Disney has produced animated movies since 1937, but they are just releasing their first Southeast Asian Disney princess this year. It might have been decades too late, but everyone still celebrated. There is the anticipation around a trailblazing Disney princess that many girls can finally relate to, until the cast list was released. 

Primary school children of colour whose parents do not want to risk them catching the virus at school have no choice but to stay at home and continue their studies virtually. As many of us know from our own experience, online school is significantly inferior to that of in-person. For these more deprived children, it is even worse.

A Sikh boy in an orange turban clutches a photo of a man bearing a striking resemblance to himself. His father stares empty-eyed out of the picture frame, one out of the thousands of farmers who commit suicide yearly due to increasing levels of debt and depression in Punjab. Each of the thousands of women behind him clutch their own photographs, filled with a loved one who is now lost amid agricultural crises and a raging drug epidemic. Their eyes scream with a collective pain.

The three of us sat patiently. It took another several minutes to have our names called to pay. We weren’t residents of Korea, therefore no insurance. But, although I cannot recall the exact price, the vaccines for both my sister and I were much less than a hundred dollars.