Park In-ho

Park In-ho is Yeong-hye’s doctor at the psychiatric hospital, where he must respond to her persistent refusal to eat as her health deteriorates. His role is both explanatory and practical: he discusses the uncertainty surrounding her condition, sets out the medical risks and available interventions, and oversees an emergency attempt to feed her. Through him, the novel presents clinical care as a struggle to preserve life when a patient’s wishes and the treatment intended to save her come into conflict.

Identity and Clinical Assessment

In-hye comes to the hospital with an appointment to see Park In-ho, establishing him as a doctor already involved in Yeong-hye’s care. When In-hye asks whether she can speak to her sister before the hospital takes further action, he tells her that Yeong-hye’s condition has not improved. He proposes intravenous feeding and says that, if it does not help, the hospital may have to transfer her to a critical ward at a general hospital.

Park In-ho distinguishes Yeong-hye’s case from anorexia nervosa as he describes it to In-hye. He says that some patients who starve themselves remain convinced that they have gained weight, and that psychological factors can contribute to the illness. Yeong-hye’s case, he explains, is different: she refuses food while suffering from schizophrenia. The doctors had not thought her schizophrenia severe and had not anticipated this outcome. Although he discusses poisoning fears as a circumstance in which reassurance or demonstration might help, he acknowledges that the doctors do not know exactly why Yeong-hye refuses to eat and that medication has not worked.

Care, Risk, and Institutional Authority

Park In-ho gives In-hye a stark account of the danger: he says that fifteen to twenty percent of anorexia nervosa patients starve to death. He frames intervention as a professional obligation, explaining that the doctors’ first duty is to preserve life and that the hospital cannot be sure of keeping Yeong-hye alive under its current arrangements. His recommendation to move toward more intensive treatment rests on the immediate risk, even as the source of Yeong-hye’s refusal remains uncertain.

The hospital’s care is organized through procedures that regulate movement and access. When Yeong-hye is admitted to a six-person ward, a nurse checks the sisters’ bag and removes a thick woolen belt before taking them inside. Later, Park In-ho gives In-hye about thirty minutes to try to persuade her sister, but makes clear that staff will proceed with treatment if she cannot. At the bedside, other staff keep In-hye outside while the doctors attempt to intervene. These arrangements place the decision-making power with the institution, while In-hye is left to negotiate between her sister’s expressed wishes and the risk of her death.

Emergency Intervention and Outcome

During the later crisis, Park In-ho asks In-hye whether she has spoken to Yeong-hye. When In-hye says that her sister did not appear conscious, he explains that appearances are misleading: Yeong-hye’s muscles remain tense, and her attention seems concentrated elsewhere rather than absent. He warns that forcing her out of that state can be difficult for family members to witness and tells In-hye to move away if her presence complicates the treatment.

Park In-ho then attempts to administer liquid nourishment through a tube, while other staff hold Yeong-hye still. The first attempt fails; the tube is displaced, and he tries again more quickly. After the tube is placed, bleeding occurs, and In-hye intervenes, demanding that the staff remove it. Park In-ho struggles to extract the tube as Yeong-hye moves, and the attempt ends with an urgent change of plan rather than successful feeding. He directs In-hye to take Yeong-hye to Seoul for emergency treatment, explaining that doctors there will need to give a protein injection into a carotid artery to stop gastric bleeding and that the effect will not last long. His final intervention thus acknowledges both the failure of the immediate procedure and the narrow medical means still available to try to preserve Yeong-hye’s life.

Narrative Significance

Park In-ho’s account gives medical language a necessary but limited authority. He can identify the danger, distinguish the case from explanations that might make refusal easier to address, and recommend procedures; he cannot explain why Yeong-hye will not eat or make treatment reliably effective. The gap between his professional knowledge and that uncertainty keeps the crisis from resolving into a simple contest between a competent doctor and an irrational patient.

His care nevertheless operates through forceful institutional measures: observation, restricted access, removal of potentially unsafe belongings, and an attempted feeding that Yeong-hye resists. The novel sets the stated duty to preserve life against the cost and coercive character of the intervention, without suggesting that the doctor has an easy alternative. Park In-ho represents the limits of clinical control as much as its urgency: his decisions can organize an emergency response, but they cannot restore the understanding or consent that the situation has lost.