They eventually settled in Chongqing, but she took sick with pharyngitis on the journey and died at the age of 80, six years before the liberation of Korea.

[3] She came from a lower class and poorly educated farming family that experienced discrimination from the local elite.

[4][5] She was determined to ensure her son would avoid a similar fate, and enrolled him in a local seodang to learn to read and write and prepare for the gwageo civil service examinations.

Desperate to cure him, she sold off all of the family's belongings, including silverware, and left Kim Ku at a relative's house while she took her husband around the province in search of a doctor.

[4][5] Kwak went with her son and worked as a housemaid in Incheon,[5] providing occasion care for him in the form of meals and news from the outside world.

[4][5] After Kim's escape and marriage in 1904, she reportedly made a point of consistently siding with her daughter-in-law whenever the couple argued.

[3][6] In 1922, she left Korea to join her son in exile in Shanghai, and supported him while he worked at the Korean Provisional Government (KPG).

[4] She was hardly able to afford two meals per day, and for one birthday she received just two strips of phoenix oolong [zh; ko] for tea.

[5] And after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, their retreat intensified, as they followed the Kuomintang across China, eventually ending up in Chongqing.

[7][8] Her son carried out her request and bought two pistols as well as fifty fountain pens to distribute amongst the independence movement to facilitate communication.

[9] The statue depicts Kwak wearing a hanbok and with a bowl in hand, preparing food for Kim during one or perhaps symbolically both of his stays at an Incheon prison.