K-Bridge #6: Geonwoo Park on Koreans in India, Meeting Royal Families, & Overcoming Crohn's Disease

we searched for some investors potential investors and he knew a guy who was like half a billionaire in Korea basically the kwave inclined rapidly since late

2010s but I heard from the news that India was pretty much the only country that Korean wave could not penetrate when I turned an adult I got diagnosed with crohn's diseases and so basically

it's incurable so G thank you for joining the podcast one of the uh reasons that we had got connected the primary reason is

because I had met Uno uh first week that I arrived in soul and I was impressed at his age of being like 18 how ambitious

he was and I had wondered are there other people like Uno uh kind of in his Network or in his orbit that are also like big picture thinkers and working on

interesting projects and so when he introduced uh the two of us uh I was very curious to kind of pick your brain and enjoyed our chat last time um so

maybe some context for the people that are listening and watching uh could you provide a brief bit of background on who you are and what you're currently up to

in in the UK um so my name is Kon Park I'm born and raised in Korea uh I'm currently an

Imperial College London Computing undergrad student um yeah that's pretty much it and how did you and Uno originally gets uh connected cuz I

remember I I know that you guys haven't been um friends for all all that long um but what was the original way that you

guys um found found each other um this I think it was this may I had to take some recent exams from my college

because I basically fill some of the modules so I had to come back to the UK while I was like you know um well my original plan was just to

come back to my home country and just chill out for the vacation but I had to come back to the UK earlier to take the exams but then while I Was preparing for

the exams um I've just ran into this uh I've just run

into this bunch of writings with originality uh and it was obviously written by unel so I was like this guy is interesting it's especially

interesting because he's really young I think he's 18 years old right so a high school kid with this much openness and creativity and originality originality

part was actually the most impress impressing thing so I I cold mailed him through Twitter and asked if we could have a coffee chat and that's how it

started very interesting um yeah I I agree the way that he thinks is uh is quite different from a lot of other young uh Korean people that I me meets

um for for you one of the things that most caught my attention was on your Instagram you have kind of a link to this K uh Koreans in India page um with

cabridge one of the things that I've been uh most interested in is how do I Bridge people of all different backgrounds um Korean people in other parts of the world and also people that

are living in Korea that have uh different ethnicities U but care about like Korea's future um so it piqued my interest when I saw the Korea uh Koreans

in India Instagram page and it had done quite well in a very short period of time um could you provide a little bit of of context on like why you decided to

start that um and the whole India Journey I'm just very curious overall oh yeah sure um

so I think early this year um early yes it's it was early this year

early this year um I kind of tried to think of a you know way to make some

money um and I heard about uh a Korean photo studio uh doing well in London too Street basically I heard they're making

like millions of dollars uh per year with profit margin like 80 90% uh which sounded like a huge Mone

yeah that time so I was like uh I asked my friend you know my best friend we should do this uh why not and we we met

uh we we searched for some investors potential investors and he knew a guy uh who was like half a billionaire in Korea he's Korean as well and and the the

relationship between that rich guy and my friend was he was my friend my friend's um father's best friend so that

we could trust him and he had some kind of you know reason to give decent advice and we met him uh the in the

potential investor guy and we gave gave him a basically a pitch uh context as well and got some advice uh the first advice the

conclusion was uh you know he he didn't like the fact that we came up with such a small uh business idea H uh from his

perspective at least so he kind of emphasized you know um building a

business is pretty difficult regardless of the size and building like really big business uh is

not not like if let's say if you're trying to build 100 times bigger business than the other one it's not 100 times harder it's it's right equally

difficult so he he emphasized the the market size SC scalability and profitability okay that was interesting

uh he gave some different advices uh as well the the second advice was he

said you know um you need to think about um a way to differentiate yourself from the other

competitors as well H and one of the things he mentioned was uh social media is the media one of the mediums that the younger Generations are really better

with than the older generation so um I I I took it personally and and after with with those advices um um after the meeting uh I looked at the Goldman Soxs

report of of uh 2050 oh actually I have to mention this as well um he also mentioned like looking back at his 50 years of career

um um as a Korean guy for his generation he realized that um in 30s if you grind and you have the talent you could become

10 million like tens of millionaire and then in your 40s um if you're lucky enough you you get to make 100 million dollars and in your 50s usually you hit

the career high uh so I was like okay building a really big business takes time is really difficult and usually you you have the chance to build your

biggest you know career in a high business when you get 50 uh so I looked at the Goldman Sachs report of 2050 GDP

ranks uh and number one country was I think it was United it was China actually number two was the United States and number three was India uh I thought India was very interesting it

was quite um unexpected for me so I booked the flight to get the the the very next day and and then flew to India the next week to

