On the Aug. 17 episode of SBS's "My Little Old Boy," the actor set off on a heartfelt trip to Mongolia with his mother.
While traveling together, Yoon worried about his mom still working so hard. Over a meal, he gently told her, "You’ve been working since you were so young. You had to start as soon as you became an adult―because of me."
His mother replied, "I became a mom early," and Yoon echoed her with regret: "You became a mom too soon, so you had no choice but to work too soon."
Yoon’s mother gave birth at 20 and raised him on her own. Yoon grew emotional, saying it hurt to know his mom missed out on the carefree years her peers enjoyed.
They revisited some of the hardest memories. His mom recalled being too malnourished to breastfeed. Baby Yoon cried nonstop for three days until his grandmother stepped in to help.
"Thinking about it now, if I was that hungry, Mom must have had even less," Yoon said. His mother added, "Right after you were born, the first thing I checked was your eyes, nose, and mouth. There was this old superstition that if a mother can’t eat what she craves, the baby won’t be normal. I was so scared, I counted your fingers and checked everything."
Eventually, while juggling odd jobs, she had to send him away. When Yoon asked if they were separated when he was about eight months old, she corrected him: "It was even earlier. Maybe just after your 100th day. I sent you to your grandmother’s. That’s why I don’t know when you took your first steps or those milestones―I wasn’t there."
After that, seeing each other even once a year was tough. Yoon also revealed he wasn’t allowed to call her "Mom" in public back then.
"You told me not to call you Mom in front of customers," he recalled. "You made me call you ‘aunt.’"
Yoon continued, "If people knew you were married with a child, they wouldn’t hire you. You had to hide it. But you still wanted me nearby, so you told me to call you ‘aunt’ instead."
His mother remembered her salon days: "I told you to stay quietly in the room. As soon as you heard me saying goodbye to a client, you’d run out and ask, ‘Mom, is the customer gone?’ Then you’d hop on the sofa and keep calling me ‘Mom.’"
Yoon said softly, "I didn’t live with you, and I couldn’t really call you Mom, so I was trying to say it as much as I could whenever I could."
The memories kept coming. "When you were in third grade, I brought you back to live with me," his mother said. "Your school was having a sports day, but I told you I couldn’t go because of work. I ended up stopping by for a moment and saw you eating a cup of ramen alone by the platform. It broke my heart. I realized maybe living together was my selfish wish. So I sent you back to your grandmother’s."
"I never knew that," Yoon said. "I thought you sent me away because I misbehaved." His mother, in tears, replied, "It still hurts to think about it. I was devastated."
Yoon comforted her: "You were in your mid-20s back then. No one could have handled it the way you did."
"Even the weakest person becomes strong when she becomes a mother," she said. "I just prayed for the strength to raise you, keeping my eyes forward."
Yoon then shared why he planned the trip: "Looking back now as a grown man, you had no chance to experience anything in your 20s. I want to show you a new world and let you try all the things you missed."
(SBS Entertainment News | Kim Hyo-jung)