoul is the past that remains attached to him even after physical departure. Its significance lies not in being erased, but in being reinterpreted: the city contains the child who resisted his father, the brother protected by Ye-jun, and the adolescent who escaped to Sunmi, all of whom remain part of the adult trying to learn how to live differently.