Mumbai that's how it started and and because he also gave me the advice about the social media thing I thought you know um I don't have any any background

I don't have a name card so why not use social media as a name card and and and yeah um that's how it

started and this all like happened it was it over it was over a very brief short period of time because if I remember correctly of like even scrolling through the Koreans and India page it's not like you'd been posting on

there for years this was like all within the last 12 to 18 months or so yeah yeah it SED this year so and had you um had you done anything

like this not necessarily like Koreans in India um but even uh like trying to build your own business um or launch something in the UK or or when you were

like in high school in Korea in terms of like entrepreneurial startup all of that interest had you done anything uh similar personally that you used to frame the experience or was this really the first time you had done something

like this good question um I will say throughout my um student years um I've been quite familiar with

the leadership position I've been always related to the student council thing so I was pretty comfortable starting something uh with starting something off

and then um I would say when I my first J was about um was

about fashion influencer it startup thing and and I was quite familiar with those um creators and I myself kind of

did some postings of fashion things to Instagram so Instagram was a very familiar platform for me as well wasn't an influencer though um

uh and then last year when chbt came out and last last last year's March I think when I first used chbt personally um I

got shocked and and I tried to make some some projects um for instance like um one of the interesting ideas was

basically to build um only fence for um anime characters CU basically um yeah yeah uh generative allows you to literally

generate any you know fictional characters really easily and I thought um now with the Bots and and the the Lord bar for

generating um various personas online I didn't really thought think you know um the the whether how you look

like really matter whether you're a real human or not so I thought it would be an interesting project but my girlfriend and my parents really didn't like it that's why I stopped it I I did kind of

make money out of it a little bit but it was an interesting project those kind of things but really didn't you know

um never never was a as as big as the Korean in India scale I never flew out to different countries or or met the users a real time never

happened what did your parents think of the starting the Koreans in India Channel you flying to to India cuz I mean you're you're uh you you've been a

university student for the past uh four years or so and you're studying computer science if I remember correctly um so this whole side project did you inform your parents about like what what you

were doing and uh what you were up to um yeah uh um my

parents were quite supportive with whatever I did as long as i i i prevented myself from you

know dropping out of college so I'll say they were quite supportive they didn't really care cuz um they knew from their experiences that

uh I really don't listen to them I see I see that makes uh that makes sense if you have a strong Independence uh will um so tell me a

little bit because you had this idea the the photo booth idea initially uh from seeing that in in the UK and then you decide to travel to India start the

Koreans in India Instagram page was there still this idea in the back of your head that you would try and build these photo boosts throughout India or was it simply I'm just going to use

social media or was it uh there is no real plan I'm just going to kind of see what happens as I explore India and start uploading to social media can you tell me a little bit about that that

thought process um in a big big picture uh I really didn't have any you know background knowledge about India at all so um I

would say there was no like this is the go-to kind of strategy because I really didn't have any information um but at the same time um I'm pretty good with

like uh building a narrative so I thought you know the story The motive of going to India with this Korean photo booth idea was part

entertaining and would be a good starter for any conversations so that definitely was there while I was traveling

India that makes sense and in terms of the how many times you've been to India at this point which cities you've you've hit and also the overall experience

because uh me as like an American coming to Korea for example there have been some like cultural nuances that I've picked up on but because of my own Korean Heritage it's like a lot of that

stuff is familiar whether it's the food the smells the cultural Customs all that stuff but you being a Korean born and raised spending time in the UK uh I

would imagine that going to India for the first time is quite a eye openening experience yeah it definitely was an ey opening experience um I would say uh

especially because I I've never visited the mainland China so I've heard from my friends India is quite similar to China

back then in like 2007 200 five uh with with the huge um continent uh diversity and and different languages and all that and a lot of population as well of

course it's quite chaotic and at the same time it's incredibly um um inspiring to be honest to to to see

that within that chaos there is some kind of order uh uh that's that that that exist uh based on trust

I think the trust is is also based on religion as well so that was very interesting but but to answer to your questions I think I've been to India so

far um four four or five times so far I've been to the metropolitan cities uh Delhi Mumbai and Bangalore uh first time I

went there for a week to Mumbai for kind of a you know uh uh examine you know exploring how how India is like the

takeaway there was um two things uh there was middle class and middle class had the consuming power that was quite interesting second thing was um there

was actually a photo booth studio uh Korean photo booth Studio existing which which was the first ever photogra studio in in India

