My one-sided romance with Tae Ho, neither reciprocated nor noticed, matched my relationship with South Korea. When I learned how to read Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and could understand signs and ingredients, my heart sang. Cracks also began to appear in my dealings with Tae Ho. Things began to stabilize in the spring and Tae Ho and I, along with his wife, started hanging out more, getting food or a coffee at Starbucks. His YouTube videos, to which I had begun adding English subtitles (for free, of course), broadcast to the world the Tae Ho that I actually knew.

Source: New York Times September 11, 2020 03:56 UTC