Jiyoung confronts Daehyun’s family at Chuseok

Jiyoung confronts Daehyun’s family at Chuseok when a dispute over holiday cooking opens onto a larger imbalance: women are expected to prepare and serve the family gathering, while the holiday’s meaning is treated as belonging chiefly to her husband’s family. Jiyoung’s defense of her mother-in-law becomes a demand for reciprocity, including the right of her daughter, Jiwon, to visit Jiyoung’s family. The scene ends not in agreement among the elders but in Jiyoung being hurried from the house—and in Suhyun privately recognizing the truth of what she said.

Background and Unequal Holiday Labor

The confrontation follows days of cooking. The day before Chuseok, Daehyun’s mother prepared pancakes, fritters, stewed ribs, and rice cakes. On the holiday itself, the family had little to do for the ancestral rites, which were overseen by Daehyun’s older cousin. After Suhyun arrived with her family, she immediately fell asleep: her own holidays in Busan involved heavy work for her in-laws, including preparing food and attending to guests. Jiyoung and Daehyun’s mother, meanwhile, made lunch for everyone.

After the meal, Suhyun brought Jiwon a large bag of gifts—dresses, a tutu, hair slides, and lace socks—and dressed the child, saying that she wished she had a daughter. Jiyoung served fruit and then rice cakes. When Suhyun learned that Daehyun’s mother had made the rice cakes at home, she objected to her mother continuing to cook. She urged her to buy holiday food instead, arguing that the family did not hold ancestral rites there, that the older woman was doing too much, and that the work was hard on Jiyoung.

Daehyun’s mother answered that feeding her family did not feel like work and that making and eating food together was part of the holiday. She then asked Jiyoung directly whether it had been too much. The question put Jiyoung at the center of a disagreement in which concern for her labor was already entangled with criticism of the older woman’s way of caring for her family.

The Confrontation

Jiyoung’s expression softened, and she answered in a manner that sounded like a protective mother speaking about her daughter: she said that her poor Jiyoung became sick from exhaustion every holiday. Daehyun, nervous and apparently trying to head off what might follow, was too late to redirect the conversation. The room fell silent. The sudden stillness makes the remark more than a complaint about one meal: it exposes how routinely Jiyoung’s exhaustion has been absorbed into the family’s holiday arrangements.

When Daehyun tried to take Jiyoung’s hand and shift the moment by pointing out that Jiwon needed a diaper change, Jiyoung brushed him off. She then turned on him as well, telling him that he was also responsible because he spent the holidays in Busan and only stopped by his family’s home for a quick meal. She urged him to come earlier the next year. Her wink gives the reprimand a pointed, almost conversational edge, but does not blunt its substance: Daehyun, too, has been able to treat the holiday as a brief visit while women handle the work around it.

Daehyun’s father responded angrily, framing the issue as an improper complaint in front of elders. He argued that the family gathered only a few times a year and asked whether spending time together was really something to object to. Daehyun tried to explain that his father had misunderstood, but could not find a way to begin. Jiyoung pushed him aside and answered for herself. She accepted that the holidays were for families to gather, then widened the definition of family: the occasion belonged to her family as well as his. Since her own family members were also busy and had few chances to meet, she argued, Jiwon should be allowed to go home when Daehyun’s sister came to visit his parents.

Departure and Aftermath

Jiyoung’s claim is both practical and symbolic. She does not reject family gatherings; she challenges the assumption that her marriage has made her available to one family’s holiday while placing her own family’s reunion second. Her appeal also links the distribution of holiday work to the distribution of family time: the person expected to help sustain the gathering should not be treated as having no equal claim to where the child spends the occasion.

The confrontation ended abruptly. Daehyun put his hand over Jiyoung’s mouth and dragged her out. He told his parents and Suhyun that Jiyoung had not been well lately and promised to explain later. He got Jiyoung and Jiwon into the car so quickly that they had not even buttoned their coats. His parents did not come outside to say goodbye. Inside the car, Daehyun pressed his head against the steering wheel, overwhelmed; Jiyoung, by contrast, sang to Jiwon as if nothing had happened.

Suhyun came out carrying Daehyun’s bags and loaded them into the trunk. She told him that Jiyoung was right and that the family had been inconsiderate. Rather than encourage an argument, she urged him to respond with gratitude and an apology, then went back to speak with their father for him. Her response gives the scene an important counterpoint: the family member who had objected to the cooking was also the one who ultimately recognized the larger unfairness Jiyoung had named.

Significance

The scene turns a familiar holiday meal into a dispute about who counts as family and whose labor makes family life possible. The food is not incidental: homemade dishes stand for care, but the expectation that women will prepare, serve, and absorb exhaustion makes that care unequally distributed. Jiyoung’s intervention refuses the choice between honoring family and naming the cost of maintaining it. She defends Daehyun’s mother’s right to value cooking while insisting that such devotion cannot be used to overlook the labor imposed on her—or on Jiyoung.

The family’s immediate response is to treat Jiyoung as unwell and remove her from the room, a move that displaces the substance of her argument onto her condition. Yet Suhyun’s apology to Daehyun confirms that the complaint has been heard. The ending leaves no public reconciliation, but it does establish that Jiyoung’s words have made an inequity visible to someone inside the family, and that Daehyun can no longer be treated as a neutral bystander to it.