When the whole world is vocal against the inequalities of rights and responsibilities between BLACK and WHITE, let us consider other boundaries- between the rich and the poor, the men and the women, the married and the unmarried, the locals and the foreigners, the educated and the illiterate, upper and lower castes, the young and the old. People on either side of these boundaries need appropriate rights and responsibilities to earn their living, and enjoy lives. Not only Black Lives Matter but Every Life Matters.
The novel starts with a stealthy escape of Hye-jin, a tired soldier of life, from her residence. Only after a few days, husband Jie-won will celebrate their Fiftieth Anniversary, when Hye-jin will be forced to mimic love.
Hye-jin has realised that, if she continues to live with Jie-won; she would never be allowed to share her sorrows with him and eventually she would have to look for a way to end her life.
After Hye-jin’s escape, we would look back on various dates of her life, what happened and how the course of her life changed. We will review her fight against boundaries– against the borders between countries, boundaries between married families, between the married and the unmarried.
Hye-jin dreams, each person has rights to live in any country and earn the living there, “where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls”.