I Was a Different Person Every Year

I was a different person every year.

Spring 2016 — from the hell after dropping out, to the first six million won in revenue.

If I explain my past backward from who I am now, much of my life becomes a lie. I was not someone who wanted to be an entrepreneur from childhood; I was not someone who spotted generative AI's potential early and prepared for years; nor did I study for the CPA because accounting was my life's dream. The first time I actually used AI was March 2025, and the most accurate answer I can give today for why I prepared for the CPA is: money. My self-assessment at the time was simple. Money aside, I considered myself already complete. This is not a claim that I was objectively complete — it is a record of how I saw myself then. 〔first-person statement〕

So my last ten years must not be shaped into a growth narrative toward a single goal. In reality, an entirely different world appeared before me each time, and I walked into it. In one world I took exams; in another I played as a university student; in another I shut myself in a study room grinding for the CPA; one day I used AI for the first time; months later I registered a business; months after that, a customer paid me six million won. The purpose kept changing, and so did the way I explained myself to myself. Yet beneath those changes, one rhythm of daily life persisted strangely long. After the roughly one year of hell that followed dropping out — I simply got up, washed, and went out. 〔first-person statement · interpretation〕

It begins in spring 2016. That is when I dropped out of high school. 〔first-person statement〕 Knowing who I am now, it is tempting to caption that scene: “someone who escaped the old order early,” “someone who refused the path others set,” even “the first appearance of entrepreneurial independence.” But that is a story told after the fact. There is no evidence I was conceiving today's business then, none that I was thinking of building anything with AI. Nor, chronologically, can the spring 2016 dropout be read as a reaction to the political upheaval of that year's second half. By the Constitutional Court's own account of the Park Geun-hye impeachment, reporting on the Mir and K-Sports foundations began in earnest around July 2016, the pivotal reporting on Choi Soon-sil's interference came on October 24, and the removal ruling itself came on March 10, 2017. I left school before any of that gathered force. So retrofitting my present political and business worldview onto the dropout has no basis. 〔interpretation〕

And freedom did not follow the dropout either. This is the part of my chronicle that must be recorded accurately first. For about a year after dropping out, I lay at home. I remember almost none of it now. I do not call that period “hard.” I do not even call it “like hell.” It was hell. There is no need to invent causes or psychology here for why it was hell. What I can state with certainty is three things: I spent about a year after dropping out lying at home; I remember almost nothing of that time; and I call that time hell. 〔first-person statement〕 As it happens, the latter half of that hell overlapped with an enormous event in Korean society — a presidential impeachment. The National Assembly passed the motion in December 2016, and the Constitutional Court removed the president by unanimous decision on March 10, 2017. But that was what Korean society was going through in those months; there is no basis for connecting it to the cause of my private hell. The two merely existed in the same time. 〔interpretive limit〕

After that year or so, a strangely simple pattern began in my life. I have no memory of waking up one morning and declaring, “From today I change my life.” Nor have I ever told a story of vowing never to lie in bed again. Building that kind of hero narrative would only pull this further from the truth. Simply, from some point on: wake, wash, go out. 〔first-person statement〕 This was not a habit formed by enjoying university life in 2022 and 2023 — it was the default of my daily life from much earlier. What I did after going out kept changing, but the morning's first motions were remarkably alike: get up, wash, leave the house. So if a single continuity must be found in my life after this period, it is less “pushed one goal for ten years” and closer to entered the day even without a goal. 〔first-person statement · interpretation〕

Then I walked back into that most traditional of Korean games: the entrance exam. Dropping out had not meant concluding that exams and universities were unnecessary. I prepared for the Suneung and sat the 2020 exam in 2019. I scored grade 2 in Korean, grade 1 in English, grade 1 in math, grade 1 in world history — a perfect score in world history — and grade 3 in East Asian history. I then entered Chung-Ang University's business school through the essay track. 〔first-person statement〕 This fact makes it hard to explain my dropout as “a permanent refusal of institutions.” When needed, I took the exam again; when needed, I entered university. There is no basis for saying what I hated was all institutions. Judging by actions alone, I was the type who re-entered whatever game seemed necessary at the time, rather than remaining forever outside. 〔interpretation〕

And in 2020 I entered university — just as the university itself, as a space, stopped. In March 2020 the Ministry of Education, responding to COVID-19, loosened first-semester restrictions so universities could run remote classes broadly, letting them organize their own remote courses and content. The same month it drew up systematic standards for remote instruction in case classroom teaching became impossible. So 2020, the year I entered, differed at the level of basic conditions from any ordinary freshman year. I became a university student, but the in-person campus life I would later experience did not open right away. 〔first-person statement + public records〕

