How to Prevent the Tragedy of a Love Triangle Scandal

I remember this day 10 years ago. It was a day I’ve never forgotten. And it is also the day of ‘tomorrow’, which I gave up 10 years later because I was afraid to face it.

I don’t know why I came back to today. The day I fell off the Han River bridge was definitely yesterday.

Today was the day I received a notification of acceptance from Seoyeon High School, which I wanted to go so much, and it was the day when my parents died after being hit by a drunk driving vehicle that drove in the opposite direction.

So yesterday may have been my last happiness.

I couldn’t help but be dissatisfied with the world because the two people who had been careful about everything and put safety first all their lives died like that.

So naturally yesterday became my last happy day, and today became my least favorite day.

Because on this day, my life was thrown into the gutter.

Shortly after my parents died, I went down to the street. There wasn’t much money the two of them had saved up. I had start working right away.

I naturally gave up going to Seoyeon High School because I couldn’t afford the expensive tuition.

Instead, I went to a general high school near my new house. It has been a long time since I gave up my dream of going to a prestigious university and becoming a journalist.

I first encountered cigarettes in my freshman year of high school, and I first stepped into the police station. And it wasn’t the last time. Deviance has become my daily routine.

I dropped out when I was a sophomore in high school. I worked part-time here and there for a year and earning a day to live.

She seems to have matured even belatedly because she lived a difficult life.

At some point, I started to cry every night because I was sorry for my parents.

It’s only been two years since they left me, and I’m so ashamed and guilty of ruining my life in two years.

So after that, I lived looking at one thing: Becoming a journalist. It was the road my parents and I once walked together.

I started reliving our dreams again by myself.

After taking *GED and *CSAT, I entered a small university on the outskirts of Seoul late. But I couldn’t even dream of graduating. The tuition has only increased the debt.
(TLN: *General Equivalency Diploma: an official document. that is given to someone who did not complete high school (= school for students aged 15 to 18) but who has passed a test that shows they have similar skills to someone who did.
*Scholastic Aptitude Test and later, Scholastic Assessment Test.)

Because of this, I had to live a life that feels like dying. Still, I worked hard. I worked at convenience stores at night, factories, and everything.

What I got as a result was a broken body, broken health, and cancer.

On the day I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I increased my part-time job.

To pay back the money I borrowed from my benefactor and die.

I struggled alone for 10 years, but the world eventually pushed me over the narrow railing of the Han River bridge.

I collapsed like a sand castle that couldn’t beat the waves. It was pushed down and broken.

A reacquired life. If I’m really given another chance, I’ll take it.

I’ll grab it and stand up. I’ll come to life.




* * *





As soon as I got my new life, I stopped my parents from dying.

Originally, Dad would have rushed out of the house with mom after receiving a mysterious phone call from Uncle Taeyoung. He would have died driving on the road and been on the news.

And I would have been crying my eyes out with my mom and dad’s picture by now.

But I’m leaning on the window frame in my room and enjoying the chilly wind of winter night blowing through the window.

I heard that Uncle Taeyoung was my dad’s old friend. He was a very close person, but now he doesn’t contact Dad, and he’s living with the thought that ‘no news is good news’.

Either way, I’m not interested, and I blocked Uncle Taeyoung’s number from my dad’s cellphone. The saved number was also deleted.

No news is good news, so may mutual ignorance be good news for each other.

Honestly, wouldn’t Taeyoung be happier with no news than with his friend’s funeral?

A blizzard of winter, evening when the sun was setting. My dad’s cell phone didn’t ring and my family was able to finish my Seoyeon High School entrance celebration party safely.

‘First of all, I achieved my first goal.’

Preventing my parents from dying means that my life itself will be different in the future.

I’m happy just to be able to stay with my parents, but I’ll be able to enter Seoyeon High School, and I’ll be able to become a journalist and fulfill my mother’s wish.

‘Can I really be a journalist?’

Can I bring out the dream that I had buried in my heart again?

I didn’t close the window. I didn’t want to fall asleep drunk with the warm air in the room. Because I might not be able to open my eyes again.

Instead, I went to the front of the desk, took the chair out and sat down. Then she reached out and took the diary from the bookshelf. It was a diary that I made when I was young, nurturing my dream of becoming a journalist.

I called it the Mina Times. I know it’s crazy cheesy, but like a habit, I used this name until I was 26.

And when I was 26 years old, I named it in a notebook where I wrote articles. It was used to practice writing articles with my own hands whenever there was an interesting issue in society.

Because of this practice, it seems that 10 years of social issues have a bigger stake in my head than my last 10 years of life.

I turned over the red cover and scanned the contents. The 16-year-old Mina Times was more of a scrapbook. Rather than social writings, most of them were movies, book reviews, restaurants, snacks, and travel destinations.

