Chung Kun Lim was born in 1944 in Jeonju, her childhood shaped by the displacement of the Korean War and the constant threat of bombings. As the seventh of eight daughters, she was raised under strict discipline in a society that traditionally prioritized male heirs—a reality she felt deeply when her mother’s hard-won educational legacy was eventually inherited by male relatives rather than the daughters who helped build it. A talented soprano, Chung Kun majored in vocal music at Sookmyung Women’s University—she jokes about how all her crying must have trained her vocal chords—before immigrating to the United States in 1966.

Jean Yoon Kwon was born in Seoul, Korea, during the Japanese occupation. Although she was born in Seoul, Jean Yoon spent her early childhood in Pyongyang, where her father worked as a regional manager for a bank; she recalls playing with her siblings by the banks of the Taedong river, as well as accompanying her father on night strolls to Morangbong hill.

David Soon Ho Kwon was born in 1936 in Kyoto, Japan, to a mother who worked as an assistant for a Japanese aristocrat. From his early childhood years, he recalls the day-to-day discrimination faced by Koreans living in Japan, from being denied healthcare at the hospital, to being the first medics which the Japanese Empire shipped off to serve in the treacherous Pacific front.

Born in Korea during the Japanese occupation, Reverend Chang Soon Lee reflects on a life shaped by faith, displacement, and pastoral care amid the upheavals of colonial rule, war, and migration.

Born in 1938 in the countryside of Icheon, Korea, In Sook reflects on a childhood marked by both natural beauty and the disruptions of war.

Jae Hee Jun was born in a small rural village in South Chungcheong Province called Mongiya shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War.