Jung Daehyun’s Uneasy Partnership

Jung Daehyun’s movement from affectionate husband to overwhelmed partner and psychiatrist’s patient traces both his care for Jiyoung and his delayed recognition of her unequal burdens.

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Courtship and Marriage

Building a Partnership Meeting Through a Friend Jung Daehyun first meets Kim Jiyoung at the wedding reception of Cha Seungyeon, a friend from his university hiking club. Their relationship develops into a passionate romance, and they marry after two years together. Daehyun brings a relatively secure job and substantial savings to the marriage. He and Jiyoung arrange their home and wedding without asking their parents for financial help, presenting their new life as a partnership built by the two of them. Everyday Companionship Their working hours are demanding, but they make time for late-night films, shared meals, and weekends spent at home. Daehyun cooks breakfast and takes pleasure in ordinary domestic routines with Jiyoung. These affectionate beginnings matter because later inequalities do not arise from a marriage devoid of love. The strain grows inside a relationship whose members care for each other but do not initially understand the consequences of gendered expectations.

Learning to Defend Jiyoung

Silence and Repair The Fertility Interrogation During a family gathering in Busan, relatives speculate that Jiyoung is unable to become pregnant, attributing imagined problems to her age, body, and health. Daehyun remains silent, believing that speaking up would create conflict with his family. On the drive home, Jiyoung tells him that his silence left her alone in a humiliating situation. Daehyun initially thinks she is overreacting, which deepens the hurt rather than resolving it. A Belated Promise After reflecting during the long drive, Daehyun says he should defend Jiyoung when his family treats her unfairly, just as she speaks on his behalf with her own relatives. He apologizes and recognizes that his family’s familiarity gives him more room to intervene than she has. The exchange shows a capacity for change, but it also establishes a pattern: Daehyun often understands the imbalance only after Jiyoung has had to explain its effect on her.

The Childcare Bargain

Unequal Stakes The Decision to Have a Child Daehyun suggests having a child partly to stop his parents’ questions. Jiyoung has not reached the decision as casually: she weighs pregnancy, care, and the possibility of losing a career she values. He promises to change diapers, feed the baby, and help with household work. When he later describes what he might give up, his losses sound modest beside the health, work, networks, and future Jiyoung believes she is placing at risk. The Language of Help After the couple concludes that Jiyoung will leave work to care for the baby, Daehyun calls future support “help.” Jiyoung objects that the home, child, and chores belong to both of them; his wording makes shared obligations sound like her work and his voluntary contribution. Her challenge exposes the difference between good intentions and equal responsibility. Daehyun is sincere, but his assumptions have not yet caught up with the extent of the sacrifice assigned to her.

Confronting the Episodes

A Husband Faces the Unknown The First Signs On a cold September morning, Jiyoung imitates her mother, and Daehyun initially treats the behavior as playful. Later she speaks as Cha Seungyeon, recalling a private moment from his university years that Jiyoung could not ordinarily have known. Daehyun’s amusement gives way to alarm as similar episodes recur. At Chuseok, Jiyoung speaks as if she were her own mother and directly confronts his family about unequal holiday labor, leaving him embarrassed and frightened. Seeking Care Daehyun brings Jiyoung to a psychiatrist after arranging an appointment, explaining it to her as help for stress and poor sleep. He is trying to respond, but he knows she does not appear fully aware of the episodes that concern him. His actions mark a change from dismissing her behavior as a joke to seeking professional guidance. They do not yet amount to a full understanding of the social and personal pressures surrounding her distress.

The Psychiatrist’s Perspective

Care Reconsidered From Concern to Clinical Account Daehyun describes Jiyoung’s history to her psychiatrist, who first suspects dissociative disorder and then initially settles on postnatal depression developing into childcare depression. Jiyoung attends twice-weekly sessions and receives medication for depression and insomnia. The psychiatrist later questions whether that first diagnosis was too quick. His change in perspective reflects not a sudden cure but a broader recognition of the world that he, like many men, might otherwise have overlooked. The Limits of Recognition Daehyun’s role in the account is mostly that of a concerned husband rather than the narrator of his own transformation. Still, the treatment process depends on his descriptions and on the clinician’s willingness to reconsider what those descriptions mean. The episodes have decreased but not vanished, and the account offers no simple resolution for the marriage or for Jiyoung. Daehyun’s trajectory therefore remains unfinished: concern has brought him to seek help, while understanding continues to lag behind the complexity of her experience.

Before 2012

After their marriage, during a Busan family visit

During Jiyoung’s pregnancy, before Jiwon’s birth

Autumn 2015, from Baengno through Chuseok

2016, during Jiyoung’s treatment