H and and it was founded by an Indian guy so it wasn't like at the level of Korean uh original uh photo studios but

still you know uh it was interesting second time um I I visited India it was a planned visiting because the first time was like very an impromtu kind of

thing uh second time I I visited there with my best friend um for a month uh to all three cities that I mentioned Delhi

Bangalore and Mumbai um and I've met a a bunch of um like domestic people it was possible

because uh when I went to India Mumbai for the first time um um what I accomplished was basically back then my social media didn't have any um

followers and and my algorithm the accounts algorithm was not tuned in targeting uh Indian audience so I tried

to tune the algorithm uh by just you know asking people to follow my account in in the um Gates of India because if

you go to Gates of India in Mumbai there a lot of tourists Indian tourists that are from different

um cities and and uh States and and they like encountering foreigners is a very unique experience for them so

whenever they foreigners uh they try to take photos together because they don't know if this guy is a famous dude or not so we pretended to be celebrities and we

we gave them like signatures to photos and in exchange we asked them to follow our Instagram and I

I think it was quite a bright idea we we targeted 100 followers and we made it and the algorithm was set up to to Indian audience and then when I came

back to uh Korea uh with the takeaways that there there was a huge Korean hype going on in India I've asked one of my influencer friends Korean infu fashion influencer friends

with a good you know good look to take you know uh to just make one instagram real about you know we're going to visit

India uh you know and it g it blew up basically that one video uh allowed me to gain like 10K followers within a week

basically wow was that the first video that you had upload upload no no it wasn't the first one it was okay a video

with this handsome dude gotcha basically yeah yeah yeah so looks M looks matter a lot on on social media looks matter a lot of course it's Instagram yeah yeah

so U but then he did not make it to the the trip though um so I I kind of substituted him to a different friend but anyways with that uh over 10K

followers it really at that time uh worked as a name car um because uh you know um a lot of uh Indians uh

wanted to do business related to Korean things they wanted to import some kind of thing they wanted you know to buy whatever that is but then they could not find someone to trust but I'm a public

figure on Instagram and with with all the open information about myself so it was very very helpful for me to meet uh various people including like

celebrities I've met some royal families there I've made actually a roal family uh dude he owns like he's a billionaire basically he's younger than me I've

heard like some interesting things about the old money kind of stuffs there uh and and domestic people of course they know their place so they've they've you

know interested me about the cultural things I've tried many different foods I've went to their homes visited different you know uh homes and and saw

what rich people home is like some some other poor people home is like M I really had a good nice tour guys ready

for me with Instagram it was really fun did you have any uh like dicey or kind of scary unusual experiences as

well so so I um I had been recording some of these podcasts in person in Soul in the uh Global startup Center uh in cognum and the the kind of managing

director of tip toown and the head of operations at um at the global startup Center I was curious about like why that had all gotten started and so I decided to interview him a little bit about his

background and his affiliation uh with tip toown um and it ended up diverging into a whole story of how he ended up traveling to India and how he had gotten

uh basically like deceived um he was like in the Himalayan Mountains and then like a lot of his money he lost uh as a result of like paying a quote unquote

like tour guide uh way too much money for no real like expert advice um did you have any unusual or scary experiences or did you feel like you were able to figure out pretty quickly

who the people were that you should trust and and who the people were that you shouldn't I was extra careful and I think uh um um because I had a clear

purpose of you know I didn't visit there to you know learn the spiritualism or something like that to some some Village places where or touristy places I went

there to do business so I went there to the most advanced cities with with relatively more uh safety that's why I think uh I really

didn't run into you know any of the dangerous people so tell me this because it seems like what you have uh identified to some extent is like a

imbalance between uh Supply demand Dynamic uh there seems to be a lot of demand for let's just say like K culture

types of of stuff um do these like big time let's say K-pop uh entertainment companies do they have presences in India where they do shows and things

like that or like why do you feel like this opportunity exists right now and is uh is so large so my so my analysis is

um basically the K wave uh inclined rapidly uh since late

2010s and it kind of picked around like covid and and next right after covid uh especially with uh the BTS thing uh and

and interesting thing about BTS the rise of BTS was it was due to YouTube uh of BTS thing you know they they had a

YouTube a Channel of of broadcasting the chemicals of them them living together and working on their projects and kind of uh worked uh and

with the covid thing um people couldn't go outside and obviously the contents were kind of worked uh and and it I I I

I could I can say this because I felt it when I when I came to London uh in 200

um 22 because when I was in when I I came to London in in 20 2020 or or 2019 for for an interview for

my college and back then there was like nobody knew about Korea and I couldn't hear any Korean songs or nothing like that and and and nobody seemed to care about Korean guys especially because

