Old Spool

Introduction to the work "Old Spool" The story is set against the backdrop of the 2014 Sewol shipwreck disaster in South Korea. It focuses on Kim Soon-ae, the mother of Lee Eun-hee, the girl who died in Ansan. It uses a bloody and tearful suicide note written by her mother in the mourning hall to her deceased daughter as the main narrative line, and weaves a broken life of a lower-class mother trapped by poverty and regret. Kim Soon-ae, who gave birth to a daughter in her middle age with difficulty, has been trapped in a life of poverty all her life, and is used to making do with everything: She was reluctant to spend money to buy a new spool when her daughter was only one week old, and took the old spool discarded from the factory, which became a knot that gnawed at her day and night in the future. She was still working hard during pregnancy, which caused her daughter to be born prematurely. She was paranoid that if she could have been pregnant for one more month, the child's fate would be completely different. In order to earn a meager livelihood, she was working in the factory on the day the shipwreck sank, and missed her daughter's last phone call before she died. Her poor family background made her sensible and beautiful daughter pick up scraps and wear old clothes with her since she was a child. Every detail of her life turned into layers of debt in her heart. After the disaster, others accused the ship and the school of negligence. Only Kim Soon Ae blamed all tragedies internally, tying all natural and man-made disasters to every time she "saved money" and every involuntary choice she made. An old spool wrapped with messy silk threads is a token of mother and daughter's tenderness, and it also becomes a shackle that locks her for the rest of her life. At the end of the letter, she wrote a decisive confession. She believed that she was full of faults and did not deserve to be reunited with her daughter. She was willing to fall into hell and only prayed that her daughter would go to heaven safely. The novel does not deliberately exaggerate the grand disaster pain, but focuses on the petty and humble self-blame of ordinary people, and opens up the face of the poor at the bottom. Purpose: In the face of the great disasters and tragedies of the times, it focuses on the secret pain of ordinary people at the bottom who are trapped by poverty and self-blame, and shows the fragmentation and desolation of maternal love that leads to self-destruction amidst extreme guilt.