A teenager gave his coat away. It came back 30 years later.

A black winter coat, given to a crying schoolgirl thirty years ago, was returned this year to the teenager who offered it. Norihisa Koyama was a Japanese high school student during the "hanbok slashing incidents" of the 1980s and 1990s, when ethnic Korean girls in Japan had their traditional uniforms cut open with knives in public. Koyama saw one such student crouched and weeping. "I knew something was seriously wrong," he said. He gave her his brand new coat, bought by his parents, so she could cover herself and get home. He forgot about it. She did not. His full name was written inside. She kept the coat for three decades, and recognized his name this year in a newspaper story about his charity work. Koyama, now 50, runs a nonprofit supporting single mothers and struggling families. The Korean artist Park Chung-moon, who once painted the torn uniforms, invited him to his Tokyo office in June. Koyama brought the coat.