Cha Seungyeon’s death in childbirth

Cha Seungyeon’s death in childbirth is both a sudden loss in its own right and a grief that returns through Kim Jiyoung’s later dissociative episodes. Seungyeon died from an amniotic fluid embolism while giving birth to her second child. The news reached Jiyoung during postpartum depression, binding the loss to a period when even ordinary responsibilities had become difficult.

Friendship and the Circumstances of Their Meeting

Seungyeon and Jiyoung became friends through the university hiking club, though neither actually enjoyed hiking. Seungyeon was kind to the club’s female members, and she and Jiyoung stayed close after Seungyeon graduated, keeping in touch and meeting frequently. Their friendship therefore extended beyond the club that brought them together.

Seungyeon’s wedding reception was where Jiyoung first met Jung Daehyun. Although Daehyun and Seungyeon had entered university in the same year, Jiyoung was three years behind them. Daehyun had been away from university for military service and then returned to Busan to work part-time; Jiyoung was active in the club during his absence. The reception, rather than their shared university connections, became the occasion that brought Jiyoung and Daehyun together.

The Death and Its Immediate Effect

Seungyeon died giving birth to her second child because of an amniotic fluid embolism. The account identifies the medical cause but offers no further explanation of the event. Its emotional force in Jiyoung’s life comes through the circumstances in which she learned of it: she was already experiencing postpartum depression, and the shocking news compounded the strain she was under.

In the aftermath, Jiyoung struggled to handle everyday tasks. The loss did not arrive as an isolated grief that she could set apart from new motherhood; it landed amid an existing difficulty in managing daily life. The narrative places the death in that overlap, showing how news of a friend’s death could deepen an already precarious period.

Return Through Jiyoung’s Dissociative Episodes

The account of Seungyeon’s death emerges as part of the explanation for Jiyoung’s later behavior. A few days after imitating her mother, Jiyoung says that she is Seungyeon, speaking as the friend who died a year earlier. The shift brings a past loss into the present of the couple’s life with their baby, linking Jiyoung’s postpartum distress to a friend whose own death occurred in childbirth.

The narration sets out their history and Seungyeon’s death before returning to the couple’s present, so the episode is understood through the relationship and grief behind it. Seungyeon’s death is not merely background to Jiyoung’s impersonation: it marks a loss that had already made daily life harder when she heard the news, and that returns when she speaks in her friend’s identity.