I Took the Long Way

I made peace with the Korean I don't have in Episode 10. Then I went back to Korea for two weeks, and found out peace with a gap isn't the same as closing one. This trip split itself in half without us planning it. First, tourist Seoul, hotels, Hongdae street performers, custom shirts at Nike, an airsoft range, and the streetwear brand that stopped me in my tracks. Then everything changed when we...

I've been asked my whole life why I can't speak Korean. And for a long time, I didn't have a good answer, not one I was willing to say out loud anyway. I'm Korean American. Born in San Francisco. Raised in a mostly white neighborhood. I looked Korean. I just didn't sound it. And depending on which room I was standing in, that meant I was either too Korean or not Korean enough. Never just...enough....

I didn't get into cycling because I loved it. I got into it because I had to. In Los Angeles, that's not a minor inconvenience, that's a full restructuring of your life. But somewhere between riding 20 miles through Koreatown at night and building my first fixed gear bike on my apartment floor, something shifted. It stopped being a punishment and started being something else entirely. This episode...

I had to size up my jeans last week. One inch. Thirty-plus years at the same size -- through the Army, through my 30s, through everything -- and then one day the number changed. That's when I started paying attention to everything else I'd been quietly ignoring. The iPhone text size bumped up. Spotify new releases full of names I don't recognize -- so I closed it and went back to Jurassic 5, ATCQ,...

I am not built like a runner. Skinny doesn't mean fit -- ask the Army PT test I failed at nineteen in front of everyone at boot camp. That failure filed itself somewhere in the back of my brain and did not let go. What followed was years of proving something to myself -- running twice a day in the Arizona heat during interrogation training, still smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day, somehow ge...

A Wednesday night Korean BBQ dinner with old friends. Drinks that kept coming. A server who quietly mentioned she'd been sober for a year — and a table that kept going anyway. By Thursday morning, I was hungover, calling in sick, and my daughter walked in and said — matter-of-factly, like she was checking the weather — "you drank too much." She's twelve. And she's said it before. That's what final...

I was eight years old, home alone, and the toilet had a history. I knew what it was capable of. And when the rumbles in the jungle arrived, I did what any reasonable kid would do — I grabbed the Charmin and I went outside. This is a story about being a latchkey kid, making calls with no manual and no backup, and what happens when the wind picks up right after you think you've handled something. It...

I was nineteen years old, fresh out of basic training, and I had just volunteered for Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia — because I thought it would be cool. That was the whole reason. No deeper thesis. Just a kid who wanted wings on his chest. What followed was three weeks of Georgia summer heat, mosquitoes that had no fear of me, sand pits, combat boots, and a Sergeant Airborne who made s...

When I was a kid, I'd come home to an empty house in the suburbs of San Francisco, grab my snacks, and flip on the TV. What I found was Bo and Luke Duke tearing through Hazzard County in a bright orange Dodge Charger. What I didn't realize until decades later was why it never left me. This episode is about family loyalty, cultural identity, and what it looks like to inherit something from your par...

What happens when a full day of small frustrations — bad traffic, a stolen phone moment at the Korean market, a valet, and a gummy bear bag — leads to a blowup you didn't see coming? This week I'm talking about anger. My anger. Where it really comes from, what it did to my marriage last weekend, and what I'm trying to do about it. In this episode of I Took the Long Way, I walk through a Saturday t...

There's a tree near Monterey, California that's been standing alone on a cliff for over 250 years — misshapen, weathered, and still standing. It's also the perfect metaphor for growing up Korean American in Los Angeles. In this first episode, the host shares the origin story: immigrant parents, a familiar childhood, a detour that changed everything, and why taking the long way around isn't the sam...