Kim Soo Rim’s was born in Seoul and her parents divorced when she was just 2 years old. Her father left her at a distant relative’s house in the countryside. She lost her hearing completely when she was six due to an illness, and her mother, who left in search of work, came back four years later with a sibling from a different father. Kim followed her mother to Japan after finishing elementary school and was left in the care of a Japanese friend of her mother’s.

Kim Soo Rim now is hearing impaired but can speak 4 languages – Korean, Japanese, English and Spanish fluently and understand all four languages simply by lip reading.

She learned Japanese in order to survive before moving on to conquer other languages. After graduating from high school in 1991, she spent two years in a language exchange program in the U.K. She returned to Japan, graduated from a two-year college and landed a job at a paper manufacturer. But she suffered bouts of depression four years later and decided to go traveling to rediscover her passion for life. This took her on a three-year journey through 30 countries, during which time she picked up Spanish.

Her naturally active personality allowed her to overcome the hardships she faced in life. The story of how she learned English is deeply moving. “In order to familiarize myself with the sound ‘I,’ I touched my teacher’s mouth and neck with my hand and mimicked the tongue’s movement, the vibration of the throat, the intensity of [the teacher's] breathing and how the teeth touched together,” Kim said. “I repeated that sound all day so that I wouldn’t forget it.”

Her impressive language skills finally landed her a job at Goldman Sachs, where she earned a license to become an investment advisor.

Kim Su-rim, who is dubbed “Helen Keller of Korea,” recently released the Korean-language version of her autobiography, which was first published in Japanese in April last year.

New Source – Chosun Iblo
Image Source – Daum Blog