Yi-Jun Misang

There’s a photograph I keep folded in my wallet—creased and faded, the edges curling like dry leaves. It was taken in 1974, the last day I saw my younger brother. I was 25, he was 20, and we were standing in front of a bakery near Mapo, grinning like idiots, our arms around each other. He left for Germany the next week to work in a coal mine. He promised to come back rich. He never did.

Now I’m 76 and live in a quiet apartment in Seoul’s Jongno district, South Korea. My children think I’m doing fine, that I spend my days watching television and going for walks in the park. But I spend most days sitting at my small table, staring at that photograph and wondering what really happened.

A letter arrived in the spring of 1975. A single page in German, forwarded through some embassy contact. I had it translated. There’d been an accident in the shaft. Three Korean workers died. My brother was listed among them. There was no body sent home. Just a name on a form and an apology.

For years, I didn’t believe it. I wrote to German officials, Korean consulates, even a Catholic church in Essen. No one could tell me more. My parents died believing he would one day walk back through the door. But I began to accept it—until last year, when I received a phone call from a stranger in Busan. A woman. She said she believed her father might have been my brother. He had returned to Korea in 1990, sick and broken, unwilling to reconnect with anyone from his past. He had changed his name, lived in a coastal town, and worked on fishing boats.

He had died two years ago. She found the photograph of us in a metal box. That same photo. My photo.

I met her last winter. She has his eyes. We spoke for hours. Cried a little. She gave me the photograph. Said she thought he’d always wanted to come home—but never found the strength.

Now, every evening, I light incense beside the photo. I whisper to it in the quiet.
“You came home after all.”