Seoul anchors several decisive stages of Kim Jiyoung’s life, from her birth and university education to the family home she later shares on the city’s outskirts. It is both a specific place in her biography and the setting against which the novel measures the distance between aspiring to professional independence and taking on the largely unseen work of care.

Geographic Anchor and Household

Kim Jiyoung was born in Seoul on April 1, 1982, at an obstetrics clinic. She weighed 2.9 kilograms and measured 50 centimeters. Her father was a civil servant and her mother, Oh Misook, was a housewife. Her older sister, Kim Eunyoung, had been born two years earlier, and her younger brother arrived five years later. The family’s home is described as a compact dwelling of about 35 square meters, with two bedrooms, a combined dining and living room, and one bathroom. The account places that household in Jiyoung’s childhood but does not specify its address, so Seoul’s explicit connection to her early life is her birthplace rather than a stated childhood neighborhood. In adulthood, the location becomes more definite. In autumn 2015, Jiyoung, her husband Jung Daehyun, and their daughter Jung Jiwon rent a small apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. The apartment complex is also part of the family’s childcare routine: after Jiwon turns one, she attends a daycare center in a converted ground-floor apartment in the same complex. Seoul thus frames a family life organized around rented housing, employment, and the practical geography of getting a young child to care and back home.

Education and the Prospect of Work

Jiyoung’s connection to the city also includes higher education. After finishing school and weighing her own options, she is accepted into the faculty of arts and humanities at a university in Seoul. Her acceptance follows a period when her parents are struggling to keep their business afloat and cannot direct her future closely. Her mother tells her that the family has tuition for the first year and that they will find a way to manage the next year if circumstances do not improve. The prospect of studying in Seoul is therefore tied to both Jiyoung’s independent preparation and the family’s limited finances. The later transition from education to employment complicates the promise of that preparation. Jiyoung and Yun Hyejin meet through cultural-center classes and join a study group that exchanges job information, prepares CVs and cover letters, undertakes volunteer work and corporate monitoring, and applies for internships. They also enter competitions together and win several local-government contests. Jiyoung begins this search hopeful about finding work compatible with her interests, while Hyejin—despite stronger grades, test results, and credentials—expects that even a large employer may not hire her. Hyejin points to the absence of women at the job fairs Jiyoung attends. The figures the novel supplies concern recruitment across companies rather than Seoul alone: in 2005, women made up 29.6 percent of new hires at 100 companies, and a survey of recruitment managers found a preference for male candidates with equivalent qualifications among many respondents. The account also describes unofficial recommendations from university departments in which male students were put forward. These details make the job search a structural problem, not simply a matter of how much effort an individual applicant makes; they should not, however, be mistaken for statistics specific to Seoul.

Office Life and the Image of the City

Jiyoung’s first job gives her a vivid image of ordinary office life. She wears her company ID on a lanyard when she goes out to lunch, noticing other workers with their IDs swinging from their chests in busy districts filled with office buildings. To her, walking among office workers, carrying her phone and purse, and talking about the lunch menu represents the professional belonging she has wanted. The scene connects the city’s visible working population to a private ambition: not merely to hold a job, but to feel like one of the people whose daily routines fill the streets around offices. The workplace itself has about fifty employees. Although women outnumber men overall, men account for a larger share closer to management. As the youngest of four new hires, Jiyoung makes coffee to coworkers’ preferences, sets the table for team meals, takes orders for takeout, and clears dishes. These tasks sit alongside her assigned marketing work, including compiling and analyzing news related to the company’s clients. The contrast shows how entry into office employment can carry both the promise of professional participation and a gendered expectation of service. The evidence describes her workplace and the surrounding office-district scene, but does not give the company’s precise address.

Housing, Childcare, and Work After Birth

By 2015, Seoul is the setting for the family’s housing and care decisions. Jiyoung’s parents run a restaurant and cannot serve as her regular childcare support; Daehyun’s parents live in Busan, and their age and health make it impractical for them to raise Jiwon. When the couple considers whether Jiyoung should return to work after giving birth, they compare three possibilities: an immediate return, a return after a year of maternity leave, or leaving work altogether. Sending the child to Daehyun’s parents or hiring a live-in nanny would be the available arrangements if both parents kept working. The couple concludes that one parent must stay home, and Jiyoung is the one who leaves her job. Daehyun’s work is more stable and pays more, while the decision also follows the more common expectation that husbands work and wives care for children and the home. The economic pressure continues after Jiwon begins daycare. When the lease ends, the landlord raises the required deposit by 60 million won, forcing the couple to borrow again. They cannot afford to buy a home for three on Daehyun’s income alone, and anticipate further expenses when Jiwon reaches kindergarten and begins after-school programs. Daycare gives Jiyoung roughly three hours between drop-off and pickup, but most of that time goes to laundry, dishes, tidying, and preparing food. Statistics cited in the narrative give stay-at-home mothers of children under two four hours and ten minutes a day to themselves, compared with four hours and twenty-five minutes for mothers whose children attend daycare. The small difference underscores that daycare does not remove domestic work; it changes whether a mother does it with the child beside her.

Narrative Significance

Seoul’s importance is not that every social pattern in the novel is attributed to the city. Rather, its changing place in Jiyoung’s life joins personal milestones to conditions that extend beyond one neighborhood: education, entry into paid work, rented housing, and the organization of childcare. The city holds the promise visible in the lanyard-bearing office crowd, while the family’s home reveals how little unclaimed time can remain once paid employment gives way to full-time care. The account also connects Jiyoung’s difficulties to the longer consequences of leaving work after childbirth. It describes women who return through freelance work, tutoring, service jobs, or other part-time employment, and notes that many women who quit cannot find new work for more than five years; those who do may end up in less skilled or lower-paid positions. These claims are presented as broader patterns, not as measurements of Seoul alone. Read together with Jiyoung’s own move from marketing work to caring for Jiwon, they make the city a concrete setting for a larger tension: the same household that depends on unpaid care also faces rising housing, living, and education costs, while the person who assumes that care loses time and continuity in paid employment.