Vegetarianism and refusal of meat

Vegetarianism and refusal of meat is both a dietary change and an escalating conflict over Yeong-hye’s body. What begins when she decides to stop eating meat disrupts ordinary meals and family obligations; over time, her refusal extends beyond meat to food itself. The progression exposes a widening divide between those who regard eating as a duty necessary for survival and Yeong-hye, who understands her body and its needs in radically different terms.

Beginning and Domestic Disruption

In-hye later dates Yeong-hye’s increasingly unusual behavior to about three years earlier, when she suddenly became vegetarian. The change was accompanied by severe weight loss, very little sleep, and a withdrawal from conversation: although she had always been quiet, meaningful communication became difficult. The family, especially their parents, were alarmed. In-hye connects this period to the family’s housewarming, where their father tried to make Yeong-hye eat meat despite her refusal. The episode culminated in Yeong-hye harming herself, leaving In-hye to revisit whether she could have prevented what happened.

The refusal first enters married life as a tangible disturbance in the kitchen. Mr. Cheong finds Yeong-hye in their kitchen in her nightclothes, surrounded by food taken from the refrigerator. She is putting meat into rubbish bags: among it are beef, pork, chicken, squid, eel, and dried fish. Mr. Cheong estimates the discarded eel alone at 200,000 won. The scale and variety of the food make the refusal visible as an action rather than a private preference, while her continuation in the face of his anger makes clear that his objection does not restore the household’s former routine.

Meals as a Test of Compliance

The conflict follows Yeong-hye into social settings. At a meal, she has sat silently while the others gather, but when a waiter is about to serve her mung-bean jelly dressed with green-pea jelly, mushrooms, and beef, she says she will not eat it. Her quiet refusal abruptly arrests the table’s activity; the guests turn their attention to her. The meal’s elaborate presentation cannot disguise the question the scene poses: whether participation in a shared meal requires her to accept what others place before her.

At a family gathering, concern about Yeong-hye’s health turns into collective pressure to make her eat. In-hye argues that people need nutrients and that a vegetarian diet should be planned carefully. Yeong-hye’s sister-in-law says the diet has visibly damaged her body. Their mother brings stir-fried beef, sweet-and-sour pork, steamed chicken, and octopus noodles to the table, insisting that the vegetarianism stop; their father also orders Yeong-hye to eat. Food here carries more than nourishment: serving it becomes a way for relatives to assert authority and to define care as compliance. Their alarm does not resolve the dispute, because the person they are trying to feed continues to refuse.

From Refusing Meat to Refusing Food

The distinction between a meat-free diet and Yeong-hye’s later condition becomes crucial. In the hospital, In-hye asks why Yeong-hye will not eat anything at all, while allowing that she need not eat meat if she dislikes it. Yeong-hye says that people are always telling her to eat, that they force her, and that she dislikes injections as well as the experience of being made to eat. Her request to be released from the hospital places the dietary refusal within a larger struggle over treatment, confinement, and control of her body.

The doctor explains that the case does not fit the pattern the staff had expected. He distinguishes Yeong-hye’s refusal from cases in which a patient fears food is poisoned and may be reassured by seeing a doctor eat it. The staff remain unsure why she refuses food, and medication has not worked. He describes her condition as refusal to eat in the context of schizophrenia, rather than as a straightforward fear of weight gain, and emphasizes that the hospital’s first duty is to preserve life. The explanation clarifies the medical stakes without resolving the central uncertainty: treatment and reassurance have not persuaded Yeong-hye to eat.

Yeong-hye’s Explanation and the Family’s Appeals

Yeong-hye gives her refusal a meaning beyond dietary choice. She tells In-hye that her insides have atrophied and says she is no longer an animal, does not need to eat, and can live on sunlight. In-hye challenges this belief by asking whether Yeong-hye really thinks she has become a tree. The exchange makes the gap between them explicit: In-hye speaks from the bodily necessity of eating, while Yeong-hye describes a transformed relation to food and to being human. Her words do not make her condition safer, but they show that the refusal is bound to a conviction the family and medical staff cannot simply answer with a meal.

In-hye tries to reach her sister through remembered pleasures rather than commands. At the bedside she opens sealed containers and offers a tinned Hwangdo peach, recalling Yeong-hye’s childhood insistence on buying the tinned fruit even when fresh peaches were in season. She also recalls how Yeong-hye used to smell watermelon when In-hye cut one open. The appeal depends on a shared history of food and sensory memory, but Yeong-hye remains motionless. The remembered appetite belongs to an earlier relationship with eating; it cannot be summoned back by offering familiar food.

Persistence, Coercion, and Significance

Yeong-hye’s refusal of meat continues after periods in hospital. In the closed ward she screams and tries to escape if she sees a side dish containing meat, while on sunny days she presses herself against the window and bares her breasts to the sun. Later, her refusal broadens: she does not come down for meals or eat food brought to the ward, becomes dehydrated, and resists attempts to administer treatment. The hospital’s efforts to maintain her health therefore meet not simply an objection to meat but a refusal that threatens her survival.

The conflict reaches a stark expression when Yeong-hye, restrained during an episode of agitation, repeats that she dislikes eating. Her words give clear form to what family exhortations and medical explanations have failed to change. The novel does not present vegetarianism as an isolated lifestyle decision that remains stable in its original form. It traces how refusing meat becomes a point of collision among personal conviction, family authority, medical duty, and bodily autonomy—and how, as the refusal expands to food itself, the effort to care for Yeong-hye becomes inseparable from the effort to make her comply.