character development

Yoko, the main character in the story changes a lot during her journey from North Korea to Japan and her life in hard conditions when her mother dies. In North Korea she wasn't very spoilt but her life is extremely spoilt compared to her life in Japan. We have evidence that she was spoilt when she refuses to share her blanket with the pregnant women on the train. After a few arguments with her mother, she finally shares it with her. I think this was her first step to being like the way she is in Japan. She goes on her journey where she starts to care about others more. She helps gather food on their journey and instead of eating it herself, she shares it with other food, this might not sound very hard to us because we have a lot of food but she had been starving for days. When she does arrive in Japan, her mother dies and she and her sister are put into a tight situation. They have to live on their own and KO can’t support both their lives. At Yoko’s age, I would probably just whine and refuse to do anything and stay depressed, but Yoko helps her sister a lot and she works hard to please her. This shows that she cared for her sister and not just her own laziness. An example is that when it was New Year’s Day, she bought lots of good quality food for a change to celebrate the festival; she didn’t have much money so she used the money that she was saving up to buy shoes. I think this is a great act of compassion because she was working really hard to buy those shoes. This also shows that she had sacrificed her own labor, gathering the money, and her own comfort, new shoes, for KO.