Summary

Love in the Big City takes place in Seoul, South Korea. Part I, “Jaehee” (1), begins with Chapter 1, in which the first-person narrator Young attended the wedding of his best friend, Jaehee. He made polite conversation with other attendees and noted that the wedding's emcee was a friend of Jaehee's “husband-in-progress” (2). Young and Jaehee became friends when they were both 20. Young was in the habit of meeting men at bars for brief romantic or sexual dalliances. One evening, he was kissing a man in a parking lot and someone slapped him on the back. He turned and saw Jaehee, whom he vaguely knew from university. She teased Young and Young asked her if she would tell their classmates that she had seen him with a man. She replied, “I'm a broke bitch, but I'm loyal” (4). Later, when some male classmates were gossiping about Jaehee's...