What Han Sung-ok death has meant to me

The exact date of Han Sung-ok’s and hersix-year old son death is unknown, but the sad reality is that their bodies lay in their apartment for over two months and were only discovered when someone came to read the water meter. Han Sung-ok’s story appeared on my BBC News app this morning and has really had an impact on my thought process moving me to write this blog post. I read the news almost every morning, and as I am sure you are all aware there is a lot of not so positive news out there – the Amazon Rainforest fires is concerning for all of us who care about climate change and the future of our planet; the news from Kashmir echoes the ongoing conflicts in many places where colonial processes continue to leave their mark; refugees fleeing their homes facing the perils of the Mediterranean ought to have us all reflect on how lucky we are to have a home unaffected by war and direct climate change; attempts to buy Greenland might be considered laughable but sadly speak to continuing processes of power and need to control resources.

Yet somehow Han Sung-ok’s story impacted me on a very personal level: it left me thinking about my blog entry from a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about avoiding the time trap and the ‘what ifs’. It also left me thinking about two of the three-word phrases that I sense are the hardest for us as humans to say out loud, “I need help” and “I feel alone”. I would encourage you to return to the entry from August 13th on reflecting on the passing of time because in the article on Han Sung-ok others asked themselves those “what if” questions, but the reality is they didn’t before and now Han Sung-ok and her son are dead. What can we all learn moving forward? People in Seoul are questioning how in a city of 10 million this could happen to a young woman who has survived escaping North Korea and travelling through China. We will never know the full details of what happened or what led to this tragedy, but what stayed with me about the article was the focus on the fact that this would never have happened in North Korea (according to people interviewed for the piece). The interviewees contended that in North Korea there is more a sense of community, and that someone would have reached out to Han Sung-ok. Yet in the ‘modern’ metropolis of 10 million people that is Seoul Han Sung-ok was totally alone. There is no point in asking “what if”, what the people of Seoul need to ask themselves is how can we move forward and learn from this. I also add that Sung-ok’s story is far from unique, I remember the story of a young women in Ireland while I was living there during my PhD who died from hyperthermia because she could not afford to pay the heating bill. She too was found in her apartment a number of days after her death. In an increasing virtually connected world, we are losing so much of the fundamental day-to-day community which one needs to feel a part of life. It is not always about being with close friends, family or a partner sometimes it is just about having a person on the bus smile at you, it is about the banter with a shop keeper, it is ultimately about being seen and having your existence acknowledged.

The second more personal reason that Han Sung-ok’s story resonated with me is that these two phrases have at times in my life, been such a struggle for me. These two three-word phrases with such basic grammatical structures are two of the hardest phrases I have had to utter so far in my own life. I have no idea what Han Sung-ok was going through or what her motivation was for not reaching out to people she knew or authorities in Seoul, but I can relate (if she felt this way) to how hard it can be to ask for help. There is of course no gender element to needing help, as humans we all do, but I speak to it from my own experience as a woman and how I was brought up. Vulnerability, I perceived growing up, was a weakness and emotions associated with needing support should be kept close to your chest. Survival was based on pushing vulnerability and emotional needs to one side and just “getting on with it”. If there was a problem then there was always a practical solution that could be found. In doing all of this I lost touch with my body (my gut feelings so to speak) and so much was intellectualized and through this process ‘solved’. What this led to was an inability to admit a need for emotional support, even from myself.

I don’t want this post to be seen as somehow about me because I have embraced my emotional body’s needs and love her with every breath. I do want to use it to highlight what finally uttering those two ‘simple’ phrases has meant in my life. I am thinking of the support I have received from family and close friends when I ask for emotional help. I know how wonderful it feels when those close to me feel they can share with me their emotional vulnerability. I appreciate the sense of never being ‘alone’ even as I live alone and spend a lot of time in my own company. Alone time is so important to each of us as people, it is during this time that we grow and replenish our souls, but it is also important that we do not feel a sense of somehow being alone in the world. It is important to also acknowledge that we can feel this deep dread and sense of being ‘alone’ even when surrounded by people, and this comes from our own lack of ability to reach out.

What would I like you to take from my stream of consciousness arising from Han Sung-ok’s death? Two things: firstly, the simple act of really seeing other people around you – saying hello with a smile on your face. Some on the bus might think you are weird for smiling or saying hello, but you might make another person’s day because you really ‘saw’ them. Think of how you feel when someone sees you, says hello to you, catches your eye on the street and smiles – it makes such a difference. Secondly, please do make my mistake – reach out, ask for help, practice saying the words out loud in front of the mirror first if you need to, but please ask. If there is someone in your life right now who you know is struggling, know that you cannot ‘fix’ them or compel them to accept your help. What you can do is let them know you are there, send them a smile emoji (I know a virtual connection but so many people I love are physically very far away), have empathy for their journey, and most of all teach them self-love through loving yourself.      

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