Ye-jun

Ye-jun is Jungkook’s elder brother and one of the few figures who tries to protect him during their childhood in Seoul. His importance lies in the contradiction he embodies: he understands the danger posed by Dong-hyun and attempts to restrain Jungkook, yet fear prevents him from stopping the violence. The brothers’ bond is therefore shaped by protection, helplessness, resentment, and the lasting consequences of abuse.

Identity and Family Background

Ye-jun grows up in a household dominated by Dong-hyun’s unpredictable violence. Min-ha is subjected to intimidation and physical abuse, while the children learn to recognize the sounds and silences that follow their parents’ conflicts. Ye-jun is old enough to understand what Dong-hyun may do and young enough to be unable to prevent it. When eight-year-old Jungkook tries to leave the bedroom to intervene in an argument downstairs, Ye-jun holds him tightly against his body and warns him about the danger. His restraint is not indifference; it is a desperate attempt to keep his younger brother from becoming another target.

The family’s earlier history contains a contrast to the later abuse. Min-ha recalls that Jungkook was a calm baby who demanded considerable attention, and that Ye-jun was also present and loved his younger brother. Dong-hyun, according to her recollection, had not always been cruel and volatile; his dramatic change began when Jungkook was four. Ye-jun therefore belongs to both versions of the family: the earlier household in which the brothers could be close and the later household in which affection is repeatedly deformed by fear.

Childhood Under Dong-hyun’s Violence

Ye-jun’s defining childhood scene begins when Jungkook breaks free from his brother’s grasp and runs downstairs. In the kitchen, Dong-hyun is holding a glass of whisky in one hand and a belt in the other, while Min-ha sits on the floor. Jungkook refuses his father’s order to return to his room and tells him to leave their mother alone. Dong-hyun responds by smashing the glass against the wall and striking Jungkook across the face after a shard cuts him. Ye-jun’s earlier warning is proved correct, but the knowledge does not spare either brother from the consequences.

Later, Dong-hyun reinforces the household’s coercive masculine code by telling Jungkook that a man must never cry and ordering him to behave accordingly. Ye-jun remains nearby as the father insults and humiliates the younger boy, demanding obedience and directing him to follow his brother’s example. The instruction turns Ye-jun into an unwilling standard against which Jungkook is judged, even though Ye-jun himself is also trapped inside the same abusive structure. His presence is used by Dong-hyun as part of the discipline imposed on Jungkook, making brotherhood another channel through which paternal power operates.

After Dong-hyun leaves, Ye-jun approaches Jungkook and tries to embrace him. The gesture, which might once have offered safety, is rejected with violent force. Jungkook pushes Ye-jun to the floor, declares that he hates him, and orders him never to come near again. Ye-jun is frightened by the black anger consuming his brother and can do little more than nod. When he later enters Jungkook’s room, Jungkook refuses even to hear him and calls him a coward. The accusation crystallizes Jungkook’s sense that Ye-jun failed to protect him, while Ye-jun’s silence suggests the paralyzing guilt of someone who understood the danger but could not overcome it.

Separation, Silence, and Family Consequences

Ye-jun’s relationship with Jungkook remains marked by distance after the family breaks apart. Min-ha tells Jungkook that she and her new husband, Frank, tried to find him and encountered Ye-jun, who did not know where Jungkook was. The information confirms that Ye-jun remains connected to the family’s fractured history, but it also emphasizes how incomplete that connection has become. He is a possible intermediary between Jungkook and Min-ha, yet he cannot reunite them or repair what Dong-hyun destroyed.

When Min-ha speaks about taking both boys with her, Jungkook’s expression closes at the mention of Ye-jun. His reaction shows that the brother has not become a neutral memory. Ye-jun is bound to the tenderness of childhood, the terror of the abusive home, and the moment when Jungkook felt abandoned in the face of danger. The text does not present him as the author of the violence, but Jungkook’s pain cannot separate Ye-jun’s limited protection from his inability to stop what followed.

Ye-jun’s Narrative Significance

Ye-jun functions as a figure of compromised protection rather than rescue. He recognizes the threat before Jungkook does, physically restrains him, and tries to keep him away from the kitchen, but his warning cannot change the family’s power structure. His failure is therefore ethically and psychologically complex: he is responsible for no part of Dong-hyun’s assault, yet he becomes the person onto whom Jungkook directs some of the rage produced by that assault.

Through Ye-jun, the novel shows how domestic violence damages relationships beyond the direct confrontation between abuser and victim. Dong-hyun’s commands divide the brothers, turns fear into silence, and makes one child appear responsible for the other’s safety. Jungkook’s later anger, distrust, and difficulty with vulnerability are connected to this early experience of trying to defend Min-ha, being punished for it, and then rejecting Ye-jun’s attempted comfort. Ye-jun remains a reminder that love inside an abusive family can be genuine while still being unable to provide safety.

Ye-jun’s arc ends without a full reconciliation with Jungkook in the supplied narrative. His lasting role is instead that of an absent and morally complicated brother whose early attempt to protect Jungkook survives alongside the memory of his helplessness. The contrast between his childhood affection and the later command to stay away gives the family story one of its most painful reversals: the brother who once held Jungkook back from danger becomes, in Jungkook’s memory, part of the silence surrounding it.