“How KPOP Changed My Life”

It started in Elementary School. The year 2005, when I went to a public school for the first time. You see, for the first few school years of my life, I was homeschooled. My mom feared that I wouldn't fit in with the students at a Korean school. For starters,  I was mixed, and I "looked more Filipino than I did Korean". My skin was tan, and back then, skin color was still pretty big. I was darker than my mom, and people would stop and stare. Once, a store owner even asked if I was adopted. Second, I knew almost no Korean growing up. I was raised with my dad's family in Itaewon, and they spoke English and Tagalog. I couldn't go to an English-speaking school because the only foreign language near us had a huge waiting list. Therefore my mom felt it was a good idea to teach me, since she was already a high-school teacher.

Now, I was prepared for the real world....or so we thought.

I was alienated. People wouldn't talk to me and teachers would refer to me as the "Different" one. It seemed like everyone had a group of friends besides me, but I was okay with that. I grew up lonely, another couple of years wouldn't hurt, right? Nope. Because I decided to be a loner set me to become the sole target of ridicule. People kept telling me to go back where I came from, that I didn't belong in Korea. Telling them I was Korean didn't help, because they started calling my mom a "" or a "traitor".

I felt like there was no way to win.

Winter break came and I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. I knew that when it was over, I would be in a new school and grade. Life would be easier. We didn't exchange Christmas presents until Feburary, and my mom had gotten me one thing. The box was small, and didn't weigh much. The high hopes that I had kept all year fell fast when I finally opened the present.

An album. Tri-Angle.

When I listened to it that night, I instantly fell in love. The following week I got a mini-poster of Changmin and put it in my binder. The next day, my seatmate looked over at my binder and smiled.

"You like them too?" she asked quietly. I nodded. It was an instant friendship.

Soon, she introduced me to her friends. They were so cool towards me and didn't treat me like the ones at my old school. Their names were Hae-mi, Yeon-hui, Yeon-nam, and Ha-na. My first real friends.

We remained together all throughout elementary school year, but when middle school came around, we were seperated. It was 2009, and Yeon-hui was going to the US. After a tearful and messy farewell, it was just the 4 of us. That year, a new girl-group had just debuted, After School. We found yet another group to obsess over. Ha-na became more and more popular, and soon left us for her new friends. Yeon-nam skipped a grade the following year and she abandoned us too.

Now it was just us 2.

2010 rolled in and Hae-mi and I had just gotten over the feeling of being left out when we got a call from Yeon-hui's mother. The reason why she had left in the first place was because she was battling with leukemia. She survived 4 years before she died that morning. The news was shocking, and we didn't know what to make of it. It wasn't every day you hear that your best friend died. Soo-yung and Ha-na also heard the news and, for the first time, bothered to be with us again. They had her body cremated and they flew back to Korea for her funeral. On that day, Yeon-hui's mom pulled us aside and handed us each a folded sheet of notebook paper and a rolled glossy paper. The glossy one was a poster of TVXQ. The folded one was a note:

Do you know how hard it is to find these in the US? You're lucky I love you guys. I hope nothing's changed much since I left. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. I didn't want you to worry about me. By the time you read this, I will be gone...but I promise not to forget you girls if you don't forget me.

Jung Yeon-hui

It was short but it left us all in tears.

Near the end of her service, her father asked us to speak. When we went up, none of us really wanted to speak. Please say something, her father pleaded with his eyes. I reached into my pocket, grasped hold to the note, and started:

"We all kind of met through kpop..."