TREELESS MOUNTAIN

Jin, a feisty 6-year-old, lives with her mother and chubby little sister, Bin, in a cramped apartment in Pusan City, Korea. When their mother decides to go look for their estranged father, Jin and Bin are forced to stay with their alcoholic Big Aunt in a small town for the summer. The girls are given a piggy bank with a promise from their mother that she will return when it is full.
What at first seems like an annoying departure becomes a dire situation for the girls when Big Aunt loses her house. After their mother fails to return, Jin and her sister are forced to move to a farm owned by their grandparents.
It is through this journey of abandonment that Jin comes to learn the importance of family bonds. Inspired by her grandmother's determination and hard work, Jin learns that taking care of her younger sister is actually a way of filling the missing link in her heart.

This story is inspired by events from my early childhood of growing up in Pusan, Korea. My mother divorced our father and left us with our grandparents at a rice farm. She emigrated to America in order to find a better life for herself and to build a future for her children. At the time of these events, we were too young to understand, and our mother did not tell us what was happening. I began writing Treeless Mountain to search for certain lost memories from this period of my life and also as a letter to my mother.
Treeless Mountain is a simple story about a six-year-old girl, Jin, and her journey to maturity. Jin's sensitivity and the complexity of her emotions stem from her desire to have her family life back. At the end Jin must let go of everything she has known in order to persevere. In this sense Treeless Mountain is an intimate portrait of a young girl and a classic coming-of-age story. I want to tell the story of Jin in order to celebrate her resilience in life.