Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism

Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism is a sustained refusal of meat that begins with her explanation that she had a dream and develops into a conflict over who may decide what her body consumes. It unsettles ordinary meals, exposes the force of family and social expectations, and persists even as Yeong-hye’s health declines and her refusal extends beyond meat to food more generally.

Beginning and Scope

About three years before In-hye reflects on the family’s crisis, Yeong-hye abruptly decides to stop eating meat. Her husband first encounters the change at home, where she empties the refrigerator of its contents: beef, pork, chicken, eel, squid, dried fish, frozen dumplings, and other stored food. She puts the provisions into rubbish bags while wearing her nightclothes. When her husband tries to stop her, she pulls back against him; after he overpowers her, she calmly explains, “I had a dream.” The dream is the explanation she offers, not a practical diet plan or a reason her husband can readily accept.

The first meals make the refusal visible in the household’s basic routines. Yeong-hye lays out lettuce, soybean paste, kimchi, and seaweed soup without the usual beef or clams. When her husband asks for fried eggs, she tells him she has thrown those out too, and adds that she has also given up milk. Asked whether she means to continue indefinitely, she says she supposes she will do so forever. What starts with meat thus broadens quickly: the changed refrigerator and table show that her decision is not a single rejected dish but a reordering of what she will eat.

Her husband tries to fit the decision into explanations he considers reasonable, such as health, weight loss, or religion, and treats the absence of meat from one meal as a problem for his own convenience. Yeong-hye, by contrast, does not present her choice as temporary. The mismatch between his attempt to normalize or negotiate the change and her stated intention to continue gives the refusal its early force.

Meals as Social Tests

The refusal moves from the private kitchen into social settings, where a shared meal becomes a test of conformity. At a formal gathering, Yeong-hye sits silently while food is served. When a dish of mung-bean jelly arrives dressed with mushrooms and beef, she tells the waiter that she will not eat it. The brief statement interrupts the meal: the other guests stop and look toward her. Her refusal is quiet, but the attention it draws makes clear that eating together is governed by expectations she is no longer following.

When another guest asks why she became vegetarian, Yeong-hye again answers that she had a dream. Her husband speaks over her with a medical explanation, claiming that a dietitian advised her to give up meat because of severe gastroenteritis. The scene places two competing accounts beside one another: Yeong-hye’s own explanation, which her husband considers socially disruptive, and the acceptable health rationale he supplies in its place. Her dietary choice is therefore contested not only at the table but also in the telling of why she made it.

At a family gathering, the attempt to restore customary eating becomes more direct. In-hye rebukes Yeong-hye and urges her to eat properly; her brother’s wife expresses alarm about the effect of vegetarianism on her body. Their mother places stir-fried beef, sweet-and-sour pork, steamed chicken, and octopus noodles in front of her and insists that the vegetarian business stop. Their father joins the demand. Yeong-hye stands and says she will not eat. When her father presses the demand further, she answers clearly, “I do not eat meat.” Her mother’s distress and her father’s insistence show how food carries parental authority as well as care: the meal is presented as something Yeong-hye must accept because her family has decided it is necessary.

The episode also connects the refusal to the family’s history of force. In-hye later remembers that, at the housewarming after she and her husband moved with Ji-woo, their father struck Yeong-hye and forced meat into her mouth. Yeong-hye spat it out and then used a fruit knife to injure herself. The account makes the family meal more than an argument about nutrition: it becomes an occasion in which Yeong-hye’s refusal meets physical coercion, with a severe consequence. In-hye’s memory of standing rigidly by, and her continuing questions about what she might have done, bind the dietary conflict to her own sense of responsibility.

Family Responses and Bodily Consequences

The people around Yeong-hye repeatedly answer the refusal by trying to manage, explain, or reverse it. Her husband initially resists treating her condition as an illness and avoids seeking urgent medical help. At the gathering, he substitutes a conventional medical explanation for her account of a dream. Later, Yeong-hye’s mother tries another form of intervention: she brings black-goat meat to the hospital, cooked with medicinal ingredients to mask its smell, and proposes passing it off as herbal medicine. The effort is presented as maternal concern for Yeong-hye’s weakened state, but it still depends on concealing meat in order to get her to consume it.

The family’s pressure is accompanied by a marked decline in Yeong-hye’s condition. In-hye recalls that after giving up meat Yeong-hye lost so much weight that her appearance became shocking, slept very little, and spoke so rarely that meaningful communication became impossible. Her relatives are alarmed, but their concern does not produce a shared response grounded in Yeong-hye’s own account. Instead, the family’s efforts to feed her repeatedly collide with her refusal, and the coercive attempt at the housewarming ends in injury and hospitalization.

In the hospital, the scope of the refusal becomes more serious. Yeong-hye remains unwilling to eat meat and reacts with distress when she sees a dish containing it. Later, the problem is no longer limited to meat: she stops eating other food as well, does not come down to the lobby for meals, and fails to eat when a tray is brought to the ward. After four days without food, she is dehydrated. Staff report that attempts to provide treatment are difficult because she becomes violent when they try to insert a drip, and her medication may not be reaching her either. In-hye’s question to her sister marks the change plainly: she can understand not eating meat, but asks why Yeong-hye will not eat anything else.

Persistence and Meaning

The hospital scenes show the consequences of Yeong-hye’s refusal without resolving its meaning into a conventional argument for or against vegetarianism. Her family and medical surroundings treat eating as a requirement that can justify pressure, deception, and intervention. Yeong-hye’s repeated refusal, beginning with a dream and later maintained through silence or a short, direct answer, resists those attempts at explanation and control. The conflict is therefore not only about the contents of a meal; it is about whether her stated limits will be recognized.

Even after Yeong-hye’s condition worsens and she becomes unable to sustain herself through eating, In-hye continues to seek a way to reach her. At the bedside, she opens several tightly sealed containers and starts with a tinned Hwangdo peach, which Yeong-hye used to like, then offers her cut watermelon, recalling how she once smelled it as a child. These remembered foods contrast with the meat that has defined so many confrontations: In-hye tries to approach her sister through fruit and shared memories rather than force. Yeong-hye remains motionless. The scene leaves the refusal unresolved, showing both the persistence of In-hye’s care and the distance that no meal, appeal, or recollection can simply close.