【by Eun Ah Cho, Dec. 2024】
I’m here to talk about smell—the smell of a person, not in some figurative sense, but the actual scent that comes from a human body. More precisely, it’s about the smell of the elderly. Perhaps, it is helpful to start with an expression that is familiar in Korean society: “…who can’t even control their feces and urine (ttong-o jumdo mot karineun).” It often refers to infants who haven’t mastered toilet training, sometimes elderly individuals with dementia who struggle with mobility or can’t manage on their own, or others with similar challenges. This essay delves into those who’ve reached an age where their cognition and senses have dulled, becoming indifferent to their own smell—and how this affects their connection or distance from the world around them. What is the relationship between the senses and memory? This isn’t a medical question; it’s a story about memory and the power of empathy.
The issue of aging populations isn’t new, especially in developing countries. But South Korea is at the forefront, racing into a hyper-aged society while battling low birth rates. As concerns about aging and the responsibilities that come with it started feeling more like a social burden, stories featuring elderly main characters began to emerge in novels and films. Among them is Kim Hye-jin’s Concerning My Daughter (2017), which recently made a comeback through a 2024 film adaptation by Lee Mirang. True to its title, the novel is told from the perspective of a mother working as a caregiver, observing her daughter. Her adjunct professor daughter and her same-sex partner, struggling with skyrocketing rent and living costs, end up with no choice but to move back in with the mother. The story delves into the tense dynamics of attempting to understand one another while sharing the same space. The novel is already worth noting for its portrayal of a 30-something lesbian couple, known with the nicknames, “Green” and “Rain,” and their fights against the immense wall of hatred they face. But what stands out even more is that half of the novel unfolds within a nursing home—a different world where the mother is deeply rooted. The mother’s main care recipient, Jen, is a solitary figure with no immediate family ties. Jen has the largest room in the facility, and the mother can provide her with individual care thanks to the financial aid from the public that supports the nursing home’s budget. In her younger years, Jen travelled extensively, sponsoring countless children worldwide. But as dementia crept in, making interviews impossible, the donations and foundation support gradually dried up. The nursing home then decided to move Jen to a remote facility solely for dementia patients—a place unknown, unvisited, where death becomes the only expected guest.
The mother wonders. Who is this Jen, really? Why did she spend her life helping children she never even met? What made her waste her life on such things? These questions also spill over to her own daughter. When the daughter organizes a protest to condemn the unjust dismissal of a fellow LGBTQ+ instructor, the mother asks her, “What does any of this have to do with you? Why are you wasting your youth like this?”
The author mentioned that while writing this novel, she believed that “understanding someone else is impossible.” Now, let’s remember that Jen is inching closer to death, her cognitive functions slowly consumed by dementia. The photos of the children she sponsored, the letters they sent, and the awards she received—all treasured in a small bag—are gradually slipping from her memory. People say her cognitive functions are weakening, but how do we make sense of why she held onto that bag like it was her lifeline? What is it about her senses that compelled her to hold it tightly whenever she could?
The film adapts the novel quite faithfully to the screen, but a few of the changes raise questions. In the film, despite her dementia, Jen fiercely rejects wearing diapers, as if it’s the last bastion of her dignity. When the mother secretly tries to put a diaper on her and Jen finds out, a physical struggle ensues, marking a turning point in the film that eventually leads to Jen’s transfer to another facility. However, in the novel, Jen does not resist wearing diapers. Instead, following the nursing home’s policy of saving resources by using only half a diaper, Jen’s clothes get soiled, prompting her to try to hide the stains.
Is wearing diapers in old age—needing help with going to the bathroom because one can no longer do it independently or on time—truly a sign of lost dignity? Can anyone claim that this is the “human element” we must protect at all costs? Is this dignity simply the kind that exists only when I can maintain enough distance to avoid the smell of your feces and urine, allowing me to feel that you are still worthy of respect? Is it, in fact, a dignity centered on my convenience rather than yours? Dignity, however, is surely not found in a diaper.
The second adaptation marks the film’s emotional peak. After learning that Jen has been transferred to a distant nursing home—and despite being told that information can only be shared with immediate family—the mother manages to find out Jen’s whereabouts and goes to see her. In the novel, the mother herself is at an age where she frequently feels the urge to urinate and can no longer “control her body (142).” In Jen’s impending death, the mother sees her own end – a solitary death. She spends half a day beside Jen, who is now in such a poor state that she no longer recognizes anyone, trying to clean her, massage her, and talk to her. Just when she feels that Jen’s eyes are finally seeing her, the mother asks, “Do you recognize me? Who am I?” After a long struggle, Jen’s lips part to say one word: “…human (saram).”
The exchange between the mother and Jen, absent in the novel, is a deliberate addition by the director—likely the film’s intended message. “I am human, and so are you; this is a story about people.” Whether you’re LGBTQ+ or whether you’ve done something worthy of respect, in the end, we are all human. The film asks: is this truly how one human should treat another? What might have felt clichéd on the page is brought to life by the powerful yet restrained performances of the actors. Jen’s response raises a question for the audience: if a person with dementia can still recognize another as human, is it too dismissive to claim they have no hope of understanding the world? Couldn’t this recognition serve as a new starting point for reconnecting with the world?