Here too, the present me must not be inserted into the 2020 me. I was not an entrepreneur then. Not a CPA candidate, and I had never used AI. 〔first-person statement〕 There is no basis for portraying me as someone already studying the production structures of companies. The 2020 me was a student who entered university in the middle of COVID. Passing through 2021, that blocked life slowly began to take another shape. One date in my personal history is clear: October 2021, my first relationship. 〔first-person statement〕 From around then, people and relationships entered my university life in earnest, and moving through late 2021 into 2022 and 2023, I enjoyed university life enormously. 〔first-person statement〕

The first relationship ended around April or May 2022. 〔first-person statement〕 Almost exactly then, Korea's COVID rules for daily life changed drastically. Per the KDCA, from April 18, 2022 the government lifted the social-distancing measures on operating hours, private gatherings, and events — after about two years and one month. I cannot assert this as the direct cause of how much I enjoyed university. But the fact that I remember 2022–2023 as years of meeting people face to face and loving university life, and the fact that Korean society actually removed its major restraints on in-person activity from spring 2022 — those two mesh precisely in time. 〔first-person statement + public records + limited interpretation〕

I do not want to grandly reinterpret the 2022 and 2023 me in today's language. I was not strategically building networks for a future business. I was not observing people in preparation for the AI era. I did not spend my days analyzing Korea's demographics and industrial productivity. I just had a damn good time at university. 〔first-person statement〕 I met people, played, went to school, went out when there were plans, came home when the day ended, and the next day got up, washed, went out again. Through the end of 2023, I remember playing that much. 〔first-person statement〕 If a meaning must be attached to this period now, it is not “time spent preparing the future” but time when the present was lived as the present. And even that is only a reading attached in hindsight. 〔interpretation〕

Meanwhile, Korean society outside was shifting bit by bit. Korea's total population in 2022 was 51.63 million, and Statistics Korea recorded that the total had turned to decline after peaking at 51.84 million in 2020. The 2022 total fertility rate was 0.78, the lowest since records began, and the capital region held 50.5% of the population. In the 2023 youth statistics, the population aged 15–39 fell by 291,000 from the prior year; among youths with income, average annual labor-and-business income was 29.5 million won, and the home-ownership rate was 11.5%. Such figures can serve as background on the economic environment of Korean youth at the time — but they do not mean the 2022–2023 me lived conscious of those statistics daily. I clearly remember enjoying that period instead. 〔first-person statement + distinction between era background and personal experience〕

Then 2023 ended. And here the mood of my chronicle changes as if cut with a knife. In 2024 I moved down to my family home in Gwangju and did nothing but study for the KICPA in a reading room. 〔first-person statement〕 The person who had been meeting people and loving university life the year before spent most of every day the next year on accounting, tax law, corporate finance, economics, and problem sets. 〔first-person statement〕 I do not want to write this change gently as “gradually maturing into focus.” In my memory, 2023 and 2024 are simply different worlds of living. What is more interesting is that the skeleton of behavior barely changed. In 2023 I woke, washed, went out; in 2024 I woke, washed, went out. Only, what waited outside in 2023 was school and people — in 2024, a reading room and CPA books. 〔first-person statement · interpretation〕

And why the CPA must be recorded precisely. I did not prepare for the exam because I felt accounting was my destiny. Nor because I needed a new identity. It was money. At the time, I considered myself complete except for money. Again: not an objective evaluation of a human being, but the self-perception of that period. I did not feel I had to become something to finally be adequate — I judged myself already lacking little, and the resource I realistically lacked was money. 〔first-person statement〕 So the question then was less “who am I?” than “how do I secure money?” 〔interpretation〕 The CPA was the concrete answer the 2024 me chose: pass the exam, obtain a professional license, supply scarce labor, produce high income. 〔first-person statement + interpretation of the economic structure〕

What matters especially: the 2024 me must never be written as someone preparing for the eve of the AI transition. I never actually used AI in 2024. 〔first-person statement〕 ChatGPT had been public since November 30, 2022 — but my first use of AI came about two years and three or four months later, in March 2025. 〔first-person statement + calculation from the release date〕 So I am no early adopter who tracked generative AI from its infancy. While ChatGPT existed and spread rapidly through the world, the 2024 me was studying for the CPA in a Gwangju reading room. That is the fact. 〔first-person statement + OpenAI release date〕

In spring 2025 I returned to school. I attended my final semester, completed the graduation requirements — and in March 2025, the month of that return, used AI for the first time. 〔first-person statement〕 From this scene, the distance to the present suddenly shortens. Through December 2024 I was a person in a CPA reading room; in March 2025, a person who had just met AI. Yet by August of the same year I had effectively finished all required coursework, and in September 2025 I registered a business. 〔first-person statement〕 From first using AI to becoming a business owner: roughly half a year. This is not the timeline of someone who researched AI products for years before founding. The actual dates are what they are. 〔interpretation grounded in dates〕

