When I was sixteen, we experienced the tragedy of having five of my younger siblings die in a single year. No words could describe the heartbreak of our parents in losing five of their thirteen children in such a short time. Death seemed to spread. Other clan members lost their livestock. One home’s cow suddenly died, though it had been in perfect health. At another home, several horses died, one a.er another. At a third home, seven pigs died in one night.

       The suffering of one family seemed connected to the suffering of the nation and of the world. I was increasingly troubled to see the wretched situation of the Korean people under Japan’s increasingly tyrannical rule. People didn’t have enough to eat. They were sometimes forced to take grass, tree bark, and whatever else they could find, and boil these for food. !ere seemed to be no end to wars around the world. Then one day I read an article in a newspaper about the suicide of a middle school student who was the same age as I.

       “Why did he die?” I asked myself. “What would drive a person to kill himself at such a young age?” I was devastated by this news, as if it had happened to someone who had been close to me. With the newspaper open to that article, I wept aloud for three days and nights. The tears kept coming, and I couldn’t make them stop.