I smiled for a moment at my old writings and held up my pen. I wrote the date first on the new page and then the biggest event that happened today.


‘Lee Mina, reborn.’


Below that, she also wrote an article congratulating herself on passing Seoyeon High School in the same size.

My head, which used to be inclined to think, turned. I came up with a wonderful new goal for my new life.

Wouldn’t it be better to study hard and be filial to your parents since you’re born again?

I turned over the next page and began to write clearly.

‘Goal: Seoyeon High School Scholarship!’

However, another memory that immediately came to mind forced me to throw my pen and cover this article with a correction.

I gripped my hair with both hands and groaned.

There is an incident that should have come to mind when I heard ‘Seoyeon High School’, but I forgot.

Whether it was the joy of passing or the joy of reunion, I was fascinated by something and missed what anyone of my generation should have thought of!

The scholarship is a waiver. It’s impossible. It’s not mine in the first place.

I picked up my pen again and moved my hand slowly. The nib began to slide gently over the dry correction fluid.


‘Yeon Ha-eun.’


The owner of a full three-year scholarship And 10 years later, the main protagonist of the incidents that caused a stir in Korea.

I wrote two more names next to the name.


‘Kang Moo Yeol. Min Siwoo.’


At the age of 26, I wrote an article about them in the Mina Times and gave this title.


‘The triangle relationship scandal involving the elite from Seoyeon High School.’


The biggest issue of the year that overturned Korea.

It all started at Seoyeon High School this year.

Yeah, my head which used to be inclined to think, turned.

I thought of a good idea.



* * *




Yeon Ha-eun was a legend in the entertainment industry, who accidentally showed her face on the camera, caught the public’s attention at once with her outstanding looks, and made her debut as an actress at the age of 20.

After graduating from a prestigious private high school, taking a leave of absence from a prestigious university, her appearance is the best, the acting skills is the best, and the work perspective is the best.

But the perfect woman lacked one thing, and it was a shame, everyone said in unison.

It was only one scandal that brought down the tower of her hard work, which had been at the top of the entertainment industry for six years and had never had a romantic relationship.

It was also a ‘love triangle scandal’.

The scandal was huge enough to cover up the bizarre murder of a doctor, which was a social issue at the time, with a single article.

Because it was to the extent of adorning all the titles of the news, entertainment and social aspects.

Kang Moo-yeol, one of the scandal’s opponents, was the young successor to Seyong Group, and Min Si-woo, another opponent, was the best Korean film director. They were even the investor and director of the movie Yeon Ha-eun was starring at, which was being filmed at the time.

The suspicions about the relationship between the first three began with an exclusive article by a reporter from a famous online newspaper.

Kang Moo-yeol, who hired Yeon Ha-eun as an advertising model for Seyong Electronics since the beginning of her debut, and director Min Si-woo, who cast Yeon Ha-eun, a rookie, and recorded a box office record of 10 million viewers and sent them to *Cannes. It was an article containing suspicions that it was a coincidence that these three were alumni at Seoyeon High School.
(*Cannes, a resort town on the French Riviera, is famed for its international film festival.)

Journalists then began interviewing and covering the three graduates of the same year.

And again, the three have been quite famous since 10 years ago, and it turned out to be a scandal that had already spread widely among Seoyeon High School alumni.

In this way, the deep love triangle of 10 years, which continues to come out even if it’s delved into one at a time, has been ranked No. 1 on the search list for almost a month. Every day new articles and statements are posted on the Internet.

Of course, I think there must have been some stories in it that were just rumors. But they all had one thing in common.

The two famous men, Kang Moo-yeol and Min Si-woo, were trapped in Yeonha Eun’s *fishery for 10 years.
(*it’s an idiom where the guys are the fish and they’re in Yeonha Eun’s fishing ground/she keeps them on hook)

However, while Yeon Ha-eun was everyone’s greatest concern during the scandalous month, I wasn’t an expert in this case.(In fact, at the time, there were not only one or two experts who wrote a thesis on this case. They even wrote articles that differentiated facts from rumors.)

First, I was too busy living. Because of a murderous part-time job schedule and cancer and money.

Second, I was the type who looked more carefully at the social aspect than the entertainment aspect. It was a different case that I paid attention to at the time.

Third, without seeing the end of the tumultuous month, I threw myself into the Han River water.

For this reason, the scandal was forced to take up a small portion of the Mina Times, despite being the top public concern for a month.

But I want to know more. A century-long scoop. As a journalist, I can’t deny that it’s an extremely tempting event.

I drew a red circle a couple of times on top of the letter ‘Yeon Ha-Eun’.

Wouldn’t I be the first to publish an article if I did well?