Chapter 4. An Eternal Goodbye to My Two Older Brothers.

When you open the window in our house, you can see everything—from the kitchen all the way up to the room at the very top. Our home is built like a tunnel of warmth and noise, one long stretch that holds all our lives inside it.

My sleeping spot is in the room closest to the kitchen—the lowest room in the house. Around the time my grandmother went back to her military side job, my father would start his mornings at 4:30 a.m. sharp. He’d rise first, light the fire in the wood-burning stove, and when the water in the big iron pot started to boil, he’d wake my mother so breakfast could begin.

That’s how I woke up too—not by alarm, but by the familiar orchestra of dawn: the sound of the kitchen floor creaking open, the crackling fire catching in the furnace, the bubbling pot, and the quiet, hushed voices of my parents talking. These sounds were my lullaby in reverse—they woke me, but always gently.

And then I’d make my move. My first mission of the day? Dive under my parents’ blanket. It was the biggest blanket in the house, and that made it the most prized. But I wasn’t the only one with this brilliant idea. If one of my brothers beat me to it, I’d sabotage his comfort. And if I got there first, they’d gang up on me to make sure I couldn’t enjoy it in peace. The three of us started most days with a half-laughing, half-serious blanket war.

Eventually, my father’s booming voice would end the chaos, and we’d move on to our morning chores. One of us folded and stored the bedding, another swept and wiped from the top room to the kitchen, and someone swept the yard. These were our jobs while Mom and Dad made breakfast—a small morning ritual of purpose and peace.

Our oldest brother had a nickname: Bbenji-dol, which roughly translates to “Grease Stone”—a name only siblings can give with just the right mix of mockery and affection.

He was in the fifth year of high school and knew he was handsome—and acted like it. His bangs were grown out long enough to sweep over his eyes, always styled to the side with a slick of oil to keep them glossy. This was the late 1990s, nearly 2000, when everyday people didn’t have access to hair gel or fixatives. Most didn’t even know how to use them. But not our brother—he found a way.

His pants were always pressed with razor-sharp creases, and he polished the white lines on his sneakers constantly, never letting a speck of dirt stay long. He wasn’t exactly the genius our father was once rumored to be, but he still wore a badge on his arm: the "academic monitor" of his class. It meant he checked his classmates’ homework and helped anyone who was falling behind in their grades. In our family of three siblings, he was clearly the best-looking and the most academically successful. So, of course, Mom and Dad were always on his side.

Meanwhile, my younger brother and I were the ones scrubbing floors and hauling trash. But somehow, we were the ones getting yelled at more often. As for the oldest? He just had to pretend to help, and our parents would beam with pride like he’d moved mountains. So naturally, my younger brother and I gave him a nickname that fit just right.

If my oldest brother had the kind of beauty that leaned almost feminine—delicate, composed, polished—then our middle brother had a very different kind of charm: solid, stoic, unmistakably masculine. There was something earthy and grounded about him, like someone carved out of loyalty and stubbornness more than ambition or style.

While our eldest was pressing his pants and perfecting his bangs, our middle brother spent his high school years sinking three-pointers and sweating it out on the basketball court. Studying? That was never really his thing. What he did have was loyalty—fierce, absolute, sometimes reckless. If a friend needed him, he showed up, fists first and questions later. And that kind of loyalty got him into trouble—big trouble.

He became notorious for getting into fights—group brawls, really. And not the kind you could just laugh off after school. He was so “loyal” that he ended up at the center of more than one school-wide rumble, becoming a frequent face on the school’s public discipline stage, where students were paraded for criticism. Eventually, he went too far. He was labeled the ringleader in a group fight and was thrown in jail. Not juvie. Jail.

At the time, I was still a student at the same school. You can imagine how I felt. I could barely lift my head in the hallways. Watching him dragged across the school stage or hearing his name in whispers made my stomach twist. It wasn’t just embarrassment—it was despair. He was my brother, but I wanted to disappear when people connected me to him.

But worse than my shame was the pain I knew my father must have felt. Our grandfather had disappeared during the war, and that ghost had haunted my father’s life ever since—cutting short his chances, his path, his dignity. So my father, determined to break the cycle, lived his life spotless. Every job he applied for, every move he made, was a step away from the past and toward something better. He wrote his resume like a man writing a promise to the world: “I am not the son of a lost cause.”

And yet here was his own son—our middle brother—smearing that carefully written promise with reckless fists and a prison sentence. It was as if all of Father’s clean pages had been torn and scribbled over with a single thoughtless act. And still, as a family, we lived with it, no matter how heavy it made the air around our dinner table, or how tightly we laced our silence when his name came up in front of guests.

Even though my younger brother and I once teamed up to give our eldest brother his infamous nickname, the truth is, we were never really on the same side. He and I were like North and South—always part of the same family, but somehow never truly united.

