Busan

Busan is the home of Jung Daehyun’s parents and younger sister, and a recurring destination in Kim Jiyoung’s family life. Visits there turn private decisions about children and care into family matters: relatives press Kim Jiyoung about pregnancy, holiday preparations fall heavily to the women, and the grandparents’ willingness to help with childcare is limited by age and health.

Family Home and Holiday Destination

Jung Daehyun’s parents live in Busan, as does his younger sister, Suhyun, who is married and has two sons. From the couple’s home on the outskirts of Seoul, the journey takes five hours by car. After Jung Jiwon is born, Jung Daehyun does all the driving; Kim Jiyoung keeps their daughter occupied with snacks and play because the baby fusses whenever she is placed in her car seat.

Busan therefore serves as more than a backdrop for visits. It gathers Jung Daehyun’s relatives in one place, while the long journey and the demands of traveling with a young child shape how the household reaches them. The family travels there for Chuseok and for a birthday celebration for Jung Daehyun’s father, placing Kim Jiyoung within the rhythms and expectations of her husband’s family.

Chuseok and the Distribution of Labor

During the Chuseok visit, Kim Jiyoung does the dishes after lunch, shops for holiday food with her mother-in-law, and spends the afternoon helping prepare ox-bone broth, ribs, vegetables, and seafood. The next day, she and her mother-in-law make pancakes, fritters, stewed ribs, and rice cakes. On Chuseok itself, Jung Daehyun’s older cousin handles the ancestral rites, leaving the immediate family with less to do for the ceremony; nonetheless, Kim Jiyoung and her mother-in-law prepare lunch after Suhyun arrives.

Suhyun’s visit makes the unevenness of holiday labor visible across households. She lives in Busan, but her own in-laws also live there, and her father-in-law is the eldest among his brothers. As a result, Suhyun faces substantial pressure during holidays to prepare food for the ancestral rites and wait on guests. She passes out soon after arriving at Jung Daehyun’s parents’ home. While Kim Jiyoung and her mother-in-law cook, Suhyun’s exhaustion points to the work awaiting her in her own in-laws’ household, despite the affectionate family gathering around Jung Jiwon.

Fertility Pressure at a Family Gathering

Busan is also where relatives intrude on the couple’s decision about whether to have children. At the first celebration of Jung Daehyun’s father’s birthday after the wedding, the couple joins his family elders for lunch and introductions to nearby relatives. The conversation turns repeatedly to whether Kim Jiyoung has pregnancy news, why she does not, and what the couple is doing to conceive. Kim Jiyoung says they are not yet planning to have children, but the elders disregard her answer and speculate about her age, weight, cold hands, circulation, and health.

One aunt urges Jung Daehyun’s mother to obtain fertility medicine for her daughter-in-law, framing the absence of such an intervention as a failure of concern. Kim Jiyoung does not consider that supposed lack of concern the problem; the relatives’ questioning itself is unbearable. She keeps her objections to herself and replies politely. In this scene, the family home becomes a setting where a couple’s private plans are treated as open for inspection, and the burden of explaining delayed pregnancy is placed on Kim Jiyoung.

Childcare and the Limits of Family Support

Later, when the couple weighs how to manage childcare after Jung Jiwon’s birth, sending her to her grandparents in Busan is one of the options they consider if both parents remain employed. Jung Daehyun’s parents say they would gladly raise their granddaughter, but they are elderly and his mother has recently undergone back surgery. The couple concludes that this arrangement is not feasible.

That limit matters alongside the family’s warm welcome of Jung Jiwon during the holiday visit. The grandparents cherish her, and Suhyun brings her dresses, hair slides, and lace socks; affection, however, cannot remove the physical constraints on what the older generation can take on. Busan thus connects family closeness with the practical limits of unpaid care: the relatives are present and willing, but the couple cannot rely on them to resolve the conflict between employment and childcare.