I will be there

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I Will Be There by Kyung-Sook Chin... I Will Be There is a story about young people living through a tragic time. It is also a story of people who find themselves separated, despite the love they hold for one another, because they carry wounds too deep to overcome. People who struggle to be together again. Their story takes place in South Korea during the 1980s and early 1990s, the same period in which I was in my twenties and early thirties. The long-standing dictatorship of Park Chung-hee collapsed, but what replaced it was not freedom, but a new dictatorship led by General Chun Doo-hwan. During that time, young South Koreans, including university students, took to the streets, where they were attacked with tear gas almost every day in their quest for democracy and freedom. That period of turmoil lasted for nearly ten years. Young people take to the streets to protest against the government one day, only to mysteriously disappear the next, while others commit suicide in the streets to voice their dissent. Young men who led the demonstrations died suspiciously in the military during their mandatory service. Without the sacrifice of these young men—who fought and struggled for change—South Korea would not be what it is today. This history is what shapes the atmosphere of the novel "I Will Be There."