The novel opens from the perspective of Mr. Cheong, whose wife, Yeong-hye, is “completely unremarkable in every way” (11). Mr. Cheong is grateful for his wife’s “passive personality” (11), which has allowed him to live a calm, unpretentious lifestyle. While Mr. Cheong appreciates his “completely ordinary wife” (12) who cooks and cleans for him while saying very little, she does have one distinct characteristic: Yeong-hye refuses to wear bras. Even when he does convince her to wear a bra out of the house, “she’d have it unhooked barely a minute after leaving the house” (13). 

At around the five-year mark of their marriage, Yeong-hye alters her behavior. He comes across her standing in front of the fridge in the early hours of the morning. When he asks her why she is standing there, she is “unresponsive” (15) until finally she breaks her silence to say, “I had a dream” (16). Mr. Cheong is unnerved and goes to sleep with the feeling that he doesn’t “even want to reach out to her with words” (17). In the morning, when Mr. Cheong wakes up late, he is angry with Yeong-hye for not waking him. He stumbles into the kitchen to find her back in front of the fridge, with “the kitchen floor […] covered with plastic bags […] Beef for shabu-shabu, belly pork, two sides of black beef shin” (17).