Tara Sullivan , NorthJerseyPublished 10:57 a.m. ET May 11, 2017 | Updated 1 hour ago
At first, it was the confusion. Then it was the loneliness.
Lost in this new American world, Younghoe Koo did his best to navigate the halls of Ridgewood’s Benjamin Franklin Middle School. But the sixth-grader didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the customs and didn’t, perhaps worst of all, know a soul. The lack of connection to kids his own age had built an imposing barrier from his old life in South Korea to his new one in New Jersey, cacophonous confusion by day, quiet solitude by night.