I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing.
– T.S. Eliot, “The Four Quartets”
Abandoned once again in the orphanage with Eunsu, I was still the most violent, still a troublemaker, but I had no more problems because of my brother. That’s because I was big and had ganged up with the other bad kids, which meant that as long as I was in the gang and was strong, they wouldn’t mess with me—or rather, they wouldn’t mess with Eunsu. Sniffing glue was my Bible, and jerking off was my hymnal. The shoulders of my fellow gang members were my law and my nation. By the age of thirteen, I was already taking girls who had run away from home and putting them up in rooms with boys. I kept a lookout while the older boys took turns raping them. But one day, an older boy who was stronger than me started bullying me and trying to push me out of the gang because I wouldn’t steal things for him from the supermarket. They were too strong, and I couldn’t protect Eunsu, or even myself, for that matter. We were hungry, and with each day we were becoming the butt of the other kids’ jokes. So one day, I made up my mind. While all of the other kids were asleep, I beat the oldest boy to within an inch of his life, grabbed Eunsu by the hand, and ran.
The night we ran away from the orphanage, we wandered the streets of Seoul. We were hungry and cold and hopeless. I had stopped beside a trashcan in a corner of a marketplace and was rummaging through it in the hopes that there was something we could eat, when Eunsu said he was scared. He said he wanted to go back. I got mad, but I bit my lip and suggested that we sing something instead. He liked singing. Since he was blind and never got to go to school, the only song he knew was the national anthem. That’s because we used to sing it during the morning assembly at the orphanage. So we sang the anthem. Until the East Sea runs dry and Mt. Baekdu wears away, God save us and keep our nation… Eunsu could remember all four verses. I remember how, on that cold night, the stars floated in the sky like cold popcorn as we raised our faces to the sky and sang the anthem. When we finished, Eunsu laughed and thought aloud, It’s a great country, isn’t it? Whenever I sing this song, I feel like we’re good people.