Asian male is at the lowest the very lowest hierarchy of the world and then when I came back after

the covid thing as as a second year um uh you know I I was a clubbing guy back then uh and and whenever I go clubbing or like pting you know I was pretty

pretty popular just with the title I'm a Korean dude that actually enjoys pying and that was

incredible so so I'm not saying the experience is incredible I'm saying the the rapid rise of the Korean popularity

was incredible but I heard from the news that India was the pretty much the only country that Korean wave could not

penetrate back then my my my um my theory is India was not ready for this um because India's economy was not

that high enough for the people to kind of afford the non-necessity uh consuming things y but

then they have like 7% annual you know GDP growth these days so uh if like today

now it's it's opening I think I heard like the big uh entertainment uh Idols for instance EXO or these guys are coming to India like starting this

winter basically I've heard on on the 14th of December there would be the biggest ever um Kpop uh Festival opening in Mumbai I know the CEO of that um

agency and she she told me that this would be the biggest ever uh and this would be like the one of the official things happening I think like second

time or third time kind of thing yeah fascinating yeah I mean you had mentioned earlier uh identifying there's a growing middle class in India and it makes sense kind of what you're saying

it's like uh before maybe their base needs needed to be satisfied and there wasn't much disposable income but as the economy grows and expands a lot of people have disposable income to uh

expend money on entertainment and and all that types of stuff um so in terms of the trips that you had taken to India and what I guess was it mostly a

learning experience for you of you were trying to gather information and figure out what business opportunities might be most interesting uh and also I know you held like a handful of events or like

social Gatherings for people in India um could you share a little bit more context about like what you did during your your visits yeah sure um so the

investor guy that I met uh basically who gave me the um cause for all this Indian thing um he

he worked as a mentor to me basically so the first advice was seek for a really big market so I found India and then I came back uh with the social media

accounts with with over 10K followers and I asked him like what should I do um I've made this and he the first

impression he he he he he gave was um I think you're going to you're going to make some money like meaning you're

going to be rich because he he's he he's been doing consumer oriented business like basically b2c businesses uh selling things wholesaling or like making Brands

and and from his perspective business is all about Gathering the people and once you gather the people that's 99% of the jobs done you just have to sell

something that people want and he his um message is basically you know how to you know gather the people so you've done

99% of the job uh now you have to do the remaining 1% which means what he said was um he made an interesting um statement that he does not believe in

the startup thing um because startup is all about you know taking huge risks uh not knowing whether it would work out or not and even if it works out for

instance like coupon um the CEO wouldn't have wouldn't be the large stakeholder shareholder so the company isn't yours you cannot do whatever you want um and

and and basically um it did not make sense to him that the mentor guy so um he mentioned if you want to become a businessman uh from the

day one you have to make some money and with that money you're making bigger monies and if you have things that you want to do uh do it when you you can afford like doing 10 different businesses at the same time you can fail

five of them then you can try five different businesses that you want so yeah the the message was just make some money out of your audience so I went

back to um India uh with the idea that um before when I went there for for the second trip uh the one month trip I I visited um

cultra you know cultra right no crean organiz Organization for trading something they they they're in charge of

trading with with the country and and the cultra uh person told told us that um there are only two uh items working

in India right now the food sector especially Ramen and and the Cosmetic sector skincare products especially skincare products especially because we have different skin tones and most of

the Korean um skin skincare Brands cosmetic brands they they don't have the colors for DOA people sure yeah yeah so um I was like sure um skincare products

might work and I've asked my Instagram um followers as well they want to skin care products most of them were like Teenage female followers basically so of

course it make made sense so um and at that time Uno Uno asked me to take him to India and show India around so I was

like uh I've got one week left until the the trip and and why not try to do some you know try to sell some skincare

products but then the problem was I didn't have any budget uh uh and nor nor did I I had no experience so uh the idea

was to do some you know I would say politics uh because I knew the demand and and supply thing uh and I'm I was quite familiar with social media and

influences um basically there were a few key players that that that played the roles first thing was I went to

the con conventia I think there was the Skin Care um conference pame happening in in

in Samsung the hall there a bunch of uh emerging skincare Cosmetics Brands just advertising about their brands I went there bluffing about my Instagram

account telling them I'm going to host like the biggest ever you know skincare influencer Korean beauty parties in India in those three metropolitan cities I'm the expert I've got all the

influencers listed here I guarantee you like over several million views advertisement effects blah blah blah all I need is you need to send me

