I work to revive death—because remembering that we will die truly helps us treasure our life and live joyfully.

I write and talk about death and life in a variety of venues and spaces. My audiences have been medical staff, academics, practitioners, students, and adults from all walks of life.

I received my PhD degree from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, for my dissertation on death education, which studied death education practices in the public domain of Canada. During the PhD program, I received the Four Year Doctoral Fellowship, the President’s Academic Excellence Initiative Ph.D. Award, the International Tuition Award, and the Gordon Selman Award.

In 2017, I received the First Prize in the nation-wide essay competition under the Brain Korea 21 Plus Project, organized by the National Research Foundation Korea. Prior to that, I worked as a consultant for Hyundai Motors to formulate the mechanism to match the employees’ competency level with the most suitable educational solutions at their Body Technology Center.

Two of the most fun work experiences happened in the Philippines and China. In the Philippines, I worked as a manager and established a branch office of a Korean publishing company, MotherTongue Inc., and trained local employees to take over the management. The degree of responsibility that I took up there as a sole manager, finding a suitable office building and organizing it, recruiting and evaluating the employees, and training them, was intense for someone in her 20s, being in a foreign country. However, I made special bonds with the employees there and learned how to see things in a different perspective. I was also blown away by the gorgeous tropical beaches and vacation accommodations that the country had to offer.

In China, still in my 20s, I taught Korean at BNU-HKBU United International College in Guangdong Province. Before that, I worked as an international development worker affiliated to Yunnan Institute of Development, and I was privileged to work with warm-hearted minority Chinese kids and adults in beautiful mountainous villages around the city Yuxi in Yunnan Province. There I mainly helped to set up preschools, trained teachers and educated the villagers about hygiene. I stepped into the villages with the mindset of helping them develop, but at the end of the one year project, I came out totally changed and found myself having glimpsed what it means to have a good life.