Thirty years after the events of August 1996, an archival exhibition brings back memories that had remained unspoken among old friends. Walking through Yonsei University, I find myself moving between memory and silence, until an unexpected glimpse of the present makes me smile.

Every December, there's someone who comes to mind. "Auntie Rudy," who was a friend to every member of our family when we lived in Iraq during my childhood. She was a Korean nurse dispatched to Germany who married a German man, adopted a son named Rudy from Korea, and raised a well-mannered large dog the color of toasted rice. She was a walking bundle of stories and laughter.

They say everything "K" is a trend these days. K-pop, K-beauty, K-food, and so on. I imagine the people who built all that from the ground up must feel enormously proud — but from where I stand, as someone on the receiving end of the phenomenon, it all feels a little strange.

Probably because I remember being teased at an international school as a child. This was when we were living in Iraq, which was at war with Iran. What bothered me, simply, was coming from a country nobody had heard of. So whenever I met new friends, I would say I was from Korea — "that small country between China and Japan."