uh uh products sample products uh until this date to my home then I'll get those products and do the events uh and and the products I mentioned um it has to be

echo-friendly because Indian people care about that and it has to be cheap uh pricing around like $5 to maximum like 20

bucks um and I've I've got around I think let's

see like 5,000 bucks amount of sample products ready really yeah yeah from uh three different brands H they've sent

like um serums uh serums mostly serums serums and some lotions and and mask packs face masks um

and and I've uploaded at the same time I've uploaded Instagram R about I'm hosting this event in India I need uh you know I know you Instagram influencers you want some kind of

content material if you're a Korean beauty Enthusiast and and and you want to get free you know CR skincare products that are not available in the

market then I can you know give it free to you you just have to come to the events and do some marketing for me I've I've got the list and with the influencers i' I've got the free um

Venus as well because Venus needed the marketing as well I've got the influencers they're going to do some advertisement automatically with with

Instagram um and oh and I also asked uh you know this the Korean skincare Brands you know

um if if you have have some uh spared money I need some uh F ticket uh price as well uh one one company gave me a

couple hundred bucks so it really helped as well um so I went to Mumbai uh Delhi and and Bangalore and de defense basically it

was a very rushed uh thing but um pretty successful if you go to my Instagram account then there's the story highlights you can see what kind of events there were

yeah um even the way that you think and um these different projects that you have gotten yourself into it feels like you should have been some sort of like a

business uh major entrepreneurship kind of major you you decided to study computer science right at uh Imperial College of London and uh I'm just curious when you first started um when

you decided to go to university and was figuring out what it was you should study um how you decided uh to study computer science and what your initial thoughts were like career path uh of

what you wanted to do because all this stuff in India was uh kind of unexpected right and like your back half of University years um so I'm curious what

your initial Ambitions or thought process was as it relates to studying at at University and then your future

career H good question um I don't think I'm I'm an engineer material uh by

nature but um technology has always been um a very interesting thing to me because it was it seemed even though I don't understand it really well um it

seemed so powerful that was it and back then late 2010 it I entered my high school when I was like it was 2017 and

until it was 2019 I graduated and and the comai thing with Ai Ai and and everything was so rapidly you know growing and it some it seemed

unreasonable and there was definitely this comai hype happening back then as well so I I basically joined the hype but then the reason was quite different I was more interested in the

philosophical side of of the com computer science than than the technical side so um for my commment of assays or

or so um for I think uk1 we call personal statement um I wrote about U my concerns and philosophical

um kind of pondering about uh the indications of AIS and it's how apprehensive I am with

it uh based on like movies like iRobot or like X makina so I was more of a that kind of person and turned out U it was

right you know um technology was much more powerful than I thought I um I remember I I I once I'm not sure if I'm right but um I remember I once

misinterpreted interpreted uh Steve Jobs talking about artists um he mentioned the Apple people um they would have been artists when they were born in different

centuries uh they would have been like singers or po po poetes or different artists but because they were born uh in during that time period um they were

doing building Apple um what what Steve Jobs meant was um they were they're more Mission oriented and they have more

lofty kind of you know um perfectionistic uh point of view that's I think that's what he meant reading

the Walter Walter isaacson's uh autobiography of Steve Jobs but then how I I thought when I first heard about that was basically if you think about

what artist is artst uh the value of art is determined by the market basically

Supply demand mhm and and artists try to make the most you know valuable art of

all time uh in in the 21st century it's it's it's got to be technology related thing because there's it's so much

scalable destructive so much demand uh and and I thought that's what he meant but uh I'm not I don't think he meant it that way but this kind of reflects how I

think of technology technology is scalability and and and destructiveness it's so so powerful that I couldn't resist to get into this

film that makes sense that makes sense um I don't know if you've come across um Elvin tofler before but he wrote a book in the 1970s called Future Shock um and

it was kind of about the relationship between technology and society and the fact that for the vast majority of human history uh progress

has looked uh very stagnant and linear and as we enter the kind of digital age and the techn technological age of now

we are at exponential growth in terms of society's ability to digest technology and adapt to it um both the benefits and

the the downsides um there is a kind of a generational psychological reaction uh of just like utter shock and um a lot of

things in modern society will will break down um so it was one of the most like interesting books that I had read uh in the past like year or two of like the 50 plus books that I had read and kind of

some of what you're saying in terms of uh your Reflections on Steve Jobs and the Walter isix autobiography uh reminded me a lot of of that book so it's it's definitely worth uh checking

out it's called The Future Shock um but I guess you know more broadly as well in terms of your your plans um like now that you

have this uh India exposure and you're coming up on uh graduating at University um are you still trying to figure out what it is exactly that you'll end up

doing and also with uh with cabridge and as I scale this out one of the things that I'm trying to do is um figure out what areas of expertise and areas of Interest people within the ecosystem

have um and where there is going to be likely like win-win opportunities for people to connect with one another um so I guess on on both of those fronts um can you share a little bit about how

you're thinking about the future and who you're most kind of interested in in connecting with as well um so I'm I'm quite bullish with