The two of them—my brothers—were constantly scheming about how to ditch me and have their own fun, while I spent my afternoons trying to figure out how to stay close to them. When the adults were away during the day, sneaking into their world became my daily mission. I’d lurk near their rooms, pretend to pass by casually, or offer a snack like a peace treaty. Most of the time, I was just hoping they’d let me in.

My eldest brother was clever like a fox—he’d strike small deals with me, trade silence for candy or errands, pulling me into his orbit with a wink and a whisper. My middle brother, on the other hand, was blunt and loud. He didn’t bother with tricks. He’d just bark at me to get lost. And when that happened, I found myself choosing the cunning fox over the honest brute. I ignored the middle brother completely—and that drove him mad.

So mad, in fact, that he’d throw punches—not at me, but into the air, sometimes even toward me. But that’s when our oldest would step in, catching fists, blocking blows, and suddenly, the real fight would break out. The kind of fight no one could stop. Even the neighborhood adults would watch from a distance, unwilling to get involved. When those two went at it, it wasn’t just roughhousing—it was war.

And the worst part? The fights were usually my fault. I was the cause. The little sister who stirred the pot and watched it boil over. I knew it. I knew I was the spark in most of their fires. But still, it meant something—something big—to have my eldest brother pick my side. When he stood in front of me, shielding me with his lanky arms and sharp tongue, I felt invincible. I knew I was the problem, but I also knew I mattered.

What I feared most wasn’t my brother’s temper—it was his fists when our eldest brother wasn’t around to stop him. Without that shield, I had no chance of escaping the bruises. And when those punches landed, they didn’t just hurt—they marked me. My face, my eyes, would turn blue and purple, and that was the part that truly scared me.

My mother’s scolding didn’t do much to protect me, though she tried in her own way. “If you have to hit her,” she’d say to my brother, “hit her legs or her backside—she’s a girl! Why the face?”

It wasn’t exactly helpful. But I still felt a twisted kind of joy watching him get scolded. There he was, in front of Mom, looking like he was about to die of guilt and shame—and I stood behind her, mimicking his crumpled expression like a little clown, savoring every second.

Why? Because every time I had been the one crying, being yelled at and punished, he would mock me too. Today was finally my chance. My moment to turn the tables and serve the revenge I had been saving up in my little heart.

But what I didn’t expect was what happened that evening.

Instead of exploding in anger or plotting a comeback, my brother quietly handed me a raw egg. He didn’t say much—just pressed it into my palm, mumbling that it would help the swelling on my cheek go down. That egg, small and cold in my hand, did more than ease the bruise. It made me feel… loved.

And suddenly, just like that, he looked different to me. He didn’t look like the bully I had feared earlier that day. He looked like my brother—someone who cared, in his own rough and awkward way.

In North Korea, an egg has always been a precious thing. Back then, and even now. So when my brother gave me one, just for my bruise, it felt like a gift far more valuable than it looked. And for that brief moment, he wasn’t the brother who hit me—he was the brother who chose kindness.

When I turned twelve, everything changed.

My brilliant older brother—the one who teachers said should skip straight into university—made a decision no one saw coming.

Instead of following his homeroom teacher’s advice to pursue higher education, he joined the military as required.

After graduating high school, he became a Unification Soldier—a regular conscript in North Korea’s mandatory military service, where he pledged ten years in uniform under the name of “reunifying North and South Korea.”

The day he left for the army, we all went to the train station. It wasn’t just a farewell—it was a sea of people. Everywhere you looked, there were parents, grandparents, siblings, schoolmates, and teachers crowding around the platform, each clutching tightly to the hands of the young men boarding the train. The air was thick with emotion.

When the train began to pull away, it felt like the entire station collapsed into weeping. The new soldiers cried. Their parents cried. Strangers cried. And there was good reason for it. Everyone there knew: some of these goodbyes might be final.

Although technically, soldiers could come home once or twice during their ten years of service if awarded special recognition or leave, in reality, it almost never happened—especially for families like ours who were poor. Even when a leave was granted, many declined to go home. Why? Because when they returned, the military officers expected them to bring gifts—rice, clothes, money—luxuries they couldn’t afford. And if they showed up empty-handed, they'd be punished in ways both visible and invisible.

During those ten years, some young men died in accidents. Others lost parents while they were away. Life happened, and they missed it.

Back then in North Korea, all boys were expected to go to the army after graduating high school. But there was still a small exception: if you were a top student, you could be selected for university instead. My older brother had that chance. And he turned it down.

The following year, my middle brother also left. After completing a year and a half of training at an automotive school, he was assigned to a twelve-year military service as a driver. In North Korea, certain technical positions—drivers, tank operators, lathe machinists—required longer commitments. Some served twelve, even thirteen years, depending on the role.

And just like that, both of my brothers were gone. No one could have known this farewell would last a lifetime.

We said our goodbyes with a kind of hopeful hopelessness—knowing we might not see each other again for years, maybe ever. But still, we hoped.