What form might the memories of a dementia patient take? Does memory become “faint and obscure,” like “wiggly lines”[1]? Is memory, like a web of lines, slowly unraveled, leaving only traces behind? How do we materialize memories that deserve to be preserved, like Zen’s—the remnants of history? Perhaps, for someone with dementia, memory is like the nose of a snowman, slowly melting and falling away in a light yet constant breeze.
Han Kang’s short story Farewell (chakpyŏl), published in the Winter 2017 issue of Literature and Society, follows the narrator who, after dozing off briefly on a bench, wakes up to find she has turned into a “snow-person (nun-saram).” As a snow-person, she finds herself in a “troubling situation (13).”[2] Observing her new body, she heads to her meeting place. When she holds someone’s hand, her fingertips crumble, and water pools beneath her left chest as it melts. Despite a forecast predicting continued cold, she feels uneasy and considers entering a big freezer storage (a care center for a snow-person?), but eventually, she begins preparing to say goodbye—to her partner, Hyunsu, and to her son, Yoon, whom she is raising alone.
Despite its fantastical premise of a person becoming a snow-person, the story is deeply about human connections. It explores memory, memory of memory, and the weight of relationships. It is well known that Han Kang writes about the history and memory of violence, and this short story offers a visceral take on how memory takes physical form. To her, relationships are like “noodles endlessly spilling over from one bowl to another,” a constant act of giving, when the other’s bowl is empty. The “long, thin, thread-like thing (30)” is the essence of connection, from which other strands emerge. Then, she realizes: ever since becoming a snow-person, she can “no longer feel those threads (31).” I read Han Kang’s Farewell alongside Jen’s final days, juxtaposing the snow-person’s melting with Jen’s failure to materialize memory. A recognition: I am the snow-person, and you are human. Soon, I will melt away, while you (for now) will not. My memory is like a nose melting away, losing its shape, as the thin threads connecting me to others unravel. Yet, I do sense—snow is cold, snow melts, snow becomes water, and I will disappear.
In Farewell, before becoming a snow-person, she painfully empathizes with the injustices and violence reported around the world, which is precisely why her family sees her as “not really a strong person (36).” But now, as a snow-person, even when “her ribs collapse and her side crumbles” (43), she no longer feels pain, and without pain, “there is no fear” (43). A state without pain or fear is, in effect, another form of disconnection—a place where the threads of connection fall away, cutting off the possibility of relationships or shared understanding with others. Her partner, Hyun-su, tries to hold her hand after she has turned into a snow-person, but eventually, he lets go, unable to bear the cold—a lost connection. Without pain, without fear, and without the capacity to empathize, memory—and the very act of remembering—loses meaning. Memory, like snow, melts away into water, vanishing. Perhaps human dignity lies in the lingering potential for empathy, even after memory fades. Or perhaps it is rooted in the power to seek empathy from others, even when my smell makes you let go of my hand. Losing such a connection, she, in Farewell, finds herself alone.
“Her forehead and eyebrows kept melting away, and at some point, she could no longer see things clearly. Fumbling forward, she reached the wet grass along the riverside and came to a stop. No sound could be heard. It was unclear whether this silence was due to the falling sleet or because she had lost the ability to hear. When she removed her wet shoes, two heavy lumps of snow, where the outline of her toes had already disappeared, were crushed into the muddy ground as she stepped. Not knowing what she was looking back at, she made one final desperate effort and barely managed to turn around. (55)”
Slowly yet relentlessly, memories melt away, falling in chunks, accompanied by unheard sounds and unseen tears, blurring the boundary between myself and what is not me. These are the experiences that Jen faced at the end. The image of the snow-person, straining to look back just before becoming a puddle, resembles Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, with wide-open eyes, a gaping mouth, and outstretched wings. What can it be that insists one’s eyes stay wide open, even as they melt away? What must be seen? Jen, lying on her side, looks at the ‘person’—someone who, like herself, will one day become a snow-person. As her lips melt away, she conveys a silent message – a quiet empathy.
AUTHOR
Eun Ah Cho is an Assistant Professor of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Kansas, USA. Her work examines literary, cinematic, and media representations of marginalized individuals, including North Korean refugees and aging bodies. It centres on analysing how these depictions reflect the discourse of (ab)normalcy within South Korean society. Her works have been featured in Positions (2022), Situations (2020), and Cross-Currents (2018), among others.
NOTES
[1] In 1983, eco-feminist Bonita Ely created a performance titled “Controlled Atmosphere Inc.” as part of a protest against the dam construction on Tasmania’s Franklin River. She made three photocopies of a well-known image of the beach before it was submerged. At the time, photocopiers slightly enlarged documents, so with each copy, the photographic image further degenerated. By the end of the performance, the wall of the office was covered, and the image had completely transformed into “faint, obscure, wriggly lines.” The work was later titled “Progressive Dementia of Integrated Resource Assembly.” Bonita Ely, “Archive 1980-89,” Bonita Ely, accessed November 7, 2024, https://bonitaely.com/archive-1980-89.
[2] Henceforth, all translations of the cited story are my own.