Elisa Shua Dusapin

He sounded different, further away, a distant echo from a body left on the other side of the world.

Eventually he stopped in front of a display of leather helmets and asked me to translate a sign.

It gave a summary of the conflict between the two Koreas that began in 1950, the North supported by the Soviets and China, the South by the US and the United Nations, the signing of the armistice on 27 July 1953 and the creation of this frontier on the 38th parallel, the world’s most heavily militarised border, in the midst of a no man’s land four kilometres wide and 238 kilometres in length. In the course of those three years, two to four millions deaths, both civilian and military. No peace treaty had ever been signed.

What matters is the light. It shapes what you see

Why was I bothering to drive him to the border? I was giving up my time for him. I wasn’t sure he deserved it.

Why was I bothering to drive him to the border? I was giving up my time for him. I wasn’t sure he deserved it.

told me he missed me but didn’t ask how I was.

‘I like it this way, unadorned.’

That was Sokcho, always waiting, for tourists, boats, men, spring.

Our beaches are still waiting for the end of a war that’s been going on for so long people have stopped believing it’s real.

They build hotels, put up neon signs, but it’s all fake, we’re on a knife-edge, it could all give way any moment. We’re living in limbo. In a winter that never ends