Minbak by Ela Lee

 

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

On Sale Date: March 5, 2026

Pages: 352

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

Minbak is a story that takes place in South Korea in 1985, and London in 2008. 

Incheon, South Korea; 1985; Youngja is the mother of Hana, a young woman. Youngja runs a minbak, which is a Korean homestay. During that time, a lot of  American Christian missionaries are located in Korea, and Hana gets a short relationship with one of the  American missionary men, from which a son, Yohan, is born. The American  father leaves and Youngja brings the baby to a local orphanage without the knowledge of Hana. The adoption business is in full swing during that era, and they never see Yohan again. Yongja advices Hana to go away from Incheon to avoid rumours and a bad image.

London, 2008; Youngja is in a care home, and Hana and her daughter Ada are still mourning the loss of Hana's husband Tim, who passed away recently. They found out soon he had large financial depths, and Hana decides to make a minbak of her own home, and share a room in the house with Ada. Because of the depths, Youngja, who has alzheimer can't stay in the care home anymore and moves into the same room too. While Hana tries to survive with the depths and running the minbak, Ada is a true teenager with the struggles that come with that at school and at home.

During this time, secrets from the past surface, when Ada discovers that she once had a brother she never knew about. Not sure is if he was adopted or not, as orphanages sometimes muddled with the adoption and registration papers on purpose to sell more children for adoption abroad. Switching in time from the past to the present, the three women have to place this long buried secret of a grandchild, son and brother that they are not sure of if he is still alive or not. Complex mother-daughter relationships, generational trauma, forgiveness loss of memory and living in between cultures is what the three have to deal with.

Minbak is a serious toned book. Not a lighthearted book you can escape with as it has a more serious topic. But besides that, the storyline itself is strong and good. It takes some time to get into it as a reader but when you got the hand of it, this is a book that captivates you. The characters of Hana, Youngja and Ada where all three very realistic and believable. They all had to deal with a tragic past and intergenerational wounds that somehow needed to heal and find some closure in the end of the book. Did it had a good closure? Not really, I found the end quite messy and somewhat confusing, and it still had to many loose ends. But overal , I liked the story and the characters and the realistic picture it painted of serious problems in the adoption industry during that era in South Korea.