Part I

In chapter 5, the protagonist is SA'd, but she seems to want to use Hansu as an escape from her station.

In ch 6, he says something ominous about how he'll always return. Wonder what that could possibly be foreshadowing

The next time he returns from Osaka and they make love, she tells him that she is carrying his child at which point he reveals that he has a wife and three children in Osaka, but will take care of her regardless. He cannot marry her due to the work, implications and his registered marraige in Japan though

Marriage was unnatural to him, but he would never abandon a woman who bore his children.

The father of Sunja, who himself had a cleft lip and a bum leg, dies of TB. He then comes to where the priest comes the boarding house run by Sunja's mother, and he is afflicted with TB. Though the Koreans are not christian, his positive influence radiates from them he exudes forgiveness and ultimately offers to marry Sunja so that her child can be registered and have a name.

Passage about Isaak reading Hoseah and being like "bet" in Chapter 9

Isaak, the protestant minister named his children after Noah and Moses. Mozasu frees his people from slavery

In a similar vein, Yoseb welcomes Isaak and his wife into his home with few complaints. Despite the fact that the child is not even his brother's, and Isaak's family is not his own.

Noa's name is symbolic of covenant from his father Hansu that he will never abandon the family, and also of new beginnings.

Part II

Chapter 5 of Book II is where the significance of Mozasu's name is explicated.

Hansu owning the restaurant that Sunja winds up working at is crazy.

She felt like a serviceable farm animal who would one day be useless brutal stuff in chapter 6 or 7

"A woman's lot is to suffer"

Hansu pays for Noa's school, which is the least he can do, but keeps the family indebted to the jackal. Their relationship doesn't seem overtly exploitative though, just like a humiliating sugar daddy.

Mozasu's and Yumi's child ends up being a boy, not a girl as Yumi fully expected. They name him Solomon. Biblical significance of that name being that he's the son of David – David who had a comparatively harder go at life than Solomon. Solomon merely inherited the wisdom and title of his role.

Yumi gets killed by a drunk driver about 3.5 years after Solomon's birth. The child escapes mostly unscathed, just with a broken ankle.

Sometime while Noa is at university, probably 10 years prior to the death of Yumi, Noa learns who his real father is and runs away from everybody. He learns because the girl he is talking to also talks to Hansu or smth?

Part III

Ch 14, Sunja goes to visit Noa at the parlor he now works runs (Hansu manages to track him down). Noa's happy to see her, but also very upset because his Koreanness is his deepest secret – no one in his life, not his wife, children, or boss know. If any of them were to find out, it would ruin him. "it is bad to be him." Noa shoots himself immediately after his mother leaves. The previous two chapters profiling the gay detective and is sexually repressed wife foreshadow the lingering Korean guilt that Koreans in Japan faced.

Before Sunja's mother dies, she says women's role in life is to suffer, and that Sunja is suffering because she fell for Hansu, basically that she's a whore. In the next chapter, Sunja wonders whether or not this is actually true, for Hansu gave her Noa, who she did love.

Solomon hooks up with Hana who believes that her only shot at life is to be a prostitute. Hana is Etsuko's daughter!? the gay investigator's wife?

related