“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome on StarJet flight nr. BHD94 leaving Heathrow airport, England going to Incheon airport in South Korea. My name is Rockwell and I’ be your captain tonight. We will be leaving shortly and the expected arrival time is 15:15, and I remind you that the time zone difference currently is 8 hours forward in South Korea. I hope this flight will be enjoyable for your and the crew onboard tonight are there for you to make it as pleasant as possible. So, please, take a seat, make sure to wear your seatbelts and enjoy the flight.”

The pilot’s announcements always seemed so long and boring to me, however by now I was so used to them I was just mouthing the words along with Captain Rockwell. This was the first time I had to take such a long flight though. Korea was my motherland, but I had never ever, not even once visited it since I could recall at least. My parents had divorced when I was 6 years old and my father took me and we moved back to his motherland which was here in England. He was half-Korean and half-English and he fell in love with my mother who was purely Korean when she had come here for an exchange year as so many students do. Being in the heated period of their youth they decided to get married as soon as my father finished university and within that year they got married and my mother even managed to fall pregnant with my older brother just before returning to Korea. My older brother… All I know about him really is that he is two years older and every time I try to recall any memories with him, although I couldn’t recall his face there was always this sudden splurge of warm feelings that filled me and I felt happy. This was what my brother had turned into in my memories – just a feeling of happiness. My life I can’t complain about. I had everything I needed, my father ran a very successful Korean restaurant in the centre of London and as his little princess I got spoilt a lot. Anything I wanted I got, I had all the attention needed from all the employees who worked for him and every branch I went to, even without my father next to me and it being the first time seeing a new employee, I still got all the love. Now, I’m not saying that I’m a little spoilt princess. I’m not at all. I mean, of course I love the attention, but I don’t let it get to my head. I was brought up strongly Christian, I thank God every day for blessing me with all of this, but there’s always that little bit of emptiness in my heart. I never really felt the need to have a mother, but passing by a mother and daughter on the streets always made my heart sting a bit. I mean, I HAD a mother, just… I didn’t know who she was or how she is doing. Heck, I thought she hated me for not wanting to see me so I never bothered, however this changed not too long ago. About a month ago I overheard my father speaking on the phone in the middle of the night. Now what was strange was that he was speaking Korean. In the house we do not speak Korean. My father was born British, in these 10 years I’ve lived with him I have also considered myself British, so, although it was our ethnic background, we still stuck to the language of the country we lived in. So, of course, I went on to listen in on it. Ok, that makes me sound like I was spying on the conversation; the truth was it wasn’t that hard as his voice was quite raised. I’m not going to lie, I’m not fully fluent in Korean, but I could understand majority of the conversation. And what I understood from it made my heart sink a bit. Father seemed to be talking to my mother and the main thing he kept implying was that he will never let her see me that he didn’t want my mother to ruin me so I wouldn’t turn into the same person she was. I’m not fully aware of the problems they had for it to lead to divorce, but all I knew is that my father resented my mother for something she did. I never really asked, it was one of those questions I knew my father did not want to discuss with me. It was even worse than getting through the time when my period first started and my father, obviously clueless about these girl issues, had to somehow help me through it. Anyhow, since this conversation took place I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot and what more I’ve been thinking about my brother. He was that happiness that helped a poor 6 year old child get through the trauma of her parents arguing every day over little issues, the strength that was given to me when the divorce that was announced (not that I knew what it was at that time, I was just told to say bye-bye to mommy) and the strength that has been guiding me since – a promise to be precise. Although I was only six years old and it all happened ten years ago and was very mentally challenging, I still remember what my brother had told me before my father dragged me out of the house. He had given me a very warm and comforting hug and had said to me ‘Yura-yah, you’re my sister. And my sister will always be the strongest, no matter what. We will see each other again. I promise’. Now that I think about it, I have to admit that for an 8 year old child he was quite smart and collected. However since this promise was made I have not heard anything from him, but the strange attachment I felt for him even though he hasn’t been here for most of my life was something that made me stick to this promise and believe it. What I understood from the conversation my brother had tried to contact me before and I have to admit that in the year of 2009 we now have plenty of ways to do it. But it seems my father had interfered with all of that and was very careful when it came to revealing information about our private life to anyone.

So now, 7^th of August, 2009, one month after the conversation had taken place (and as I had turned 16), I was here boarding the plane that would take me to the person that would hopefully explain everything I needed to know about why things had ended up this way, why she couldn’t have just boarded a plane herself and came to me and most of all to see the person I’ve longed to see the most – my big brother. Now, you might wonder how I can travel around freely like this only being 16, right? Easy, as I said I get what I want. I told my father I want to go travelling for a couple of weeks in Europe with my close friends (some of whom are 18) and as I’ve been travelling quite a bit, he knows I have the knowledge of how to act and what to do. Plus infinite trust in his little princess and her friends. I took a glance at my friend who was already passed out due to sleepiness next to me, let out a quiet chuckle, put my earphones on and let myself drift into the world of dreams so I could open my eyes later and take my first steps in the country that held the story of my roots and early childhood.