[Student Voices] Taking the Subway from New York to Seoul Jihoon Choi (North London Collegiate School Jeju, Year 5) by Jihoon Choi (North London Collegiate School Jeju, Year 5) “The next stop is Grand Central,” the speaker rattled. I exited the cramped subway car to find myself in a dark, boiling corridor. The homeless littered the floor as busy New Yorkers click-clacked around them in heels and work shoes.

The walkway seemed to squeeze smaller and smaller as all kinds of people, tall, short, tattoo-covered, mini-skirted, bushy-bearded, black, white, bumped past me—some smelling like expensive perfume, others like drugs that would get them tossed behind bars in Korea. The train doors closed and it lurched away, exposing walls and metal pillars peeling off or rusting away, weathered with decades of serving Americans quickly but uncomfortably to their destinations. It wasn’t the “grand” golden station that I had imagined.

It was a grave. The NY subway is famed for its tendency to unveil danger at any moment. The latest attacks on the subway include shootings, stabbings, and people being pushed onto the tracks.

I remember it as an unsettling labyrinth filled with trash, the homeless, and strange people. Last summer, when my mom and I were visiting Manhattan, we came across a twentyish woman shouting at her phone as if it was a devil that had murdered her family. Tears were streaming down her face like miniature waterfalls as she shouted “Betrayer!” over and over .