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Jeong-dae
Jeong-mi is Jeong-dae’s sister. She and her brother rent out the annex in Dong-ho’s hanok. Jeong-mi is remarkably stubborn, bossing her brother around and pushing herself to her limits in factory work to fund his education. She is also pretty—Dong-ho harbors a secret crush on her—and prone to jokes, often delighting in Jeong-dae’s goofiest pranks. Though Jeong-mi has had to sacrifice her own education in order to finance her brother’s schooling, she dreams of being a doctor, an impossibility that still haunts her old friend Seon-ju many years after Jeong-mi’s death. Jeong-mi disappears in the early weeks of the Gwangju uprising. Years later, Dong-ho’s mother finds conclusive evidence that Jeong-mi was killed in the first round of state violence.
Jeong-mi Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Jeong-mi or refer to Jeong-mi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: The Boy’s Friend, 1980
Quotes
Burning my tongue on a steamed potato my sister gave me, blowing on it hastily and juggling it in my mouth.
Flesh of a watermelon grainy as sugar, the glistening black seeds I didn’t bother to pick out.
Racing back to the house where my sister was waiting, my jacket zipped up over a parcel of chrysanthemum bread, feet entirely numb with cold, the bread blazing hot against my heart.
Yearning to be taller.
To be able to do forty push-ups in a row.
For the time when I would hold a woman in my arms.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Human Acts LitChart as a printable PDF.
Jeong-mi Quotes in Human Acts
The Human Acts quotes below are all either spoken by Jeong-mi or refer to Jeong-mi. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: The Boy’s Friend, 1980
Quotes
Burning my tongue on a steamed potato my sister gave me, blowing on it hastily and juggling it in my mouth.
Flesh of a watermelon grainy as sugar, the glistening black seeds I didn’t bother to pick out.
Racing back to the house where my sister was waiting, my jacket zipped up over a parcel of chrysanthemum bread, feet entirely numb with cold, the bread blazing hot against my heart.
Yearning to be taller.
To be able to do forty push-ups in a row.
For the time when I would hold a woman in my arms.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
