((Takes place in summer of 2019. TWs: double suicide (no in depth details, blood mention), suicidal ideation mention, psych wards, self harm mention. Tags: Julin Woo ))

It had started as such a peaceful morning. He had gone to hang out with friends, his parents told him it was fine, that they’d see him later and they loved him. It should have tipped him off. His parents usually asked a million questions before letting him go anywhere. By this point, they were U.S. citizens, but his parents never stopped believing that someone would come and take them back to a camp for what his uncle did. He had tried to ask exactly what it was his uncle had done, but every time he asked, it was only, “he was a traitor,” never more elaboration.

It’s easy to be a traitor when you’re from North Korea. If you talked positively about South Korea or America in public, or questioned the regime, or protested… Many things, really. He didn’t remember much of his time from living there, some clips of being at home, telling his mom he was hungry, and her giving him what measly portions of food other than rice that she could find, or being in school, learning about history but - though he didn’t know it at the time - everything was… wrong. He also had some memories of playing soccer with the other neighborhood kids in China. They taught him Chinese and it was a thing he held onto dearly. But his parents called him to come inside any time there was a policeman roaming the neighborhood, even if it was unrelated to the fact they were illegal immigrants in the country. China was an ally of North Korea, they couldn’t risk bringing any sort of attention to themselves. At the time he had thought it was so cool to spend six months out of school.

Then there was the migration. He didn’t remember much from it, but he remembered being tired all the time. They only occasionally managed to find affordable public transit, so they walked the rest of the time. All the way from the tip of China where it meets North Korea, to Vietnam. He remembers almost nothing from Vietnam, except an empty room that was smelly on good days and stifling on very hot days. He also remembers he was left alone for long periods of the day.

He supposed it made sense his parents would end it this way - for all the trauma he did remember, he could only assume there was more, and tenfold for his parents. They were born and raised in North Korea after all, and his grandparents, who he’d never met, were born in a time when there was no separation of North and South Korea, and went through the trauma of the war. His parents never talked about them much, and they had died just after he was born.

But to see the police and paramedics at his family’s apartment was still jarring. He didn’t see their bodies, but a policeman asked him questions. Something about if he knew his parents had a gun in the house - he didn’t. If he could notice any signs of something gone wrong - yeah, something was wrong! He was being told his parents were dead, and just thirty minutes ago he’d been laughing with his friends over fro-yo. He asked the policeman how long they’d been dead, but was told only the coroner could answer that, and they hadn’t received an answer yet.

How long had he been laughing with his friends while parents were bleeding out and dying? He was told it was most likely an instantaneous death, but even so…

His life changed quickly after his parents died. He hadn’t been working, and for whatever reason, or as some sick joke, his parents committed double suicide at the end of the month, so he had about a week before he’d be kicked out the apartment. There was no way he’d be able to afford the rent in time.
As expected, he lost the apartment, and he managed to get a spot at the shelter for at least that first night. He had a travel backpack - one he had since they were in China - full of clothes and whatever snacks he could fit in afterward. It was as others in the shelter began asking him questions, he was young, after all, that he started to realize his life couldn’t continue as it was.

His parents’ trauma from living in North Korea made it so they never got the chance to acclimate. The Korean population in the area was solely South Koreans, and there was such a difference. The only thing similar between the two countries at this point was the language. He had adapted up until this point. His knee-jerk reactions were still to hate anything South Korean. But H Mart still helped him find food that was hard to find elsewhere that he remembered from his home country. And the friends he made in high school were other Asians, a handful of Chinese speakers, as well as some kids from South Korea who were still paying attention to the culture there. He copied them well enough no one, not even the Koreans, suspected anything. Perhaps if they had been transplants rather than first or second generation they may have suspected something, but he was good at this. He blended in well enough no one seemed to suspect him of being anything other than South Korean, maybe from a small province with a weird accent at most.

To lose his parents, though, made him realize he had been oblivious to their inability to blend in. Their mannerisms, their language, had become so different that their dialect felt like another language. The shelter hooked him up with a counselor after he’d spent a night there. He had to make it through a week before he could meet her though. He felt like he’d lost his whole sense of self. After all, if he no longer said he was North Korean, was he willing to let people just assume he was from the South? Who was he after he was no longer a refugee?

A week later, when he brought it up with his new therapist, figuring he’d just frontload everything after establishing the patient confidentiality rules, she asked him why he felt it was so important people know he was North Korean, especially since it was something he’d never shared with anyone? He needed to know his parents hadn’t suffered just for him to lose his identity. He didn’t want to lose the only thing keeping him tied to his family, most of whom were probably dead, or wished they were. He didn’t want to live if it meant losing his sense of self.

In retrospect, it was a mistake to tell her that last part. But at least the hospital was a warm bed, a roof over his head, and free food. There was group therapy every afternoon, and he had one-on-one therapy twice a week. He could tolerate that for a place to sleep. He was given antidepressants that made him sleepy and nauseous and like he could never drink enough water. He was told the side effects would subside after a while. He mostly stayed in his room. He shared it with another teen, a white kid with dyed black hair and scars all up and down his arms. He didn’t talk much, and also had his own friend in the hospital, so he was left alone most of the day. He was glad for it, it left him with time to think.

After a month in the hospital, he was brought to the financial department and was told the state would only pay for one month, but they got him in touch with a guidance counselor and he’d be put into a temporary transitional housing unit. He was told he was expected to continue with his antidepressants, and if he didn’t check in with the guidance counselor within a week, they’d send the police to do a wellness check on him. He prickled at the mention of police, the habit of hiding from authority still drilled into his head. He left the hospital the following afternoon, found the housing unit, and immediately called the guidance counselor.

His guidance counselor was a tall, burly man with a loud laugh and a bright smile. He finally understood what people meant by “big teddy bear.” It fit this man perfectly. He introduced himself as “Lance, like Lancelot.” He told him he would help him find a job, and get him set up with proper housing - which is when they’d have to say goodbye - and just getting him settled.

It took about another month for him to get settled into a job at a Chinese bakery, so he was excited to get to keep up his Chinese, and this time he got to work more on reading it, too. Then when it was time to get his own apartment, he was a bit reluctant. Lance had been a huge help to him, and now they’d be saying goodbye. Lance told him to call him any time he needed, even if he just wanted to talk.

His heart was still broken, he was still kind of going blindly, but he felt like he’d maybe figured himself out. It had been the roughest summer he could remember, but things were finally starting to sort themselves out. He knew who he was, and he now understood the best way to make his family proud was to continue being his authentic self, and living freely. And when his name was called wrong in his first class freshman year, he actually corrected the teacher for the first time since he practically had moved to America, “It’s Julin, actually. Julin Woo.”