My Journey — Part 1: Before I Left Korea

My Journey

— Part 1: Before I Left Korea

A Quick Introduction

Hello everyone. My name is Max. It is not real name but, at least that's what I go by here.

I was born in 1989 in Korea, and this section is where I'll be writing about the journey that eventually brought me to Canada. It's not a short story, and it's definitely not a straight line. But every story has to start somewhere, so let's start from the beginning.

The Kid Who Just Got on a Bus

I've always loved traveling. Not the planned, itinerary-printed, hotel-booked kind — the other kind.

When I was in high school, I packed a few changes of clothes, grabbed my phone and debit card, and left. No destination, no plan. I just got on whatever bus was in front of me, fell asleep, woke up somewhere new, found the nearest PC café to figure out where I actually was, looked around for a bit, then got on another bus and did it all over again. When I needed to sleep, I found a jjimjilbang. When I wanted to move further, I went to the intercity bus terminal and picked somewhere. Ten days, completely alone, entirely improvised.

Looking back, that trip probably says a lot about how I've lived my life since.

The English Problem

I was terrible at English. Genuinely, embarrassingly bad.

Which makes it pretty funny that I now live in Canada and have a non-Korean wife. Life has a sense of humor.

But back then, my English score on the CSAT dragged everything down. My other scores were decent — it was just English that killed me. So instead of staying in Incheon where I grew up, I ended up at a nursing school in a province far from home.

Honestly? It turned out to be one of the better things that happened to me.

Living in the dormitory, I had my first real taste of independence — first drinks, first nights out at clubs, first experience of just being young without much to worry about. Student life there was genuinely fun, and I have zero regrets about ending up there.

The Army — And the Soldier Who Saw Things

Like every Korean man, I went to the military.

I ended up as a new soldier trainer — the guy who teaches recruits how to handle rifles, grenades, gas masks, all of it. Serious work, but the trainees had a way of keeping things interesting.

One of them was a psychic.

In the Korean military, it doesn't matter what you are in civilian life. You show up, you train, you follow orders. But this particular trainee had a habit of talking about ghosts. Our barracks already had no shortage of ghost stories, and he worked through them one by one like he was reading from a personal list — except it never felt like stories. It felt like he was reporting things he was actually seeing.

I was skeptical. Until the night I wasn't.

We were on our way to guard duty. Late, dark, just a few streetlights spaced out along the path. The trainee suddenly stopped — which is not something a recruit does in front of a trainer.

Before I could say anything, he spoke first.

"Sir, I'm sorry — but can we stop for just a moment?"

I told him we couldn't. We were on duty.

"There's something unpleasant ahead," he said quietly. "You might be able to see it because of me."

I was unsettled, but I couldn't show it. So I ignored him and kept moving. And then I saw it.

About two streetlights ahead, something dark was on a tree. The shape was wrong in a way that's hard to explain — it looked like a large shadow clinging to the trunk, limbs wrapped around it, but with extra arms folded across the body. The closest thing I can compare it to is a giant spider embracing the tree, except shaped like a person. The nearby streetlight was flickering, and the shape was moving with it.

We both stopped.

The trainee stepped forward and began murmuring something under his breath. Then the thing unwrapped itself from the tree and disappeared into the dark.

I don't know what I saw that night. I'm not sure I want to. But it was the first — and last — time something like that has ever happened to me.

And Then, My Mother Had an Idea

After the military, I went back to nursing school and finished the semester.

That's when my mother started working on me.

She kept telling me to leave Korea — to travel, to see the world, to experience something beyond what I already knew. She wasn't subtle about it. She brought it up again and again until it stopped feeling like a suggestion and started feeling inevitable.

So eventually, I listened.

That's how this whole thing started.