Summary
The disastrous company dinner is a turning point for Mr. Cheong. He calls his mother-in-law and informs her that her daughter has given up meat. He also calls his wife's sister, In-hye.
An italicized interlude showcases Yeong-hye's voice as she describes further violent dreams.
Yeong-hye dispassionately listens to her father shout at her over the phone before putting the phone down to tend to her soup cooking in the kitchen. Mr. Cheong picks up the phone and speaks to his father-in-law. Yeong-hye's parents resolve to come the following month to try to get their daughter under control. Mr. Cheong then describes coming home some nights and raping Yeong-hye. Three days before the family gathering, Mr. Cheong finds Yeong-hye peeling potatoes while topless.
They meet at Yeong-hye's sister's house for lunch. Everyone (with varying degrees of volume and forcefulness) tries to convince Yeong-hye to properly manage her nutritional intake. She refuses, inciting the anger of her father and brother. The old patriarch slaps her and then summons Mr. Cheong and Yeong-ho to secure Yeong-hye so that they can force her to eat meat. Yeong-hye begins to flee but turns around and grabs a knife, brandishing it at everyone until she slits her wrist.
At the hospital, Mr. Cheong feels nothing but revulsion for his wife.
Analysis
When Mr. Cheong informs his mother-in-law about her daughter's dietary decision, Yeong-hye's mother expresses outrage at what she perceives as her daughter's defiance. This parallels Mr. Cheong's initial reaction, showing that the people closest to Yeong-hye care more about controlling her than about understanding her or supporting her well-being. For Yeong-hye, making personal decisions leads to intense pushback and conflict. In addition, Mr. Cheong is not the only man who enacts physical violence against Yeong-hye when she disobeys. Yeong-hye once told her husband that her father "whipped her over the calves until she was eighteen years old." Overall, her family dynamics make it difficult for her to have agency in her life.
It is clear that Yeong-hye's mental state is deteriorating. In another italicized interlude that showcases her perspective, Yeong-hye describes the feelings engendered by her nightmares. She uses language like "strangeness," "violence," "crumpled," "horror," "perpetrated," "hazy," "blood-[chilling]," "intolerable loathing," "shuddering," "sordid," "gruesome," "brutal," and "unfamiliar" to portray the unraveling taking place inside her. When Yeong-hye talks about how "familiarity bleeds into strangeness," this introduces "the uncanny" in the novel. This refers to the disorientation and fear caused by defamiliarization.
A focus on appearances and the need for control recurs throughout the novel. After the fiasco of the company dinner, Mr. Cheong's coworkers act noticeably cold towards him. This slight ostracization only dissolves when Mr. Cheong succeeds in making a profit for the company. This shows that some of the issues fracturing Mr. Cheong's marriage and worsening Yeong-hye's mental state exist on a societal scale. Deviating from social norms leads to exclusion. Another instance where appearances and control appear alongside each other occurs at the family lunch when Yeong-hye angers her father by refusing to eat meat. Her brother, Yeong-ho, asks her to submit to her father's will or at least to pretend to so as not "to make such a thing about it in front of Father."
