Although the story that When Life Gives You Tangerines tries to tell is actually quite ordinary and can happen to almost anyone in real life as well, it is the characters and performances that make it stand out in the Korean drama space. One such character, who cements her importance to the generational tale despite having relatively limited screen time, is Ae-sun’s mother, Jeon Gwang-rye.
Played wonderfully by Yeom Hye-ran, Gwang-rye is a constant presence throughout the show from the very beginning. Unfortunately, she passes away in the series premiere but still manages to leave an everlasting impact on the main characters of When Life Gives You Tangerines.
Why Did The Mother Die?
In the first episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines,called Spring in a Heartbeat, the main character, Ae-sun, is seen looking back at the time she spent with her mother decades ago, since the protagonist is quite old herself when she makes her series debut.
Sincethe story is set in Jeju, it touches upon plenty of themes revolving around the semi-matriarchal family structure that is followed in the region.
Unsurprisingly, given the setting, Ae-sun’s mother took up the responsibility of supportingher family by becoming a haenyeo, a job that can take a great toll on one’s body if it continues for some time.
Haenyeo are women who have todive into the ocean to collectvarious types of sea life, such as seaweed. They are basedin Jeju province in South Korea, and the job is often responsible for running the entire household, given the lack of income opportunities and other circumstances in the region.
Naturally, consistently diving into theocean can drastically affect anyone’s health, especially when there are not many high-quality precautionary measures taken to prevent dangerous risks.
It was a similar case with Jeon Gwang-rye, a resilient woman who had to take care of her family financially consideringthat her husband was too sickto do anything and her children needed proper upbringing.
After her husband passed away,Gwang-rye had to marry once againto ensure that her children still had a future, but during all this time, she kept working as a haenyeo.
If there is one thing that kept Gwang-rye going, it was her daughter, which is why she often overworked herself to earn some extra cash for Ae-sun, resulting in her ownhealth constantly depleting through the years.
Unfortunately, despite Ae-sun hoping to see better financial days with her mother, they do not really come to fruition because of the physicallydemanding nature of the haenyeo job. As time goes by, Jeon Gwang-rye’s health keeps getting worse, and since she can’t afford to take a day off from work, that depletiononly escalates, causing her eventual death.
It goes without saying that there was also a lot of stress that kept Gwang-rye on her toes, ranging from thinking that shehad to send her daughter awayfor a better life to losing her husband after a very short time together.
All of that,combined with the kind of responsibilitythat she had to manage alone, added up to hurting her physical and mental health, leading to her passing away.
Gwang-rye lived her entire adult life dedicated to providing for her family, and her resilience is a tale that, to some extent,shapes the rest of the storiesthat are presented in When Life Gives You Tangerines.
