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Book at Bedtime

Please Look After Mother

Episode 3

Duration: 15 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Kyung-Sook Shin is arguably Korea's most popular and acclaimed novelist. Please Look After Mother has already sold over 1.5 million copies in Korea and has been reprinted over 100 times, turned into plays and a film. It is now published in 19 countries.

Please Look After Mother tells the story of So-nyo, an elderly wife and mother, who goes missing on Seoul station. Only with her gone, do her children and her husband begin to appreciate not only all she has done for them, but who she really was and how much they have left unsaid.

A story in part about the cultural clash between the generation who inhabit modern, urban Seoul and their parents steeped in the rural traditions of Korea, Please Look After Mother is also a universal reminder of how easy it is to take the people we love for granted.

In today's episode, Hyong-Chol, the first born and favourite son, continues to search fruitlessly for his mother. As he does so, memories of his youth surface and he begins to realise all that he owes to her.

The reader is Sian Thomas
The abridger is Sally Marmion
The translator is Chi-Young Kim
The producer is Di Speirs. Show less

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