Please Look After Mom is a book about sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo who gets separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, and her family who then begin a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mom? Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

Archana Khare Ghose from Times of India, interviews Kyung-Sook Shin, the first Korean woman to win the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize for her book - Please Look After Mom.

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

‘Please Look After Mom’ has been called a sensitive portrait of a mother through the eyes of her family, and is a comment on the changing Korean society. How was the story born?

The line, “It’s been one week since Mom went missing” came to me suddenly one day. I thought that we lived in an era in which the sentiment we associate with ‘mom’ had been lost. Park So-nyo in the book is the mother you would find anywhere . I wanted to describe the love and pain I found inside her. If you connect with the inner life of the mom you have forgotten about, or want to reach out to her again, I would feel rewarded as the author of this book.

How much of your own life is reflected in this story? You migrated from a small village to Seoul as a girl of 16…

My childhood was spent with many brothers and parents farming. My childhood was happy even though we were poor. Something that I learnt then was: if you don’t seed in the spring, you would have nothing to harvest in the fall. The changes in nature and the joy, sadness, anger and love that I experienced then left a deep impact on me. From the age of 16, I have lived away from my mom and still miss her. The mistakes that the daughter commits in ‘Please Look… ‘ are my own.

Please Look… examines the Korean society in flux – loss of traditions and flight from rural to urban life. Has the Korean society now come to terms with its identity or is there still some bottled up nostalgia for a past gone by?

The traditional family structure in Korean society no longer exists. Korean families today are not much different from families the world over. I don’t look for answers in traditional families as family relationships are no longer based purely on blood ties. Today, someone who lives with you is your family, even if not related. What I miss is not the traditional Korean family but kindness, intimacy, and communication that we have lost today.

How was the character of the mother in the book born?

When I was 16, one night my mother and I took the train to the city. The reflection of my mother’s face on the window looked very tired and sad. This work grew out of the desire to write a dedication of sorts to my mother if I ever became an author. The work is personal as it allowed me to keep the promise I made to myself that night.

Who are the authors whose works you follow?

I never miss a chance to read Ismael Kadare, Paul Auster, Milan Kundera and Ian Russell McEwan.

At the Man Asian Literary Prize ceremony in Hong Kong, you had made a statement on the people from North Korea being sent back from China to their land. You said ‘I want the world to know this story’.

I could make that statement because the venue of the award ceremony was Hong Kong. We, the people of South and North Korea, have been living as a divided country for over half a century. Many people are escaping from North Korea for the sake of survival but they are being forcibly repatriated. The problem is that the escaped North Koreans are being cornered into a deadly situation. So I sincerely asked the Chinese government to consider their plight under humanitarian circumstances.

Interview Source - Times of India
Image Source – Man Asian Literary Prize