I get that and totally agree. there's def a huge power imbalance between his mom and dad tho (what with the age difference and their status), but if she was supposedly so shameless, why didn't she step up b4
not at all speaking from personal experience (/s) but in non-western cultures, the worth of a man as a husband and father is judged not by how he treats his family, but by what he can provide. this concept is so deeply engrained in culture that women grow up and get married believing that as long as their husband makes a lot of money and checks the boxes for “a good member of society” then that automatically makes them a good father and husband. that is to say, its hard to incriminate jinhyeongs mother because she likely didnt even perceive her husbands behavior as abuse. of course, this doesnt free her from blame because as a parent she still has a responsibility to protect her child, be it from her own husband, but its important to acknowledge that she is as much a victim and a product of a traditionally conservative system as jinhyeong is.
yeah, i completely understand that. i can even agree that she probably didn't think of it as abuse, but it's telling that she's unbothered by the fact that jinhyeong cut him off and that she knew what jinpil was doing was wrong enough to make excuses for why it was okay. i can see her as a victim of a conservative society, but that's my utmost limit. she is still a coward, in the end, the same as jinpil.
jinhyeong's mother is very beautiful, and it's hilarious that he has her entire face, but i fear that she is also going to hell she didn't participate in the abuse, but she sure did not do her part to prevent it from happening and to mitigate the psychological damage it did. she was the one who reinforced the idea that he makes his father feel ashamed, she consistently defended his father for his behavior by saying he doesn't mean it, and at some point, we literally see her turn her back on him when he's looking for her support. no matter the circumstance, if you abandon your children like that, i will always find that especially cowardly. they didn't ask to be born, and they are the most vulnerable out of all of us, so as a parent, you have to do your utmost to protect them. i really do not think she did enough to defend him while he was still in their house, so while i suppose it's nice that jinhyeong has found it in himself to forgive her for it enough to maintain contact with her, i don't really think she deserves it. what can you do, i guess !