Blog Topic
Essays & Columns
Essays and columns on work, life, change, organizations, and personal experience.
The Illusion of Being a "Physical AI Powerhouse": What Shenzhen Showed Me About the Real Gap
Four days in Shenzhen showed that Korea's robot-density pride confuses automation with intelligence. The real gap is field data and deployment speed.
The Price of Innovation — Joongang and the Debt of Legacy Media
A look at JoongAng and JTBC's 2026 receivership as the result of digital transformation debt, aggressive investment, and a collapsing ad market.
The One Who Holds the Valve Asks: From the US-Iran War to Fable 5
From the 1973 oil shock to AI compute in 2026, this essay traces how the power to close the valve moved from nations to individual identity.
I Built a Shadow Team
What happened after building an AI shadow content team: using agents for research, planning, writing, channel expansion, and team decisions.
The One-Click Era and the People Who Carve
In the one-click AI era, the scarce resource is not execution but lived problems. This essay argues for side projects built from real needs.
Taste Is the New Competitive Edge
In an age where AI has democratized execution, the truly scarce resource is taste — knowing not just what to build, but what to cut.
Tech Bipolarization and the AI Chip
Korea's AI-chip debate focuses on Samsung, SK, HBM, and memory. This essay asks what gets missed in the US-China technology split.
The End of Print May Never Come... The Golden Age of Small Magazines
I thought the age of paper was over. But I was half wrong. Independent magazines with strong editorial identities are quietly flourishing.
Special Schools Are Too Far Away: What the Data Says About the Seojin School Controversy
Using data to examine the Seojin School controversy, special-school shortages, local opposition, and the distance society places around disability.
Strategic Ambiguity and the Push-Pull
Strategic ambiguity — the diplomatic technique Korea has long relied on between great powers — turns out to have a surprising parallel in the early stages...
Eleven Years of Proposals That Became Reality
"Let's open a creator economy room on an audio-based SNS." "Let's do a StoryPoll." "Let's do racing chart videos." These proposals all became real.
Not a Typical Journalist
A personal essay on being called a dev-journalist, design-journalist, and data-journalist, and why not fitting the newsroom mold became useful.
The Difficulty of Naming Content
Naming content is hard because it has to capture the essence, compress the story, and carry the brand before anyone watches the first episode.
Why NC Soft and Baemin Are Building Media
The boundaries are dissolving. Red Bull proved the formula. Now Korean companies like NC Soft and Baemin are following. What does it mean when companies...
On Pressing F5
Hit Refresh — on Satya Nadella's Microsoft transformation, and what it reveals about organizations that have lost their sense of purpose.
The Age of Taste
On taste-centrism: why personal aesthetic sensibility has become the defining currency of the content economy.
The Collapse of the Normal Distribution and the Age of Power Laws
Why the normal distribution no longer explains many parts of today's world, and why power laws, extremes, and winner-take-all dynamics matter more.
Impostor Syndrome
On living with anxiety — the psychological experience of believing your success is the product of luck and deceit.
Edge Wrote Me a Letter
How a first-person story by a blood donor dog named Edge moved readers, generated letters and donations, and showed what journalism can change.
Complex Interdependence Theory
Studying IR can reveal useful ways to read everyday power dynamics. This essay applies complex interdependence theory beyond international politics.