Jungkook et Dong-hyun

Jungkook and Dong-hyun’s hostile father-son relationship is shaped by violence that begins in Jungkook’s childhood and persists into adulthood. Dong-hyun uses physical force and humiliation to control his son, while Jungkook’s fear gradually hardens into anger and resistance. Their later confrontations reverse who holds the immediate power, but do not erase the damage or free their conflict from violence.

Childhood Violence and Masculine Control

As a child, Jungkook tries to protect his mother by refusing Dong-hyun’s order to return to his room and demanding that his father leave her alone. Dong-hyun answers with a harsh laugh, finishes his drink, and hurls the glass across the room. A shard strikes Jungkook in the face. Before the boy can react, Dong-hyun grabs him by the collar and slaps him repeatedly, with blows severe enough to leave marks for days or even weeks. The scene makes Jungkook’s attempt to defend his mother the immediate occasion for his own punishment, binding his concern for her to danger and helplessness.

When the blows stop, Dong-hyun keeps hold of Jungkook’s clothing and berates him for failing to stay in his place. Jungkook experiences fear and rage together, a confusion that the abuse produces rather than resolves. Dong-hyun’s authority is not only physical: he also imposes a rigid standard of masculinity. In another confrontation, he tells Jungkook that a man must never cry and demands that he behave accordingly. Jungkook can only nod, unable to answer. The command turns visible pain into a further failure to meet his father’s terms, while leaving the fear itself unaddressed. Years later, Dong-hyun’s taunting reference to Jungkook as a crybaby echoes this childhood discipline, showing that the insult remains part of their conflict even after Jungkook has grown older.

Reunion and the First Reversal

After years apart, Jungkook encounters Dong-hyun in Ellensburg while enjoying a period of growing closeness with Shelby. The sight of his father immediately replaces that ease with anger. Dong-hyun says he is in town for work and that Jungkook’s older brother is managing the family business in his absence, adding a belittling comparison that implies Jungkook has made nothing of his life. Jungkook reads the contempt as proof that his father has not changed. His concern for his mother rises alongside his anger: he asks whether she is still under Dong-hyun’s control.

Dong-hyun replies that Jungkook’s mother left months after what he calls his son’s spoiled adolescent crisis. He then insults her and suggests she had relied on men for money. Jungkook responds physically, grabbing his father by the tie and punching him hard enough to break his nose. He continues striking him until passersby and shopkeepers manage to pull him away. The assault is not presented as a clean victory: Jungkook’s eyes fill with tears as he faces the man who traumatized his childhood. Yet the immediate balance of power has changed. Dong-hyun, bleeding and frightened, is now the vulnerable one; Jungkook warns him to remain in Ellensburg only if he can avoid crossing his son again.

A later encounter outside a bar makes the reversal more unstable. Jungkook has been drinking, and Dong-hyun exploits his impaired balance, knocking him down and repeatedly striking his face while Jungkook struggles to stop him. He taunts Jungkook with the old accusation that he is a crybaby, joining the adult assault to the childhood demand that he suppress fear. Jungkook eventually pushes Dong-hyun to the ground and grips him by the throat. For a moment, he deliberately makes his father feel the helplessness of being physically overpowered, and he takes satisfaction in seeing fear on Dong-hyun’s face. The exchange shows that Jungkook can now resist the man who once controlled him, but does so by reenacting the violence that formed their relationship.

Arrest and the Unresolved Claim to Justice

After the fight outside the bar, Jungkook calls Namjoon from custody and tells him that Dong-hyun is in Ellensburg. Namjoon has already heard from Shelby and guesses that Jungkook has fought with his father again. The terse exchange makes clear that their violence has become a recurring pattern, familiar enough to be recognized before Jungkook explains what happened.

At Blossom Hospital, Dong-hyun announces that he intends to file a complaint. Jungkook is still handcuffed and tries to lunge at him, but Namjoon holds him back. Shelby remains silent, a quietness that worries both students during the drive. When Jungkook protests that Dong-hyun has also harmed his mother and him, the police pin him against a wall to prevent the confrontation from escalating. Dong-hyun demands justice for his injuries, while Jungkook’s outburst insists that the violence cannot be measured only by the damage visible on his father’s face.

The hospital scene leaves their conflict caught between two incompatible accounts: Dong-hyun presents himself as the injured party seeking redress, while Jungkook invokes the abuse inflicted on his family. Jungkook’s protest does not undo his own assault or settle the history between them; instead, it exposes how readily their struggle returns to physical force and competing claims of injury. The relationship remains defined by that unresolved inheritance: the son resists his father’s authority, but the means of resistance continue to echo the violence through which that authority was imposed.

The Conflict’s Continuing Reach

The relationship’s effects persist beyond the confrontations themselves. Later, Jungkook tells Shelby that the demons occupying his thoughts have been there since childhood, and that he had hoped learning to love would drive them away. When Ares Garden reopened, he says, the pull of his old vices overwhelmed him. The novel does not identify this struggle as a direct consequence of any single encounter with Dong-hyun, but the juxtaposition of childhood abuse and Jungkook’s later account makes clear that the past remains active in his present. No reconciliation between father and son is shown: Jungkook’s resistance breaks Dong-hyun’s immediate control, yet their encounters leave the inherited violence unresolved.