Creator economy um thinking I came up with this Creator economy is the next thing kind of uh uh realization through

a chronological observation of how the tech especially Computing industry has evolved so far on top of Hardware there was operating systems on top of os there

was um WAP and on top of WAP there were some mobile mobile phones mobile apps and social media and then it seemed quite um obvious it would be creators

that would be the platforms themselves um and in that sense basically meant you know you got to own the a media and while the software

economy was all about building a software with technology and then you're Gathering the people around the software uh now you have the media and then you make other different products including

software around that IP that's how I view the Creator economy right now and um one of the most successful um

companies in the world actually uh that has proven this Creator economies asset uh to be very powerful is uh EO Studio I think I've I've came across with this

realization thanks to inso uh uh and I wasn't at first very um convinced that it would be the next

uh YC kind of a scale uh as he argued but then uh um apart from that as well from my

personal perspective um if I am to really uh thrive in the future um I got to figure out a way to get into

the mainstream networks the inner Circles of Silicon Valley or or the powers in the world um and as a

foreigner um it seemed quite convincing that um leveraging EO studio so basically doing EO India and

then monopolizing the um startup economy in India eventually networking with the um indian-american entrepreneurs or the

CEOs like the CEO of Google as well MH and then and then with those CS entering America seemed you know to be a

quite convincing and well established path that's what I'm thinking about right now and at the same time uh Insel would be you know

keep working on EO as well so we we we aim to help each other as much as we can he he he's much of a intellectual

thinker than me so he might have a bigger plan but that's my plan basically yeah it is uh it's very um I feel like I got very lucky in crossing paths with

him and then now crossing paths with you um cuz there is something about uh maybe the way that most other Korean people think in terms of um there is a very

strong kind of structure and set path that most Koreans go through where they go through the education system and then they get like a let's say a good job at one of the large corporations and then

each next step is kind of set for them uh and having discussions with people that are like uh free thinkers independent thinkers and that have also been like influenced by a lot of like

the US startup scene um I don't come across it that often um so it was very refreshing and it's it's funny the fact that you know Ina as a 18-year-old and

you as like a college senior are two of the examples that uh that I've come across um even for me trying to find some of these like young ambitious

people that are working on interesting projects one of the the difficulties is that because I don't really speak Korean um my ability to find and have like real

dialogue with them is very difficult uh but your your English is um like basically fluent level um when you decided to study in the UK and even like

your upbringing I'm just curious how how you picked up English um and was that always part of your curriculum or did you have experiences being abroad when you were

younger um I never studied abroad uh I was in I I did participate in a in a one month program in the US while I was in

Middle School uh just attending at school uh in the US um other than that I never studied abroad um but I did start

learning English quite early uh before even entering uh entering elementary school and then uh you know endless English you know hug

ones loop with along with actually the biggest impact for me was my high school my high school was quite special it's some of the um is a form of kagu in

Korean it's basically a special purpose um High School in Korea for for students helping to prepare for to study abroad um so all the all the all the modules

were all the courses were done uh in English uh teachers were um you know foreigners speaking in English and all my peers were Bas basically more than

half of them their mother mother tongue was English their English was more comfortable so environment really helped me a lot to you know improve my English

skills I see that makes sense and it's uh a big Advantage now uh just in terms of doing business being in the UK so when you were uh graduating from high

school and figuring out colleges to go to did you only apply to schools abroad or were you potentially going to uh

study in in Korea as well I only apply to yeah foreign schools I applied to um ni ababi for my early

decision actually interesting primarily because um so my GPA and all the all the

portfolio was like kind of a good shot for IV lead uh level not the the hips but like IV lead but then I don't come

from the money so I needed the scholarships but I didn't have like very um you know outstanding portfolio or projects to get like scholarships from

from government or something like that and and we we didn't want to take risk that's why we heard nyw provides a lot of tuition scholarships we expected the

full scholarships but then they suddenly um you know decreased a lot of scholarships I've only got the half and it didn't just felt like it's worth

it so um for safety I I've already applied to the UK schools without even scheming through what kind of schools they are I just looked at the ranking and applied to the top five universities