By then, in Korean society too, AI was already moving from “fascinating chatbot” to industrial tool. Around 2025 the government pushed a national AI-transformation policy expanding AI adoption across industry and the public sector, and its 2026 work plans explicitly pursue regional AX projects and the spread of Physical AI in manufacturing, logistics, and shipbuilding. But this, again, is no evidence that “I read national policy in advance and entered business.” What I can say is far simpler: I first used AI in March 2025, and quickly experienced the range of what I could do by myself changing. 〔first-person statement〕 That the era and an individual ended up moving in the same direction, and that the individual predicted the era, are different claims. 〔interpretive limit〕

Why AI mattered to me becomes clearer against the problem I was trying to solve in 2024. The 2024 answer was: raise the price of my labor. Pass the CPA, obtain the license, supply scarce professional labor, receive high pay. 〔personal motive + economic interpretation〕 But using AI changed the scope of production I could imagine. I could build programs myself; something built once could run repeatedly; work that would once have needed several people and more capital could now be attempted, fast, by one person. 〔first-person statement〕 Then even solving the same problem — money — the solution could differ. Instead of selling my labor hours at a high price, I could build the structure in which value is created. This is not a story of abandoning the CPA because money stopped mattering; it is closer to discovering a different answer to the same problem of money. 〔interpretation〕

In August 2025 I effectively completed my university studies. 〔first-person statement〕 Administratively a graduation deferral remained, but the point I call my real graduation is August 2025. 〔first-person statement〕 And one month later, in September, I registered the business. 〔first-person statement〕 Laid out in order, the compression is almost strange. Until the end of 2023 I enjoyed university life enormously. In 2024 I studied only for the CPA in a Gwangju reading room. In March 2025 I used AI for the first time. That spring I attended my final semester; in August I finished my studies; in September I became a business owner. 〔first-person statement〕 Calling this the natural stages of one person's career development is less accurate to the actual chronicle than saying a different version was swapped in, year after year. 〔interpretation〕

Nor was the Korean economy in explosive boom when I started the business. By the Bank of Korea's near-final provisional national accounts, Korea's real GDP growth in 2025 was 1.1%. As of May 2025, the population aged 15–29 had shrunk by 200,000 from the prior year, and the youth employment rate had fallen 0.7 points to 46.2%. So there is no objective basis for describing the period when I registered my business as “a time when domestic demand was expanding strongly and opportunity overflowed for the young.” It was an economy where low growth and youth-population decline were advancing together. 〔interpretation grounded in public records〕 This backdrop helps explain the environment in which I later grew interested in corporate structures that raise productivity through software and automation rather than by continually adding people — but it does not mean I began the business from that macroeconomic analysis. 〔interpretive limit〕

In February 2026 the graduation deferral ended, and with the ceremony I formally graduated from Chung-Ang University's business school. 〔first-person statement〕 In 2020, the year I entered, the Ministry of Education was urgently rewriting universities' remote-instruction rules because of COVID-19; in 2026, the year I formally left, the very language of government policy had already shifted to industry-wide AI Transformation — AX. The science ministry's 2026 work plan explicitly commits to industrial AX projects in four regions, to be expanded nationwide. Only six years separate my entrance and graduation, but the university I entered and the industrial environment I exited can hardly be called the same technological world. 〔interpretation grounded in public records〕

And two months after formal graduation, in April 2026, the first revenue arrived from the first customer: six million won. 〔first-person statement〕 This scene matters in my personal chronicle, because registering a business and an actual customer paying money are different things. 〔general business interpretation〕 Someone had a real problem; a price attached to the solution I provided; and the result was six million won of revenue. 〔first-person statement + interpretation〕 Above all, set beside 2024 the contrast is stark. The 2024 me was studying for the CPA to make money. The April 2026 me received six million won not as a salary earned by a CPA license, but from a customer of my own business. 〔first-person statement〕 The question was still money. The answer had changed. 〔interpretation〕

The size of the problems I saw changed after that too. In 2025 I began AI coding in earnest, and began building software from real customers' workflows. 〔first-person statement〕 Quoting, order-winning, site management, purchasing, settlement, CRM, reservations, data processing — the work companies actually repeat every day became my material. 〔first-person statement〕 In the course of building one program, my interest widened into questions like why people copy the same number multiple times, why relaying and managing grow as a company grows, what people should do and what should be handed to software. 〔first-person statement〕 And as of 2026 the Korean government, too, names Physical AI and industrial AX — converting real industries like manufacturing, logistics, and shipbuilding with AI — as policy tasks. Again, this does not mean I designed my business by following government policy. What can be confirmed is that the problems I found at customers' sites exist in the same era as the problems Korean society has begun to call AX at the national level. 〔interpretation〕

