Dear Chaemin,
What does it mean that we were raised as sisters in South Korea? Chaemin, I always thought we were different.1 We’ve had completely different wardrobes, MP3 playlists, bookmark bars, and secrets… I never explained why I left home when you were 13. This letter is for the in-betweens of now and then, and here and there.2
My oldest memory is of the Minnie Mouse bracelets. Do you remember? We wore child loss prevention bracelets with a flat pendant each engraved with our name and Resident Registration Number (RRN) until our wrists grew out of them.3
I was excited by the launch of Pinch a few years ago. I met words that I needed to hear and sentences with strength. It made me want to write, but that required my gender to be verified with RRN. Written by women. Written only by women.4 I closed the window. I only realized here that I took RRNs for granted, and also that the first person to be assigned one was Park Chung-hee. 110101-100001. Yuk Young-soo, the First Lady of the dictatorship, was assigned 110101-200002. The South Korean government divided all citizens into 1’s and 2’s since then.5
A nationalized living that is managed almost completely since the registered birth. (Hong 2007)6 To go to school, to open a bank account, to see a doctor, to make a mobile phone number, to get a passport, to vote last week, and to buy facemasks this week. Our grandma, uncles, and Suji changed their names online, but to cross over the boundaries (Stryker 2008) of 1 and 2 needs to be sterilized, go through surgery, get divorced, stay childless, find testifiers, write letters and wish luck with the judge. (조각보 2019)7 Jihyun decides to stay at home without facemasks.8
I think a lot of the protests that banned cameras and promised facemasks.9 Like Jihyun and I, People were done with checking screws and knobs of public bathrooms and covering holes with toilet paper. Thousands of people gathered in my neighborhood every other week. This protest only invites biological women.10 I remember the neighborhood cafe Jihyun and I had coffee in silence that day. The bitter weight of living in Seoul was too heavy for me.11
Peru and Panama introduced lockdown by gender. Women and men can go out on alternate days. The Interior Minister of Panama says it is the simplest mechanism. I’m dizzy.12 Why do we need to know that Patient Seocho-36 is a woman? Would she have faced the same backlash for having been to Starbucks every day if not? Then Patient Yongin-66. I sighed out loud when I read on the case from clubs in Itaewon. They quarantined 10,905 people traced with mobile phone connection and debit/credit card records. Kukmin Daily reported an exclusive arguing Covid-19 can be contained when homosexual activities are traced.13 King Seoul’s Instagram account is gone and Trunk is private. Hoon told me, in Itaewon and Jongno, gay bars and restaurants are closed while the straight ones are bustling.14 Why should our citizenship be proved with our absence? (터울 2020)15
I had to take a break after writing this far. I headed out for the weekly groceries to face a stranger who yelled Corona at me. I rushed to Albert Heijn but kept hearing my heartbeat in my ears. I return to the same question: why should our health be proved with our absence? Sooyoung my classmate, Jimin my Instagram friend, and Soyeon in Berlin all left to Korea. I — We — should be, or decide to be, absent.16
I’m thinking of the quarantine app that will trace my GPS in our parents’ house in Cheongdo.17 That house never had our room. The journals from elementary school are stacked in a Korea Post box. The novel I transcribed when I was 18 is maybe in a potato box. What about the Minnie Mouse bracelets? Nobody knows which box is which. Chaemin, that was why I decided to remain here.18
It’s raining a lot here, but I guess Seoul is entering its summer.
Wishing you a peaceful summer without trouble,
Chaeyuen

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서지컬스틸

경향신문, 1968-11-21

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