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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Book at Bedtime

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Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and world literature

Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world

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Book at Bedtime: Please Look After Mother

Book at Bedtime: Please Look After Mother: Episode 2

Drama: Classic & Period

Drama: Historical

Please Look After Mother

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, Please Look After Mother, Episode 2

Recalling past intimacies, Chi-hon begins to understand at last.

Sian Thomas reads the haunting story of a mother's unrecognised love and sacrifice, by Kyung-Sook Shin. Recalling past intimacies, Chi-hon begins to understand at last.

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. As first her daughter, then her husband and then her son search the streets for her, we learn too 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 and humbling reminder of how easy it is to take the people we love for granted. 

In today's episode, as Chi-hon continues the fruitless search for her mother, memories of their rare moments of closeness surface. Mulling over them, Chi-hon begins to see her mother for who she really was, and what she did for her daughter. 

The reader is Sian Thomas
The abridger is Sally Marmion.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

By Kyung-Sook Shin. Haunting story of a mother's unrecognised love and sacrifice

By Kyung-Sook Shin. Haunting story of a mother's unrecognised love and sacrifice. So-nyo, an elderly wife and mother, goes missing on Seoul station

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