Laid out plainly from spring 2016 to 2026, it is hard to find one occupation or one goal running through my life. In 2016 I dropped out of high school. For about a year after, I lay at home and remember almost nothing. It was hell. Then I began going outside again, prepared for the Suneung, and entered Chung-Ang University's business school. In 2020 I entered university and immediately met COVID. In October 2021, my first relationship. In April–May 2022, my first breakup. In 2022 and 2023 I had a damn good time at university. In 2024 I went down to Gwangju and studied only for the CPA in a reading room. The reason was money. In March 2025 I first used AI. That spring I returned for my final semester. In August I effectively finished my studies. In September I registered a business. In February 2026 I formally graduated, and in April the first customer produced six million won of revenue. The entire personal history in this paragraph is the chronicle I have stated myself. 〔first-person statement〕

So “I was a different person every year” is no mere sentiment. The 2023 me went out to meet people and enjoy university; months later, the 2024 me was solving CPA problems in Gwangju. In March 2025 I used AI for the first time in my life; about half a year later I was a business owner; about seven months after that, the first customer paid six million won. 〔first-person statement + date calculation〕 Insert the 2026 me's occupation and mindset into the 2024 me and you get it wrong; insert the 2024 me's purpose into the 2022 me and you get it wrong again. My past selves were not unfinished drafts of the present. Each lived the world of its own time. 〔interpretation〕

But neither was it merely a series of fully severed people. One strangely simple thing remains. From the end of the year of hell after the spring 2016 dropout: I simply woke, washed, and went out. 〔first-person statement〕 I went out while preparing for the exam. I went out as a university student. I went out while in love. I went out after the breakup. I went out in 2022 and 2023 while playing hard. In 2024 I went out to the reading room. In 2025 I went out to school again, and met AI that year. After becoming a business owner I went out into the world of business, and in 2026 real money began arriving from customers. 〔first-person statement〕

So if you look for the continuity of my life in goals, it barely shows. I did not run ten years toward accounting, nor ten years toward founding, nor ten years toward AI. The act of going outside came first, and what stood outside kept changing. 〔interpretation: grounded in the full chronicle〕 Outside, in 2018, stood the entrance exam; in 2022, people; in 2024, a reading room; in 2025, AI; in 2026, customers and a company. Except for the early exam years whose exact boundaries are not specified, every scene rests on dates and events I have stated myself. 〔first-person statement · scope limit〕

And through those ten years, Korea did not stay fixed as one society either. A few months after my spring 2016 dropout, the political crisis leading to impeachment began, and in March 2017 the president was removed. In 2020, the year I entered university, COVID-19 turned the university's own teaching remote. In spring 2022, as I began truly enjoying university, the distancing measures of two years and one month were lifted. That same year Korea recorded total population decline and a 0.78 fertility rate. On November 30, 2022, while I was playing as a university student, ChatGPT was released to the world — and I did not use it. I lived university life the following year too, and in 2024 studied not AI but the CPA. Only in March 2025 did I first use AI myself. 〔first-person statement〕 And in 2026, the year I formally graduated, the Korean government was pushing the AI transformation of entire industries under the name AX.

So explaining the speed of my changes purely by personal will falls short, and so does explaining it purely as the era's push. The era kept making different doors, but I did not know of them all in advance and wait. In most cases I entered a door after actually encountering the fact that it existed. 〔interpretation〕 AI especially. For about two years and three or four months after ChatGPT's release I did not use AI; in between I lived university life and studied for the CPA. 〔first-person statement + release-date calculation〕 Yet within about half a year of first using it in March 2025 I had registered a business, and about seven months later came the first six million won of customer revenue. 〔first-person statement + date calculation〕 If I have a distinguishing trait, it is not that I prophesied every change early — it is closer to this: when a change actually appeared before me and I judged it valid, I did not refuse the new answer in order to preserve my previous self. 〔interpretation〕

The 2016 me was in hell. The 2022 me was enjoying university. The 2024 me studied for the CPA for money. The 2025 me met AI for the first time. The 2026 me is watching how customers' companies work. 〔first-person statement〕 These are not people who knew each other in advance. So I do not want to tie them into one beautiful foreshadowing. Nor will I tell the story that my whole life was designed to produce the present me.

What I can say with certainty is simpler still.

In spring 2016 I left school. The year after was hell.

And once that time had passed —

I simply woke, washed, and went out.

After that, every time I went out, the world outside had changed.

And strangely, so had I.