115 pages • 3 hours read
Min Jin LeeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Book Club Questions
Quiz
Yoseb Baek, Isak’s brother, eagerly waits for his brother and his brother’s new wife to arrive at the Osaka train station, while his own wife, Kyunghee, is back at home preparing a feast for them all. When they arrive, Yoseb embraces his brother, surprised at how he has grown into a gentleman. He welcomes Sunja, who is happy to see the warm embrace between the brothers. Yoseb tells her how he remembers staying at her family’s boarding house, enjoying talks with her father and eating her mother’s “most outstanding meals” (98). They take the trolley to Yoseb’s home; Sunja is impressed by the well-dressed people and the various buildings and shops of Osaka.
When they arrive at “Ikaino, the ghetto where the Koreans lived […] it looked vastly different from the nice houses [Sunja had] passed by on the trolley ride from the station” (100). The shacks are poorly-made, and “matted newspapers and tar paper covered the window from inside” (100). Children dressed in rags played next to a drunken man and animal smells are strong throughout the neighborhood. Yoseb tells them about the high cost of rent and food to explain the living conditions.
Kyunghee welcomes Isak and Sunja into the home, warmly embracing both of them and telling Sunja she’s so happy to have a sister. Despite the shabbiness of the exterior of their home, the interior of the home is maintained very well by Kyunghee. Yoseb warns them to beware of other Koreans since they have been robbed by their own neighbors whom, they had been generous with. Yoseb is especially worried about his brother’s kind and giving manner, as he is afraid he will be taken advantage of.
When Kyunghee and Sunja are alone, Kyunghee tells her not to be afraid of the neighbors. She also expresses her joy at becoming an aunt, especially since Kyunghee and Yoseb have been unable to have children, which is their greatest desire. To mark the special occasion, Kyunghee shows that she has made white rice for dinner.
After dinner, the two couples go to the public bathhouse. On the way home, Yoseb warns Isak not to get mixed up in any of the independence-movement politics. He says that when activists are caught, they die. He loves his brother and cannot bear the thought of any harm coming to him. As Isak listens, he remembers that when he was back home in Pyongyang, he had:
considered reaching out to the patriots fighting against colonization. Things were getting worse at home; even his parents had been selling parcels of their property to pay taxes from the new land surveys. Yoseb was sending them money now. Isak believed that it was Christlike to resist oppression (106).
Isak realizes that he has different responsibilities now that he has a wife and has a child on the way.
The couples retire to their separate rooms for sleep. Isak and Sunja remove their clothes awkwardly in the dark and then lie together in bed. They grow more comfortable as they talk about their day, and then they begin to make love: “He was her husband, and she would love him” (111).
The next day, Isak goes to meet his employer, Pastor Yoo. He is greeted by Sexton Hu, who takes him to Yoo. Yoo is counseling a brother and sister who are in the middle of an argument. The brother is angry at his sister, who has been accepting gifts from her manager at the factory, an older Japanese gentleman. The brother fears her honor is in jeopardy since he expects the Japanese man will expect more and more. Isak is impressed by the practicality of the sister, who sends the money to her family: “Father and Mother are starving back home. Uncle can’t feed his own wife and children. At this point, I’d sell my hands if I could. God wants me to honor my parents. It’s a sin not to care for them” (115).
After Yoo leads them to a resolution, he speaks with Isak. Isak asks him what he thinks will happen to the siblings. Yoo’s tone shifts noticeably from the concerned tone he used with the siblings, as he states bluntly that if she gets pregnant, the manager “will throw her away,” so it’s necessary for her to get a new job and for her brother, as well, to get a job (118). When they discuss the terms of Isak’s employment, Yoo is equally matter-of-fact, “like a hard-nosed merchant” (120). Isak is stunned to realize that he will not make enough money to support his family, and he’s embarrassed that he did not find out his salary prior to accepting the position. But Hu, Isak, and Yoo end their conversation by affirming their faith in God, and trusting that God will provide for them.
Two months have passed. The hot Osaka summer is difficult for the pregnant Sunja, but she enjoys helping Kyunghee with the daily chores. She finds that caring for the two couples is much easier than having to run the boardinghouse. She enjoys Kyunghee’s company, thinking of her as a sister. Kyunghee wishes she could own her own business and sell kimchi, but Yoseb disapproves of women working for money. So she is thrifty, carefully handling their money to have enough not only for them to live on but also to send to their parents.
When they go to the butcher, Sunja is aware of her own plainness contrasted with Kyunghee’s attractiveness. The men in the shop pay attention to Kyunghee while ignoring Sunja. When they leave, Sunja jokes that the butcher must be her boyfriend since he gave her some meat for free. Sunja then brings up money, saying that she and Isak want to contribute to food and other household expenses, especially since everything in Japan is so expensive. But Kyunghee says no, saying that they should save their money for the baby. Sunja then asks why they can’t work, as she is used to working all of her life. Yoseb, however, won’t allow it.
Two men show up at the home, saying that Yoseb is late on payments for a debt. They refuse to leave, and Kyunghee gets upset. Sunja tells them to return in three hours and she will have the total amount for them.
