The United States appears briefly in two distinct family contexts: as one of the countries Kim Jiyoung marks as a place she would like to see, and as the home of the parents of the psychiatrist’s wife. It is not developed as a setting; its significance lies in the different distances it represents, from a child’s map of possible destinations to relatives absent from daily life.

A Country on the Family Map

A map of the world with tattered corners hangs on the wall, marked with green and blue heart-shaped stickers that the sisters use for countries they want to visit. Kim Jiyoung selects the United States, Japan, and China, countries described as familiar to her. Her elder sister chooses Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, explaining that she wants to go somewhere with few Koreans. Their mother looks at the map and understands what the stickers mean. The United States is thus named as part of Kim Jiyoung’s imagined geography, without the passage specifying a visit or a later journey.

Distance from Family Support

In the psychiatrist’s account of his wife’s life as a mother, her parents live in the United States, while her in-laws live far to the south. The distance is part of the circumstances in which she manages childcare, relying on a succession of nannies as she continues working. When their son starts school, she arranges after-school care and taekwondo until she can finish work. The account does not say that her parents’ location alone determines these arrangements, but it places them far from the everyday childcare that falls to her.

Narrative Significance

The two references give the United States contrasting functions. On Kim Jiyoung’s childhood map, it belongs to a set of places she recognizes and might hope to see; in the psychiatrist’s family account, it marks how far a mother’s own parents live from her household. The country remains peripheral to the plot as a physical location, while helping the narrative register how imagined mobility and practical family distance can occupy the same geographical name.