Life presents chances to individuals where one can notice that opportunity and seize it up or let it unknowingly pass to regret it later. For me this great chance is to be able to attend Han Dong Global University. Both my parents are Korean; I have an older brother who was born in Korea and a younger sister who was born in Malaysia. I am a middle child, a middle child who was born in Singapore and at the age of three moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The process of coming to Korea and how I met God is a long one but I’ll try to start from the very beginning and try to fill in everything. My childhood is rather a blur to me, but I remember that my family use to be very wealthy, my father held a very high position job at LG, I remember that we had many cars ranging from Volvo to Mercedes Benz and big family trips all around the world during vacations. My parents enrolled my brother and me in to well known school in South-East-Asia, called International School of Kuala Lumpur or A.K.A ISKL.

Now I’m 7 years old and things were still looking pretty good, back then my dad was still working for LG and it was supposed to the last year in Malaysia, the contract with the company was that we move every few years to another country, that exact year my mom became pregnant with my sister. Through my sister my parents saw a whole different vision for us. I didn’t realize until recently that if it wasn’t for my sister, no one in my family would be the great people they are today and I am grateful. In the end, my dad quit his job at LG and started running his own company. Long story short, things were good for a couple of years after until his business partner one day decided that the company was going down and took all the money that was left and fled to another country.

Around this time I was in ending my middle school year and going up in to high school as a freshman and my brother was going up as a sophomore, and my sister was going to be attending elementary school. What you have to know is that my father is a man with dignity, he doesn’t like shame and he always wants to be considered some “class” this was why, although when we had nothing he would always try to act like he had “something” it was difficult this way for us especially when my dad would “want” to pay for expensive meals or use it to buy electronics that we didn’t even need. To the side note, my family is a 4th generation Christian in Korea, when I went to church on a weekly basis, but I got the wrong kind of idea. I became cold towards God and resentful to Him every bad turn in my life. Things were getting really out of hand for my family by the end of that year and my father came to Korea first to look for a job. The four of us stayed back in KL. Sadly, my dad couldn’t find a job so eventually things started to fall apart. The tuition for the school I went to is unbelievably expensive, it is roughly about 59,000RM per year for a single high school student. Trying to support me and my brother as high school students would be 118,000RM (2.75RM=1000won). You would be wondering why my father just didn’t enroll us in to a cheaper local school or we just didn’t move back to Korea. For my brother and I moving back to Korea would have been disastrous, we both had a full American based education and adjusting would have been nearly impossible. Also changing to local school was something my dad couldn’t do because of his pride, and he just wanted my brother and me to complete the education that we started. Halfway through my sophomore year, the apartment we lived in became a show room, people came in and auctioned for furniture.

Eventually, my dad couldn’t pay for my brother and my education bills he couldn’t support the family (we were borrowing money from relatives and then eventually the Korean government he also took huge loans trying to start multiple other companies as well but they all fell apart), this was when my mother also came back to Korea with my sister (whom I feel the most embarrassed, she was willing enough to come back to Korea for the sake of me and my brother). My brother and I moved to a temporary home stay. My mother who had prior experience as a nurse was able to find a stable job very quickly. She made roughly 175만원 to 200만원 a month, with this she was supporting the family in Korea, and trying to pay off loans as well as give pocket to my brother and me. Back in Malaysia the temporary home stay that we were in was a place where my brother and I would change forever, we had to live a secluded life (the school rule is if there is no guardian with the student attending the school it would result in expulsion), we had to live a hungry life, the home owners would not give us food (it was on the contract when my parents signed it) we would be getting meals once every 2 days or 3 days.

This was the time when I realized how meaningless life was and how much easier it would have been if I had just died, how easier it would have been for my parents to have a burden wiped out. At 15 years old I fell in to depression and suicidal thoughts. I was planning to end my life after my brother graduated from ISKL, he was a senior and I was a junior during this period we had to live off 6만원 a month. At this point I fell in to alcohol and was a heavy smoker, I was 15 and a half, towards my brothers graduation I became hopeless. My brother graduated successfully, trying extremely hard towards the end and not giving up despite the conditions we were in, he was accepted into many prestigious schools and is now attending a Christian school in Pennsylvania. My brother came back to Korea to join my parent and sister before he went to the states. I was alone in Malaysia and I was somewhat happy to know that the place where I was going to end my life was the place that I grew up in. I went in to school the next day, and as I walked around the campus I felt as if there was someone with me the whole time an unexplainable feeling. I sat down near my deck and I prayed to God (my first prayer in a very long time) I prayed that I was sorry, to watch over my parents and that I hoped that he would understand why I would want to end my life and that I couldn’t see the point in living anymore. My school Counselor who heard half my prayer came and sat down with me and we talked. We talked for a about an hour, I talked to her about what my family had been going through for the past few years, and how it was stressful to keeping a secret. I didn’t know at the time and I don’t know why I did it still today, how I could tell a complete stranger all these painful things that I even kept secret from my best friend. We finished talking and she took me home. It was until later that day I received a phone call from that counselor, how she and her husband would like me to spend my last year with them, they also explained how they would help fund my High school tuitions until graduation, and this is a person who I talked with for just a bit over an hour! This was how it was arranged for me to have a successful senior year as well, also the first time that I experienced God through another person. I got accepted in to all the prestigious art school that I applied to.

I don’t know what happened my senior year but I know it wasn’t luck that got me that far. During this time I also quit drinking and smoking as well! After graduation, I came back to Korea to join my family. I must have been blind and ignorant during my senior year or just plain greedy to never realize what a difficult life my family had to endure. When I walked in to my “Korean” home I was smiling but I felt like I was stabbed in the heart. To see your family live in tiny one room flat while I lived a somewhat luxurious life back in Malaysia is not something anyone could take lightly. The very next day I started looking for part time jobs. I was grateful to be able to work at McDonalds (I was under aged; it was hard to find any other job). At McDonalds it was hard for me to adjust to the sudden change in language, so I was in change or clearing the 3~4tons of stock that came in four times a week, I worked 8 hours a day and worked bonus hours as well leading to a full week at McDonalds. I tried to make enough money so I could fund my tuition overseas. However, it wasn’t something I couldn’t accomplish. At the time I was awestruck to find out that I had to give up university overseas. That was when my father told me to apply to HGU, a Christian school that his friend (a pastor) introduced to him. It was then when a realized that everything was falling in to plans of the Lord. It is impossible trying to understand how the Lord works and trying to predict he will do next. The week before HGU called me in for my interview, my father received a call from a cosmetic agency to be the new CEO (CU-Skin). This company is small; my dad makes about 4,500,000 won a month. Maybe even less but I am grateful I could see all the signs and the reasons for me to attend and HGU and there was a calling the feeling that I HAD to come to this school. Both my parents have a stable job and the debts are not all completely paid but everything is slowly working out. This school isn’t just any school, there is something different here, and something that says His presence is everywhere. I am proud of being a Han Dong student and I believe God prepared me mentally and physically to be in Korea. And 나는 행복하다.

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