Where Luke is from

Seoul, South Kore

 

Interview

What was your dream when you were a kid? What was the reason?

I wanted to be a professional novelist. Because when I wrote a short novel for the first time, I received a huge prize. So I believed that I had a huge talent as a novelist.

 

What was your dream when you were 18 years old? What was the reason?

At that moment, my dream was just to be a student of a prestigious university. my parents always imposed me to study to enter the university, and I believed that if I entered a university I would not have to study anymore.

 

What made you start thinking about social entrepreneurship/social enterprises? When was that?

When I was a sales consultant for a cosmetics company, I had been worked for several cosmetics stores on some streets for tourists, especially Chinese ones. In the stores, there were some Chinese crews who could speak Chinese and Korean at the same time. The reason why we had to hire the Chinese crews was that we needed some people who could sell cosmetics to Chinese consumers. They could earn a lot of money compared to their former salaries and they could change not only their life but also their families’ lives. While I had worked with them, I realized that learning a foreign language could change a person’s life. It is the main reason why I decided to quit my job and study at this school.

 

How much do you think social entrepreneurs play an important role in the world?

Honestly, I am not sure about it yet. it is very small, but would be amazing.

 

What would you say to future social entrepreneurs / those who are interested in social entrepreneurs?

I want to say that just focus on what you want to do. I believe that to do what I want to do is one of the most valuable examples of social entrepreneurs. It is because there are a lot of people who cannot do anything they want to do. They are not happy.

 

What is your favorite quote? Who said that quote?

“The lesson without pain does not have any meaning. We cannot get anything without sacrifice. However, when we overcome something and make it our own, our heart becomes strong like metal, unalterable by anything.” – Fullmetal Alchemist, Japanese comic.

 

Who Luke is

It has been a year, but I am still struggling with figuring out who Luke really is. It seems like Luke still has “something” that I have not seen and that I should not see.

Luke is very quiet in the English circumstances, but I have seen that he is very talkative when he speaks Korean.

Luke is the kind of person who makes as much effort as he can until he achieves a goal that he sets for himself. For example, whenever I would go to school, he was always there, studying and doing assignments. Luke is very independent and hey may hesitate to ask for help, but the truth is that he has improved himself very well in a year. That is not only what I saw but also what our classmates said. Luke always has someone who has his back, , but he is brave enough himself to take  action following some encouragement.

About the fact that Luke might have “something” I should not see, he sometimes suddenly explodes into  emotion by chanting or woo-hoo-hooing, even though he is basically quiet. It is so much fun to see it, but another side of me says “I have a bad feeling about opening the Pandora’s box,” hahaha. It is like Jean Grey from X-MEN becomes Phoenix, you do not want to see it happen.

 

Awesome Episode

One day, Luke was at his laptop when I saw him at Hult International Business School. I was curious so I asked him what he was doing. Luke was writing reviews of comic books that he read on NAVER, which is the most popular Korean search engine. I thought that it was great because he was writing the reviews in English, not Korean. However, it was also strange to post them on the website that only Korean people access, so I asked him why. Luke answered, “Because I am writing the reviews as my English practice. I don’t want people to think I’m a geek, so it’s good to post something in English on NAVER, haha.”

Well, I am sorry, Luke, that I revealed your secret here, but I have two things that I still have to say. One, you might need to accept that you are a geek. Second, I was very very impressed and proud that you created opportunities to improve your English by yourself. I really respect you.

 

The Power of MSE

What Luke is holding is a symbol called “go-en(ご縁)”, which means ‘fate’, ’destiny’ and ’special tie.’

I believe that it is meant to be that we met in San Francisco! I studied Social Entrepreneurship with Luke for a year, saying “We will make the world a better place.” I would love to spend the rest of my life with MSEs (Master of Social Entrepreneurship; my classmates) until the very day I die. They have already completely changed my life.

At the same time, however, I also think that we should not be together all the time, because that is not the reason why we learned Social Entrepreneurship. That is not how we will deliver the impact we want to give to society and to the world.

I think MSEs are like dandelions. We were seeded at the first day at Hult and we bloomed on our graduation day. Our mission is that we spread all over the world like dandelions and seed the future, the next generation, from each place where each of us has landed.

本当にありがとう(Honto ni Arigato-); Thank you very very much for everything!! The world needs you! Let’s make the world a better place together!!