I've missed the Oxford I didn't get into Oxford but then um Imperial seemed to be a good school and back then um I think my ex-girlfriend was also aiming for the

UK schools that's that's why I I I decided to go to the UK I see um when I talk to people here in Korea one of the things that's interesting is that uh

basically up until grade 12 uh like your senior year in high school um they're just like grinding away uh in terms of education and that's like the entirety of their life uh but then when they get

to University that's actually a time where they can kind of like relax and the um it's a little bit more laidback than well it's considerably more

laid-back at least from what I hear uh going to school in the UK um the overall uh experience in terms of what your

expectations were going in um both pros and cons like uh tell me a little bit because I don't know as much about the the UK kind of educational ecosystem and

if you were to compare and contrast between the UK and Korea uh I'm curious how you would characterize it um it might be a bit off topic but um I have

to mention that um I I had a different a little bit different path from the other peers because I got really sick when I graduated from my high school when I

turned basic an adult um I got diagnosed with crohn's disease it's an autoimmune disease with um inflammation chronic inflammation all over your digestive systems and and because it's autoimmune

disease it's you don't know the cause root cause of it and so basically it's incurable and and the treatment is basically to um get rid of your immune

system just suppress it as much as possible and and that's basically meaning you're just treating the

symptoms uh expecting some you know very bad side effects for instance like uh I have really high possibility higher possibility relatively than other people

to get cancers because I have very low immune system so I've I've been ill hospitalized like severely ill I couldn't even walk I was

on a wheelchair um a been hospitalized for around a year and that was the covid season so it was even worse cuz none of my friends or families could even visit

me cuz it was hospital I had to take the mask on every day I couldn't sleep I couldn't eat couldn't take a shower

nothing it was a very painful experience uh and that kind of experience uh taught

me the um attitude for me um it gave me so the interesting thing about incurable disease was

um if you get hurt you usually get better but because it's incurable it was for the first time of my life that me encountering you know um

this thing's not getting better and I've never experienced this before it was a very awkward

um awkward and scary um adventure for me uh and that gave me the mental breakdown around after a year uh the reason why the doctor could not give me uh the last

treatment uh the last injection that was available was because if that does not work then I've got no other

choices and and with you know my young age it it was so uh pathetic I would say so do doctor was also very careful was

using the Lost shot uh so he promised me he's going to use it after you know one period time and until then um nothing worked like steroids like uh suppressing

my immune system with some some pills nothing worked um I had a mental breakdown all my ego kind of went down um I kind

of I kind of accepted that this would be my destiny that um I've always been an elite kind of student throughout my whole life then with my English skills I

would just you know teach some Elementary or middle school students um gaining you know um like $2,000 per

month it's it's a good I'm okay with it that's how my thought process worked to kind of rationalize the entire

system um but then um thankfully um you know um the last treatment injection worked so I got much better and the entire like one year experience taught

me res resilience basically uh and the attitude of I've got nothing to lose um and that allowed me to think and and act

out of the box and that that also gave my parents uh more gave me more more kind of a leeway uh and lenience from my

parents as well because my parents thought you know um my parents wanted me to live my life

basically if so if that last shot didn't work would that have meant that you would have likely died or would that have meant you would have been bedridden for the rest of your life what would

that have have have meant if if that last injection didn't work the L up actually uh until the next you know possible treatment comes out um you just

your symptoms just does not get better meaning just gets worse then you kind of have to get rid of a decent amount decent chunk of your digestive systems

uh resulting in uh you know making like artificial um

anus uh outside uh your belly or wow you basically becoming disabled um in Korea so far um I am not considered a disabled

person but if you get to that level you become uh you know considered a disabled person and there uh thankfully the really really thankful thing for me is

recently the the treatments has has made rapid um improvements like in a very recent time if I were sick like 10 years ago then I

was probably like like 99% sure I would have you know the injection itself was super expensive 10 years ago I couldn't afford it

but now with all those um good insurance systems and and much more availability with the new treatment so I don't I don't know that much about cron disease and how it works

but how is it the case that so you didn't have Crohn's disease until you hit let's say age 20 and then you somehow contracted it or was it something you always had in I guess like

your underlying genetics and then there was some trigger that like awakened it uh how does that work um for some cases

