Bean paste

The bean paste the narrator's mother asks her about in Chapter 1 is a symbol of the narrator's mother's controlling and judgmental attitude toward the narrator. The narrator's mother asks her if she still has bean paste to eat with her octopus and the narrator replies that she does, to which her mother asks, "Why don't you use it?" (9). It is clear in this brief interaction that the narrator feels that her mother is never satisfied with her. Her mother is micromanaging her consumption of food, which has led the narrator to develop an eating disorder.

Border fence

The barbed wire border fence between South and North Korea that the narrator visits multiple times is a symbol of her inaction. The border area is a liminal space, a barrier that cannot be breached, and the narrator is similarly existing in a liminal space within her own...