Between Sydney and Seoul: How I Turned Challenges into Destiny

I arrived in Sydney, Australia, in 2014 with no real idea of what could happen next.

I didn’t know if I wanted to stay, I didn’t know what awaited me, and I certainly didn’t imagine the life I would eventually build here. Like many immigrants, I started in hospitality a familiar path for those who arrive with courage but no certainty. I carried ten years of experience working on cruise ships, traveling across continents, meeting people from everywhere, yet stepping into Australia felt like starting from zero.

There are photos that are not about beauty or angles — they exist because they captured who we were when no one was watching.

This was me, in a rented room in Sydney, right after a shift, trying to understand a new country, a new life, and a version of myself I didn’t know yet. I didn’t have anything figured out. Just courage, exhaustion, and a heart trying to stay standing.

I was exhausted. Working in hospitality drained me physically and emotionally, and the pay barely covered my bills. One day, I realized that if I didn’t change something, I would spend years surviving instead of truly living. So I made a decision: I would return to my essence: Sports.

That was the moment everything shifted.

I became a lifeguard — first in pools, then on the beach.

I became a swim coach, a swim instructor.

For the first time since arriving in Australia, I was doing something that made sense to my heart. But like every immigrant story, changing my career meant changing my visa too. I entered the feared student visa.

And to strengthen my position in the sports field, I took an even bigger step: I enrolled in an Australian university.

I wanted to be respected.

I wanted to feel legitimate.

I wanted to prove especially to myself that I was capable of belonging in that space.

I worked for a local council for a while, and that’s where I faced one of the most difficult moments of my journey.

I experienced a subtle, quiet kind of bullying, the kind that hides behind smiles and professionalism coming from an Australian supervisor who barely did her own job.

At first, I tried to ignore it.

Then I tried to adapt.

But eventually I realized that silence also becomes a form of permission.

In Australia, where so many jobs are casual and immigrants are easily replaceable, you have to learn how to stand up for yourself or people will choose for you.

So, I did something I never imagined I would do I took the case to court for discrimination. Not because I wanted a fight, but because my dignity deserved a voice.

And in that moment, I understood that surviving as an immigrant is not just about working hard, it’s about knowing your worth, even when others don’t.

I ended up entering workers’ compensation, and suddenly I found myself without a job, surviving with whatever I could.

Those months dragged on endlessly six long, heavy months where I felt stuck between fear and uncertainty.

But in the end, I won the case (thanks to the parents who witnessed on my favour)

After everything, I changed jobs and began working at an Australian university as a swim instructor.

And for four beautiful years, that place became my stability, my routine, my pride. Then the pandemic came. Two waves of COVID.

The first lasted two months, the second stretched longer and hit deeper. The world stopped completely. Classes moved online. Work didn’t.

I ended up relying on government support, waiting for the day my job would return, because aquatic sports were one of the last things allowed to reopen.

And during that time, when the silence felt too loud and the world felt unfamiliar, I discovered a group called BTS.

Their music arrived exactly when everything around me, and inside me , was changing.

Their lyrics fit perfectly with my choices, my fears, my resilience, and the direction my life was starting to take.

They didn’t just entertain me; they held me together when everything else was falling apart.

The world had gone quiet.

I had opened my own small business, but after the pandemic, it dragged itself slowly, almost breathless just like me.

At the same time, I was finishing university, and every step forward felt like a fight against gravity.

I needed strength, discipline, and a kind of resilience I didn’t even know I had, because the battle for my visa was slowly becoming the biggest challenge of my life.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was standing at the edge of another turning point.

My business was fragile, my visa was uncertain, and my life felt like it was balancing on a thin line between hope and collapse.

But something unexpected was about to happen something that would shake everything, test me again, and pull me into a chapter I never saw coming. That moment deserves its own story.

And I’ll tell it in the next one.