When Life Gives You Tangerines Episode 1 Recap

Who's in the cast:
IU as Oh Ae-sun (young)
Park Bo-gum as Yang Gwan-sik (young)
Moon So-ri as Oh Ae-sun (older)
Yeom Hye-ran as Jeon Gwang-rye
Oh Jung-se as Yeom Byeong-cheol (special appearance)
Na Moon-hee as Kim Chun-ok

In a poetry class for elderly students, the teacher explains that a poem is whatever you most want to say, written down. Classmates read verses about feeding their families and aching backs, but one student has not managed a single letter. She is Oh Ae-sun, now 70. In voiceover, she admits she never expected to reach that age, or that the word she would most want to say would be the one she said constantly as a girl: Mom. Her story starts on Jeju, the island off Korea's south coast, with a mother who is a haenyeo, one of Jeju's women free-divers, who harvest abalone and seaweed without air tanks.

A haenyeo's daughter

One spring around 1960, on the shore of a fishing village, young Ae-sun shouts at the waves for her mother, Jeon Gwang-rye, to come ashore. Gwang-rye is always the last diver out. The older divers tease Ae-sun about Yang Gwan-sik, a quiet boy whose cheeks go red around her, and laugh that he has been turned down again. Gwan-sik is there to buy abalone for his mother. Among themselves, the women agree that greed, not ignorance of the sea, is what kills a haenyeo.

The catch is supposed to be shared with Granny Hallim, a sick master diver, but Gwang-rye refuses to hand over her abalone. She sells her breath for her own children, she says, not for an old woman with three sons. The others go for her weak spots: she remarried, her new husband leeches off her, and her children carry different surnames. Someone shouts Hong Gyeong-ja's name, and the quarrel becomes a brawl. Afterward, Ae-sun shows off her runner-up award from a writing contest, and Gwang-rye asks whether a poem brings in any abalone.

Still, she sends Ae-sun to show it to her grandmother, since the Oh family loves scholars and might pay for her schooling. Ae-sun is registered in her late father's family and is supposed to eat with them. She protests that her grandmother dislikes her for looking more like her mother every day. Her uncle won't let her have croaker either, claiming her full marks steal the luck of his eldest son, Oh Jong-gu, who always comes last. She chokes on every meal there and begs to live with her mother. Gwang-rye sends her off to earn her own love.

At Gwang-rye's home, Ae-sun's stepfather, Yeom Byeong-cheol, calls her Sun-ae and is told her real name. That night, he warns Gwang-rye that a diver who smokes is wishing for death, and suggests bringing the girl to live with them. Gwang-rye refuses. They have one little thatched rental and no money, Ae-sun would end up their maid, and at least the Oh family can see her through school. When he brings up girls learning to dive in their early teens, she swears she will never let her daughter dive. Ae-sun folds up her poem and says reading it would only hurt her mother.

Gwang-rye takes her daughter back

Ae-sun buys five fish from Gwan-sik, and he throws in a sixth for free. Her household has six people, he points out, yet she only ever buys five. At the Oh house, Gwang-rye storms in, throws down the croakers and asks whether they are saving on fish. She tells Ae-sun's grandmother, Kim Chun-ok, that the girl is an Oh daughter too, the image of her father. The shouting with Chun-ok and Ae-sun's uncle, Oh Han-moo, turns to blame over the father's short life, and Gwang-rye announces she is taking her daughter back.

Ae-sun is glad she was denied the croakers, because now she gets to live with her mother. Gwang-rye tells her to grow up fast and bring home 100 hwan every day. Then the poem is read. "Stupid Abalone" is about abalone in all weathers and a daughter fretting when her mother stays under too long. It ends with a wish to pay her mother 100 hwan a day so she can rest.

Gwang-rye is beside herself with pride. She calls the judges blind and warns that anyone who mistreats Ae-sun will be the one kicked out. To her fellow divers, she sums up her life: parents in debt, a sick first husband, a freeloader for a second, and everyone riding on her back. Only Ae-sun, tiny as a bean, keeps climbing down to help carry the load. Gwang-rye wants to see her daughter carried in a dignitary's palanquin one day.

The class election

As the Fifth National Assembly election comes around, Gwang-rye jokes about handing out rice cakes as the class vice president's mom. Ae-sun is mortified. She won the class vote, 37 to Lee Man-ki's 28, and Man-ki was still made president. Her teacher lectures her that the class ate the buns Man-ki's father handed round and scrubbed the floor with his wax, so voting against the boy was unethical. A leader needs mental and financial competence, he says, and stepping aside preserves her dignity. Ae-sun's verdict: "The one who loses just loses!"

Gwang-rye goes looking for help of her own. She finds Han-moo's wife, Hyeon Yi-suk, plowing a field alone and tells her this family needs to wake up. Yi-suk, terrified of her mother-in-law, insists she has no money. Gwang-rye wants something else: the wedding jewelry Yi-suk cherishes too much to wear. In return, she offers to plow the whole field in two days and harvest the sesame.

At the school, the contest entries hang on display. Man-ki's "The Loyal Lee Family", about his father's loyalty to the country, sits in a gold frame, and it does not read like a child's homework. The general's son gets first place and the presidency. The teacher takes Gwang-rye for Ae-sun's aunt until she corrects him. She tells Ae-sun she shut him up for good, but with him she is all humility, offering nylon foot-warmers and rice cakes that may not stretch across his class of 70. After she leaves, he finds crisp new bills and a note of thanks from Oh Ae-sun's mother.

