To Whom It May Concern,          

            My name is Park Yoo Chun and I am 27 years old. I was born on June 4^th, 1986 in a small town outside of Seoul to a happy mother, a hard-working father and a loving older sister. As my mother often retold during reminiscent times, it was the most pleasant day of her life. The sunlight poked through the clouds and shone right through the crystal glass panes of her hospital room window. She had been suffering from bad labor pains and I put up a fight but 6 hours later, she gave birth to me and everyone was happy to have a new baby in the house to fawn over endlessly. And to be honest, everything was wonderful after that. Our family was happy for the most part and when I turned 8, we relocated to Seocho-gu, Seoul to fit the needs of my father’s business schedule. We remained there, adjusting to city life for 5 more years until my life was forever changed in the fall of 1999.

            On that fateful rainy day, the day I will never forget, a local police officer knocked on our front door, requesting my mother’s presence. I called up to her and soon enough, she came waddling down the stairs in her plush pink robe that she always wore around the house. As a child, only 13 years of age, I returned to the TV in the living room, watching cartoons and snacking on rice crackers which were always my favorites. I paid no mind to the officer, assuming he was making his rounds or asking if we had seen the neighbor’s dog, which often got loose. A moment after that, I heart the heartbreaking sound of my mother crying, the sorrow in her voice was enough to well tears up in my own eyes. I was scared to ask her what had happened in fear that it would only make her more upset. So there I sat on the living room couch, the television merely background noise to the shattering sound of my mother’s dismay. After the policemen left and my mother pulled herself together enough to speak, she called my sister and myself down to the kitchen and sat us at the table. We had no idea why we were there or what had happened. Did we have to move back to our old town again? Did the bank take all of our family’s money? A million of these worrisome thoughts swirled around in the confines of my brain until she finally recited what the officer had told her. My father was in an accident at work today and wouldn’t be coming home tonight.

            As a child, I didn’t realize that when mom said he wouldn’t be coming home that it meant my father had passed away. I told myself that he was on a business trip, like the one he had taken to Japan a few months ago. My big sister, being 17 at the time began to cry hysterically, throwing herself into the warmth of my mother’s arms. It was then that I began to realize that he wasn’t coming home for a reason: he had passed on.

            From that day on, our family was never the same again. My sister began failing school, not doing her work like she had spent so many long hours perfecting every single night. Eventually, she dropped out of school her senior year without warning and at the age of 18, moved out of the country, leaving her troubles behind to go live in California, the place of her dreams. My mother became rather secluded, not talking much and going into a deep depression, often leaving the house for 2 or 3 days at a time, leaving my younger self to fend all one. I would often have ramen noodles and milk for my meals until one day, she just never came back.

            At this point in my life, I was quickly approaching 15 years old and I still knew nothing about the underlying cause to the downfall of my family: my father’s sudden death. The police never gave us a clear reasoning to why he passed nor had they done any post-death investigation. Instead, they simply buried him in a cemetery outside of the local chapel, 4 blocks over. The official report claimed that he had “taken a fall down the office steps and hit his head after delivering a box of papers to the mail carrier, causing him to bleed out.” Now as a 15 year old child, this report sounded believable. But it wasn’t until I turned 18 that I came to the deduction that it was impossible. I had been to his office countless times and observed on quite a few occasions that he, in fact, did not carry boxes to a mail carrier. The carrier stopped by my dad’s office every afternoon to pick up his mail. Also, to get to the second floor of his building, there were no stairs. There was only an elevator. There was no way he could have died while delivering a package to the mail carrier by falling down the stairs.

            I felt like the police had not thoroughly investigated his cause of death and it angered me greatly. He had been buried for a while now and his level of decay would make it impossible for examination. Pondering the mystery of my father’s death made me wonder how other families that went through the same thing must feel, living with the torment of never knowing how their loved ones left them.

            This thought inspired me greatly and made me want to take action. So at the age of 19, I hauled myself down to the Asan Medical Center in the Asan-gu district. They had a hospital on the west side of the campus and a coroner’s office on the East. I inquired about a job as a coroner’s assistant and what qualifications I would need to be accepted into the position. Not surprisingly, the manager there told me I needed 3 years of medical experience to become a coroner’s assistant and I accepted the challenge with high hopes. One of the ways I could earn my medical experience was through working as a paid intern at the morgue alongside the main mortician and his assistant. I also took classes at a local night school for human anatomy and biology, acing them both with flying colors.   Before I knew it, I was 23 years old, had a degree in the human anatomical structure and over 4,000 hours interning at the coroner’s office, often sitting in on autopsies and taking notes of the procedures that were done. At night, when I got home from the office, I would open up medical textbooks and study them for hours on end, reading and taking notes until I passed out from exhaustion.

            Finally in the spring of 2009, I achieved my goal of becoming a coroner’s assistant, passing medical tests left and right until the owner of the facility deemed I was ready. I loved every minute of being a coroner’s assistant, helping to determine how people died and what caused their lives to be cut so short. And to my luck, I was promoted to head coroner at Asan Medical University 2 years later at the age of 25. I currently reside there, doing my work happily every day. I still study hard, trying to improve all I can to help the families of people who died without good reason. Through all of this, I help them attain a sense of closure that I never got.

- Park Yoo Chun (박유천)