I've heard uh the genetics might cause the Crohn's disease but then I I turned out not to have the Gen uh so it's not

my case so far uh and and I don't know I've never had I was pretty healthy I I was considering to become a professional like athlete until when I was like Middle School uh I was I was pretty

serious with baseball but then I I gave up because my um height expected height my parents are pretty short uh and I was pretty good with studying and so I was I was just you know being more rational I

would say my passion was more towards the athletes but I I had to become more rational but then um yeah I was pretty

healthy throughout my entire um school days and suddenly um I got sick um there's a there's a quote by

this guy nval rant who's a big angel investor in the the states and he says something like a healthy man wants a thousand things but a sick man only

wants one thing right and the ability for um going through something uh where there's a deep like maybe near-death experience or some type of injury or

sickness that could um end your life is like a really powerful foring mechanism that you can you can't really replicate with telling St St um or you can't

really replicate um by getting lectured by somebody you have to like experience it uh when you had mentioned before that like in a previous life you had enjoyed like going going out and clubbing and

partying and stuff like that uh but not So Much Anymore was the the Crohn's disease that uh experienced was that the before and after no no no uh so the the

the timeline is I got sick when I became an adult while when I got the legal permission to party see so so I couldn't do those things

while my friends were doing those things I I I I had the smartphone we were living in the 21st century so I could see all my friends doing the you know enjoying the Fun Time by the way uh

that's how um I also got you know familiar with uh Creator economy as well I was never a Instagram or social media kind of boy um but because I got sick uh

my self-esteem got really low I started to care about um my my appearances uh just because all I could do was just scrolling down Instagram while I was being hospitalized laying down on

bed and and um when I got better um I started working at this fashion IT company

interning there but then uh my mentality was not like I'm going to make a great company it was more like oh I'm free I'm living a life I'm outside the hospital

you know so Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday until Sunday pretty much every day um I went clubbing and then came back to work clubbing came back to work

oh that's E11 was my go-to place and then um and then uh I already did my first year while I was sick uh somehow

uh and then because throughout my first year it was on all online because the co season for my second year I went to thek for the first time for my

academics I came I went to the UK uh um maintained the same lifestyle partying and all that um until until the first

semester actually so after like five months of of partying in Korea with extra um 3 four months in in the UK around one year um pting no that was

enough for me it it really was never me never was konu thing and then you know I've I've I've came back to myself uh and around that time CH BT I've used CH

BT for the first time and that gave me a shock so my like survival Instinct kind of triggered um so I I came back to this survival mode to kind of explore and and

uh grow basically and the the Crohn's disease situation so does that for you is that like cured at this point like it will never resurface and it's like uh the

it's done um or is it something that you have to still manage just kind of lurk on a very low low level for you what's the dynamic there um it's it's lingering

uh it's it's incable so far uh I hope somebody just I I might I'm actually interested in biology because of this as well while I was being hospitalize I

I've read tons of papers I I've reached out to some some Medics professors I've I've reached out to my Med students uh friends uh asking about the autoimmune

disease and all that um I think it's reachable within my lifetime seriously somebody somebody's going to cure it but so far uh see curable what I

have to do is getting the injection uh every every two months uh the injection takes around two to three hours uh per

time and then it's pretty expensive in in in the US I've heard it's around a th000 bucks per

time so every two months uh over bucks isow actually it's it's not thousand bucks it's around 5,000 bucks sorry jeez yes yeah it's super expensive but Korea

it's around like 100 bucks so Korea is like because because Korea for for these kind of incurable diseases including some severe diseases like cancers they

provide like 90% 90 95% insurance is from the government so with the 90% um insurance Price it's around 100 bucks so this is a very in problem for

me especially as a person who wants to be more you know Global or Universal so if that last injection didn't work then more than likely you will would still be in kind of a

bedridden State um or you wouldn't have full control and autonomy over how you conduct your life you yeah I've tried a lot of things you know I I was once a

vegetarian I was once I was once a a what do you call cannibal um I I did the the meditation

things I've done pretty much everything that I could try wow but nothing worked incredible um well uh this is uh

I'm glad we got that uh piece of your backstory in because uh obviously it's very meaningful to you and I imagine it has shaped you in uh in many ways um

we're we're coming up on time but one I appreciate you being willing to share uh it's been really exciting for me to meet you and uh and insa and hopefully many

more like ambitious young people as well uh because even for myself like I have a lot of friends who um when I was in undergrad were very curious and very

ambitious but then they kind of um took a more structured and predict predictable path I'd say and it is rare for me to find people who um not over

not only have big ideas but then have actions behind them where like they're actually trying stuff and the stuff that you're doing in India is quite fascinating um the stuff like unaa is

moving to the US and he's trying a bunch of stuff stuff within the EO Studio ecosystem and so I'm very excited for the both of you uh and to be following along with your Journeys um so thank you

so much for for sharing thank you so much for having me