Do you think that Sangwoo realized he was abused by his mother because of Bum? I've read this somewhere, but honestly I disagree. Sangwoo has always known what his mother did to him and that is the reason why he's become what he is. What do you think?
Hello! Sorry for replying only now, I’ve been a bit busy these last two days.
I think Sangwoo realized he was abused by his mother thanks to Bum.
It’s true that Eunseo is the reason why Sangwoo has become what he is, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he remembers it. In fact, it’s not rare that people forget their most traumatic memories but these memories still influence their growth and behavior deeply. It happens often that when a person starts developing behavorial issues out of the blue they have no idea what triggered this change, but through therapy (or by casual events in some cases) they realize that it was caused by a traumatic memory that their brain had repressed (virtually forgotten) as a sort of coping mechanism.
I think Sangwoo always knew that something was off in his childhood memories, but he didn’t exactly remember what his mother did to him or how exactly his childhood experiences affected him.
For a long time, the fandom believed that Eunseo was a simple victim and that the only person who affected Sangwoo negatively was his father - people went as far as theorizing that Eunseo ended up being not only a victim of her husband, but that Sangwoo followed his same path turning abusive and sexual towards her and finally killing her.
These theories, as weird and nonsensical as they sound today, did make sense back then because they were based on what we knew of Sangwoo’s parents from his memories in season 1-2, which, we now know, were pretty twisted before Bum somehow helped Sangwoo to remember them more clearly.
The very first memory we get of Sangwoo’s mother is in chapter 3 and it’s pretty innocent: Sangwoo remembers her touching his cheek with damp hands while she was chopping vegetables, and he claims to love and miss her deeply. If Sangwoo remembered what Eunseo did to him at that point, I doubt he’d simply claim to miss her and act as if she was the only person who has ever loved him.
The second time Sangwoo’s mother is mentioned is in Chapter 5, where Sangwoo admits that his mother sometimes screams and kicks his door during night and that it scares hm. Due to lack of any other hint back then, most people assumed that Sangwoo’s hallucinations were simply triggered by his regret of having killed her, because he actually loved her and she did nothing to make him hate her.
We know that this theory is absolutely wrong, but going with Sangwoo’s twisted memories and the sense of regret he clearly shows for his mother’s (for both his parents’) death, he might have actually thought that his mother’s ghost was mad at him because he killed her for absolutely no reason. At this point, Sangwoo didn’t necessarily need to remember what his mother truly did to him to justify those hallucinations. It was simply the manifestation of the regret for having killed his ‘one and only mother’, the only person who has ever loved and supported him.
Another thing that I’ve only recently realized is this small detail below …
In Chapter 6, Sangwoo seems to imply that being beneath Bum’s shirt makes him feel warm and protected like he’s in the safest place ever - a mother’s womb is commonly associated with this concept. In Sangwoo’s specific case, however, Eunseo’s belly has never been a safe place for him, because as he says in Chapter 56, she spent her whole pregnancy trying to abort him. If Sangwoo remembered this in chapter 6, I doubt he’d make such a statement about his own mother’s womb. I don’t know the Korean sentence, but if this was translated in an accurate way, Sangwoo specifically says his own mother’s belly, not just a generic mother’s.
We don’t really get anything more about Eunseo until season 2. In season 2, again, we are fooled by Sangwoo’s twisted memories although something seems to start clicking in his head:
when Bum tells him that he didn’t fight back his uncle when he raped him, Sangwoo claims that this means that they had consensual sex. Basically everyone thought that this was simply Sangwoo being mean and insensitive towards Bum … But, what if in that moment some memories started to come back at him? I don’t think he remembered Eunseo having raped him, not yet, but his association of ‘not fighting back = consent’ may be rooted in a vague and faint memory he had of himself fighting back something he didn’t want (we now know that Sangwoo did fight back his mother when she wanted to rape him), thus establishing his will unlike Bum.
When Bum tries to kill himself, it’s clear from Sangwoo’s reaction that he’s feeling like he’s living a past memory again. Not only Bum collapses in the kitchen near the table (where his father collapsed), but suicide induced by blood loss is also the cause of Eunseo’s death. Sangwoo panics and tries to put Bum’s blood back in their veins … Remember this panel from Chapter 13?
Back then, everyone thought it depicted Sangwoo choking Eunseo. But, knowing his reaction at Bum’s attempted suicide and how his mother died, this assumes a whole new meaning.
What if in chapter 13 Sangwoo did have a twisted memory of that day? In chapter 13 he truly remembered having killed his mother by choking her to death. But after living that traumatic experience again with Bum, he might have started to slowly realize that this memory was off and that he might have actually tried to prevent blood from spilling from Eunseo’s throat by wrapping his hands around her neck.
In both season 1 and 2 we are led to believe that the only bad person was Sangwoo’s father, and Sangwoo himself seems to be absolutely sure of it: in fact he never claims to not love his mother, he isn’t scared of becoming like her, he’s scared of becoming like his father. And, we now know, it’s not because he saw his father as being an abuser, but because Eunseo used “you’re becoming more and more like your father” as a threat to emotionally manipulate Sangwoo into doing what she wanted and keep him on her side.
In season 3, however, Sangwoo’s perspective changes and he seems to imply that the reason why he doesn’t want to be like his father is not the same we have known in season 2: while in season 2 he’s scared of doing to Bum what Mr. Oh did to Eunseo, in season 3 he’s scared of dying like his father - by the hands of a manipulative person like Eunseo. At the same time, he seems to realize that he also was badly influenced by his mother, as he makes an association between Bum being forced to look at Sangwoo and Jieun having sex and Eunseo forcing her son to witness her having sex with his father.
I don’t think Koogi presented Sangwoo’s memory in a messy way just to give readers suspence and make it a cool mystery to slowly unveil. I think the reason why these memories are so fragmented and, in some cases, even colliding, is because we are actually seeing them from Sangwoo’s POV, which was twisted in the beginning. Memories only start to clear up thanks to Bum and we are not the only ones slowly putting the pieces together: Sangwoo is doing it too as the story progresses. So not only us are left in disbelief when we find out that Eunseo wasn’t the poor victim of both an evil husband and an even worse son, but Sangwoo is shocked by his own previously repressed memories as well.
I don’t think Sangwoo’s reaction at the ring/poison misunderstanding in season 3 would have been so strong if he knew everything since the beginning. This explains why he didn’t freak out so much in season 1 when Bum did the exact same thing Eunseo did - try to poison him. In season 1 he didn’t remember Eunseo trying to poison him and he simply used this as a test to check if he could trust Bum.
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