When they leave, Sunja and Kyunghee go to a pawn shop to sell the watch that Hansu gave Sunja. Kyunghee tries to persuade Sunja not to sell the watch, but Sunja insists they have to because she knows the men will keep charging exorbitant interest, increasing the debt so that it will be impossible to repay in full.
When the pawnbroker significantly undervalues the watch, Sunja threatens to leave their negotiation. She knows the value of the watch. Their conversation attracts interest from others in the shop: “The two men by the window put down their cards and got up from their seats. They’d never seen a girl talk like this” (135). He finally agrees to her price. The women then go to the moneylender to pay the debt. When they ask him about the timing of the debt, they realize that Yoseb had borrowed the money to pay for Isak and Sunja’s passage from Korea to Japan.
Yoseb is outraged that the women have paid for his debt: “Stupid women! Every time I walk down the street, how am I supposed to face these men again, knowing that some foolish women paid my debts? My nuts are shriveling” (140). Kyunghee is stunned by his outrage and vulgar language, but she also can’t help questioning why Yoseb had to control all the money. She pleads for her husband to understand but he storms out of the home. When Isak returns, he tries to console the women. Sunja then screams in pain; she has gone into labor.
Sunja gives birth to a healthy boy. Kyunghee is delighted to have a baby in their home, and she hopes Yoseb will return soon. When he does, Isak tries to persuade him that Sunja meant no harm and was merely trying to alleviate the financial pressure that they had added to the household. Yoseb is not upset with his brother. He always feels a strong need to protect him. He also feels the pressure to provide for everyone. The night before, when he was:
[at a] crowded bar, men were drinking and making jokes, but there hadn’t been a soul in that squalid room—smelling of burnt dried squid and alcohol—who wasn’t worried about money and facing the terror of how he was supposed to take care of his family in this strange and difficult land” (144).
When they walk to church together, Isak asks Yoseb to name the child, as Yoseb is “the head our house here” (145). Yoseb names him Noa: “Noa—because he obeyed and did what the Lord asked. Noa—because he believed when it was impossible to do so” (145).
When Isak and Sunja arrive in Osaka, they are greeted warmly by Yoseb and Kyunghee. Yoseb is overjoyed to be with his brother again, and Kyunghee immediately treats Sunja as a sister. And yet their domestic happiness, as they prepare for Sunja to give birth, is strained by financial worries. First, their situation as Koreans makes them second-class citizens; they are not treated equally by the Japanese, who distrust them and do not give them equal rights. Further, they are segregated, living in squalid shacks.
In addition to their political situation, they are also trapped by Yoseb’s sense of traditional values. He does not want Kyunghee to work, and therefore Sunja can’t work, either, although she has worked all their lives. But when the men come to collect on Yoseb’s debt, Sunja is practical, selling the watch to pay for the debt. Her father taught her about money and how quickly interest can accrue and create financial ruin for people. But Yoseb refuses to acknowledge her hard-nosed skillful negotiation in getting a proper value for the watch. He berates them both, and feels that his own masculine reputation is ruined since he’s had to be rescued by women. But he also realizes the increasing pressure that he is under as he feels a great need to protect his brother.
The differentiated gender roles that Yoseb insists on, however, create difficult roles for women when they are outside the home. The butcher gives Kyunghee free meat with her order because he feels “puffed up like any man who could give something worthwhile to an attractive woman whenever he pleased” (127). Men have the power to control who receives what, and women are in the difficult position of not knowing what to do with such gifts. This situation is magnified in the example of the sister and brother who come to Pastor Yoo about their financial argument. The sister sees that she has power over the manager because she is able to use him to get money to give to her starving parents. But Pastor Yoo can see the larger situation, and that it’s actually the older man with all of the power:
Girls think they’ll have the upper hand because these kinds of men seem so pliable, when in fact, the girls are the ones who end up paying bitterly for their mistakes. The Lord forgives, but the world does not forgive (118).
People like Yoseb insist on traditional values, but they no longer live in the traditional world. They live in a changing world that will take advantage of such values. Interestingly, it’s the women who seem to be aware of these changes, but it’s also the women who must “pay” for them.
The theme of passing is also significant in these chapters. Yoseb is aware that after living in Japan for over ten years, he can pass for Japanese if he doesn’t open his mouth: “From appearances alone, he could approach any Japanese and receive a polite smile, but he’d lose the welcome as soon as he said anything” (95). His wife, Kyunghee, is also able to pass as Japanese: “Everyone thought she was Japanese until she spoke” (124).
However, Yoseb goes beyond passing. He has internalized many of the anti-Korean attitudes of the Japanese, evident when he warns Isak against their fellow Koreans. His experiences have made him cynical; the family was robbed twice by their neighbors, and all of Kyunghee’s jewels were stolen. He has learned what he must do to survive and create a sense of safety and happiness. But he worries about Isak’s innocence and kindness. Isak has had no such experience to harden him, and Yoseb’s heart is heavy as he tries to figure out the best way to protect him.