Please Look After Mom

A global phenomenon and bestseller with over 1.5 million copies sold The remarkable and profoundly touching tale of a family searching for their missing mother and learning about the wishes, heartbreaks, and secrets she kept within is told in the author's book Korea, Please Look After Mom.

The children of sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo are overcome with loud accusations and are drowning in grief and shame after their mother disappears among the throng of the Seoul subway station. They discover that none of them have a current picture of Mom while they quarrel about the "Missing" flyers they are putting up all over the city—how much of a prize to give, how to word the text, etc. A more significant question soon surfaces: did they really know the person they called Mom?

The story, which is told in alternate voices by Mom's son, daughter, husband, and, in the heartbreaking finale, by Mom herself, puts together, in a Rashomon-like fashion, a regular existence that is anything but.

This is the story of one mother's mystery that ultimately becomes the story of all our moms: the story of her successes and setbacks, of her identity independent of her family, and of her own terms. Please Look After Mom is a discovery that will make you cry if you have ever been a mother, a wife, a son, or a daughter.