Walking home, Gwang-rye explains her good clothes: she did not want to reek of salt in front of a teacher. Ae-sun suspects what the visit was for and announces that vice president is better anyway, since she silently leads the greeting to the teacher whenever Man-ki does. Gwang-rye tells her, "I am the poor one, not you," and orders her never to hang back. To the divers, she brags that Ae-sun's first purchase as a grown-up will be a pearl necklace for her. With the average Korean lifespan reported at 52, she vows to enjoy her 60s and 70s, and her friends tell her to quit smoking, starting today. The narration warns that spring is short.

Spring ends early

Even when her breath reeks of blood, Gwang-rye keeps diving. Her fellow divers beg her to stop and warn that the Grim Reaper, dressed in black, is waiting in the water. She answers that ghosts don't scare her, but her children do. Better to die working for pennies, she says, than to die a beggar. When her diving suit goes missing, someone cheers that she can't dive without it, and Gwang-rye mutters about that rascal and says she should never have taken her daughter back.

Ae-sun rages at whoever takes innocent people, begging them to go easy on her mother, who has never even been on a plane. Gwan-sik trails her in silence, then produces meat, which people do not share even with in-laws. Crying, he tells her, will only make her hungry. When she asks whether he is pitying her, he says pity would go to a beggar. She reminds him she is older, demands beef every day instead of chicken, and adds that she still won't marry him. He says he hasn't asked.

That night, Gwang-rye comes home dressed up, carrying abalone, and insists Ae-sun eat them before her siblings get them. They would sell for 100 hwan each but are worth ten times that eaten. Then she gives instructions. When she dies, Ae-sun must go straight to her uncle, never stay on as the Yeoms' maid, and let Han-moo walk her down the aisle. Ae-sun refuses to promise: her father died, now her mother is dying, and she wants to know why she was born at all. Gwang-rye tells her that everyone ends up an orphan and life goes on and on. Ae-sun cuts her off and refuses the abalone.

The narration notes that the eldest daughter heard her mother's last words at ten. Over a lullaby, Gwang-rye dies at 29, leaving three children. Ae-sun is told again to eat while she cries. She says it plainly: her mother died this morning, and she misses her already.

Ae-sun stays

Byeong-cheol reminds Ae-sun that she and her small half-siblings, Sun-nam and Sun-bong, share "sun" in their names and the same blood. It is yellowtail season, he argues, and at her uncle's she would only be a maid. Ae-sun says her mother told her not to live that way, but he asks for just the season. The deadline slides, first until Sun-bong is out of diapers, then until Sun-nam starts elementary school, while she works the field. A voice tells her the living forget by the time the flower dye fades from their nails, and that life goes on and on.

Gwan-sik, someone notices, always seems to have fish left over. When Ae-sun announces she is leaving home, Byeong-cheol begs for a few more deep-sea trips. She says other children get private lessons while she farms and cooks, then stops herself. He guesses the rest: she wants to be a poet, like Yi Sang, Kim So-wol and Yun Dong-ju, and a few lines of verse are recited. He reminds her he paid her school fees and promises to send her to college on the mainland, which her uncle never will. Ae-sun makes him swear on Sun-nam and Sun-bong, and he swears on Jeon Gwang-rye instead.

Some years later, broadcasts push simpler clothing and denounce Seoul's short skirts as decadent. At the market, Gwan-sik steers every customer to Ae-sun's cabbages, and someone remarks that no one need worry about Gwang-rye's daughter now that she has Steelheart by her side. Her price, 50 won each or 150 for three, offends a customer hoping for a deal, but Ae-sun calls it fair. Gwan-sik's mother, Kwon Gye-ok, groans that she gave birth to a fool.

Then his grandmother, Park Mak-cheon, the village shaman, storms in demanding to know who let the girl's stall sit next to her grandson. Daughters inherit their mothers' fate, she warns. Ae-sun yells back, "Yang Gwan-sik? No, thank you!" The narration closes on people who faced days like that and did not back down.

Thoughts

Gwang-rye is the episode, and the show is smart enough to make her difficult. She is stingy with a sick elder, she bribes a teacher, and she pushes her daughter onto a family that resents her. Every one of those choices comes from the same place, and "Stupid Abalone" is the key to her. Yeom Hye-ran plays the poem scene as a woman who has never been given anything and suddenly has. When she tells Ae-sun that the poverty belongs to her mother and not to her, it lands as the thesis of the hour.

The class election is a neat miniature of the adult world around it, with the rigged 1960 vote in the headlines. Thirty-seven votes lose to buns, floor wax and a general's gold frame, and Gwang-rye's answer is a note and fresh bills of her own. Ae-sun learns the lesson, then claims she prefers vice president so her mother won't feel it. That habit of hanging back for someone else's comfort is exactly what Gwang-rye ordered her to drop, and she is already doing it again for Byeong-cheol.

I don't trust that stepfather for a second. He swears his promise on a dead woman rather than on his own children, and every deadline he sets slides. Gwan-sik, meanwhile, says almost nothing and keeps count of how many people live in her house. Gwang-rye spent her life with everyone riding on her back, and the one person who keeps trying to carry something for Ae-sun is the grandson Mak-cheon wants kept away.

Up next: When Life Gives You Tangerines Episode 2 Recap. See every episode in the When Life Gives You Tangerines episode guide.