Yeong-hye’s vegetarian turning point (about three years earlier)

Yeong-hye’s vegetarian turning point, about three years earlier, is the first visible rupture in a life her husband had regarded as unremarkable. What begins as refusal of meat unsettles domestic and family routines, exposes the coercion behind efforts to restore them, and develops into a prolonged crisis that cannot be reduced to a change of diet.

The Turn and Its First Signs

In-hye later dates the change to about three years earlier, when Yeong-hye suddenly decided to become vegetarian. The change was accompanied by severe weight loss and near-total sleeplessness. Although Yeong-hye had always been quiet, her speech dwindled until meaningful communication became difficult. Her parents were particularly concerned, but alarm did not translate into an understanding of what the refusal meant to her.

At home, the decision became materially unmistakable. Yeong-hye crouched among plastic bags and food containers spread across the kitchen floor, removing stored meat from the refrigerator and placing it into rubbish bags. The discarded food included beef, pork, chicken, squid, eel and dried croaker, as well as frozen dumplings and other provisions; the quantity and variety made the refusal a direct alteration of the household’s supplies, not merely a private preference at the table. Her husband watched her continue without seeming to acknowledge him.

The turning point also unsettles her husband’s earlier picture of their marriage. He had chosen Yeong-hye partly because her quietness and lack of demands suited his carefully managed, middle-course existence. Her refusal makes that assumed fit impossible: a decision he cannot contain within ordinary domestic expectations forces into view how much his sense of stability depended on her remaining unobtrusive.

Refusal in Public and at Family Meals

The refusal follows Yeong-hye beyond the kitchen. At a meal with other people, an elaborate dish of mung-bean jelly was served with mushrooms and beef. Until then she had sat silently; when the waiter was about to serve her, she said she would not eat it. The statement was quiet, but the other guests stopped and stared. Her emaciated appearance made the refusal publicly visible, turning a meal into a confrontation between her choice and the group’s expectation of shared eating.

At a family gathering, concern about Yeong-hye’s health became pressure to make her eat. In-hye rebuked her for continuing without a properly balanced diet, while her sister-in-law said she had not expected vegetarianism to affect her body so severely. Their mother set beef, sweet-and-sour pork, steamed chicken and octopus noodles before her and insisted that the vegetarian decision end; their father also urged her to eat. The spread of meat did not persuade Yeong-hye. Instead, the meal shows how family care and family authority became entangled with an effort to override her refusal.

Coercion and Consequences

The later account of the turning point reveals a more violent attempt to reverse it. At a housewarming shortly after In-hye and her husband had moved with Ji-woo to a new apartment, the sisters’ father struck Yeong-hye and forced meat into her mouth. In-hye watched, unable to intervene. Yeong-hye spat the meat out and then injured herself with a fruit knife. The episode makes the stakes of the dispute unmistakable: the family’s demand for compliance did not restore ordinary life but intensified the crisis.

The consequences continued into Yeong-hye’s hospitalization. Her mother brought black-goat meat prepared with medicinal ingredients to disguise its smell, asking In-hye to offer it to Yeong-hye as herbal medicine. In-hye found this determined maternal care exhausting, while the covert plan showed that even the family’s attempts to nourish Yeong-hye could proceed by concealing what she was being asked to consume.

Years later, Yeong-hye’s refusal of meat remained part of her condition in a closed psychiatric ward. If she saw meat in a side dish, she screamed and tried to flee; later, she would not eat at all, even when meals were brought to the ward. Her decline could no longer be addressed simply by removing meat or offering other food. When In-hye visited, she tried recalling familiar fruit Yeong-hye had liked as a child, bringing sealed containers of tinned peach and watermelon and inviting her to smell or taste them. Yeong-hye remained motionless. The remembered decision to become vegetarian had widened into a crisis in which even these gentle appeals could not secure a response.

Significance of the Turning Point

The chronology gives the decision a lasting structural importance: In-hye looks back from a later period of illness to identify the vegetarian change as the point when Yeong-hye’s behavior became noticeably different. Yet the family scenes resist treating food as a neutral remedy. Meat is removed from the kitchen, presented at a public meal, placed before Yeong-hye by relatives, and secretly prepared for her in hospital. At each stage, eating is tied to who has the power to decide what her body will accept.

The turning point also exposes the limits of the family’s preferred explanations. Relatives interpret the change through nutrition, appearance and their responsibility to make Yeong-hye eat; the narrative records the bodily decline and escalating consequences without making those concerns an adequate explanation for her refusal. Her decision therefore marks both the beginning of a medical and familial crisis and a struggle over whether her expressed refusal will be recognized at all.