I joined Dongsuh Securities in Seoul in 1988. In late 1991, right before the Korean stock market liberalisation to foreign investors, ABN AMRO hired me in Hong Kong as the first Korean on a Western institutional desk. I became the first regular Korean market commentator on Asia Business News (now CNBC), going on air monthly and ad hoc to explain a market most global investors couldn't access yet.

That experience shaped everything that followed. Global investors were hungry for Korean insight, yet almost nobody was bridging the language, the culture, and the market structure. The gap wasn't analytical, it was often translational.

I spent the next decade in London building that bridge through HSBC, Samsung Securities, and Daewoo Securities. After completing an MBA at Bayes Business School focused on corporate governance, I initiated what became the earliest shareholder activism campaigns in Korean history, working with prominent global investors on KT&G, SK Corp, and Samsung C&T in addition to cancellation of NVPS (Non-Voting Preferred Shares). We helped write the first chapter of Korea's value investment revolution.

Then I did something people didn't expect. In 2016, I moved to Pyongyang. My own children had all benefitted from incredible educations, and I'd come to feel strongly that education is a real privilege, one worth sharing. For seven and a half years I taught banking, finance, and economics at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, the only internationally-run university in North Korea. I served as Academic Dean, headed the Centre for Economic and Financial Research, and gained a perspective on the Korean Peninsula that nobody in finance has.

Now I'm back in London, splitting my time between Seoul and the rest of the world, running Korea Premium Facilitators and building The Korea Bridge. The mission hasn't changed since 1991, I've just decided to double down and close the gap. The tools are different, but my conviction is the same.