Chuseok

Chuseok is the setting for a three-day family visit in Busan that begins as a reunion and becomes a revealing encounter with the uneven labor behind it. As Kim Jiyoung cooks, cleans, shops, and cares for her daughter, the holiday’s language of family togetherness meets the physical demands placed on the women who prepare it. The visit culminates when Jiyoung abruptly speaks as though she were her own mother, voicing the exhaustion she has not expressed in her usual manner.

Arrival and the work of the visit

Jung Daehyun takes Friday off, and he, Jiyoung, and their daughter Jung Jiwon leave home at seven in the morning. Five hours later, they arrive in Busan and have lunch with Daehyun’s parents. The long drive already reflects a change in the couple’s routine: before Jiwon was born, they took turns driving; now Daehyun does all of it. Jiwon fusses and cries in her car seat, while Jiyoung keeps her occupied with play and snacks. Even before the holiday cooking begins, the journey divides the work of travel and childcare between them.

After lunch, Daehyun, tired from driving, naps. Jiyoung washes the dishes, takes a short coffee break, and goes to the market with her mother-in-law to shop for holiday food. The afternoon is occupied by preparation: boiling ox bones, marinating ribs, preparing vegetables to season or freeze, and washing seafood for the next day’s pancakes and fritters. The household then makes dinner, eats, and clears it away. The sequence gives the visit its practical rhythm: meals are not simply enjoyed when the family gathers; women’s labor makes them possible, and the work continues after everyone has eaten.

Preparing and sharing food

The next day, Jiyoung and Daehyun’s mother make pancakes and fritters, stew ribs, and shape rice cakes. The family eats the fresh dishes together. Jiwon, meanwhile, is welcomed into her grandparents’ arms and laps, where they shower her with affection. The scene joins two forms of care: the grandparents’ visible delight in their granddaughter and the less celebrated preparation that has filled the preceding hours.

On Chuseok itself, the family has comparatively little to do because Daehyun’s older cousin is responsible for the ancestral rites. Everyone sleeps late, eats a simple breakfast made from the previous day’s food, and finishes the dishes. Daehyun’s younger sister Suhyun then arrives with her husband and two sons. She lives in Busan, as do her in-laws, but her holiday obligations are substantial: because her father-in-law is the eldest of his male siblings, she is under pressure to prepare food for the rites and attend to guests. She immediately passes out after arriving. Jiyoung and Daehyun’s mother prepare lunch instead, making soup from the ox-bone broth, cooking rice, grilling fish, and seasoning vegetables.

Family affection and unequal burdens

After lunch, Suhyun brings out a large bag of gifts for Jiwon: dresses in many colors, a tutu, hair slides, and lace socks. She dresses and admires her niece, saying she wishes she had a daughter and that daughters are the best. The affectionate exchange briefly centers Jiwon as a cherished child, while the food and domestic work surrounding it remain part of the women’s day.

The conversation turns when Suhyun tastes a rice cake and learns that her mother made it at home. She objects to the amount of work her mother is undertaking, telling her not to make food at home, including ox-bone broth, and suggesting that pancakes and rice cakes be bought instead. Her concern includes Jiyoung: the older woman is too old for such labor, and the work is hard on her daughter-in-law. Daehyun’s mother is disappointed. For her, feeding the family is not drudgery but part of gathering together and making and eating food as a family. When she asks Jiyoung whether it has been too much, she puts the younger woman at the center of a disagreement over what holiday care means—and who bears its cost.

The sudden change in Jiyoung’s voice

Daehyun is nervous as Jiyoung answers before he can redirect the conversation. Her expression softens, her cheeks flush, and warmth appears in her eyes. But the words that follow do not sound like an ordinary reply from Jiyoung: she addresses her mother-in-law as though speaking from the position of Jiyoung’s own mother, saying that her poor daughter becomes sick from exhaustion every holiday. The shift turns the family’s polite discussion of food into a direct statement about the toll of the work.

The moment gives the gathering a second meaning. The holiday has offered affection, shared meals, and a welcome for Jiwon, but the preparations and cleanup have also fallen repeatedly to Jiyoung and the older women. Suhyun’s collapse on arrival suggests another household’s version of the same burden; her protest recognizes the strain, even as her mother’s defense of cooking frames it as an expression of family love. Jiyoung’s altered voice makes the exhaustion speak plainly at the very moment she is asked to account for it. Chuseok thus brings together the warmth of family reunion and the unequal domestic labor that sustains it, without allowing those two realities to settle into an easy harmony.