About Young

My first name is Young.

Despite my foreign name, I am an American, born and raised. My parents are also American citizens. They immigrated to the States in the early 1970s.

I grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, and even though I left Chicago in ’88, I’m still a fan of the Bears.

I went to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. I saw a soccer match, but I can’t remember who was playing. I started school at Seoul Foreign School, an international school for foreign citizens, in the fall. I was in Korea for two years, and all I learned was, Mollayo, orakshil, and jandon.

After my parents’ separation and subsequent divorce, my family moved to the suburbs of Seattle, where I wrestled and briefly got into grunge.

I graduated from the University of Washington with a Fine Arts degree. After graduation, even the Cheesecake Factory wouldn’t hire me. I ended up working at a one-hour photo before deciding to work a year in Korea.

I served in the Korean Army from 2004-2006. I did a six-month tour in Afghanistan during that time.

I’m not a Korean citizen. Those two years were the only two years I lived as a Korean.

I currently teach English at a university in Seoul, the same university I got my worthless master’s degree from. I love my job because it gives me plenty of time to write.

I love riding motorcycles. As a result of that love, I spent the first five months of 2014 in the hospital with a tibia that was broken into three pieces, fractures in both sides of my ankle and my heel, and a split chin.

This first book is a memoir, but my passion is writing fiction. (The memoir is as true as my memory allowed. No fabrication was involved. If I felt I had license to do so, it would be a much more interesting story.) My first novel is still in its early stages.