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Suyoung Kim: Inspiring the world to dream

Sarah Owermohle

Suyoung Kim wants to be a Bollywood dancer.

This is one of the 73 dreams she wrote down six years ago, following a cancer diagnosis at the age of 24. At the time, she was an employee at Goldman Sachs in South Korea. Today, she’s traveling the world, recording the dreams of spontaneous acquaintances in her documentary film, Dream Panorama. She’s fulfilled 39 of her dreams so far, and continues to check them off as she road trips through Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and eventually back to Korea.

Kim’s story began in Kwangjoo, Korea, with a difficult childhood plagued by poverty, gangs, and drinking problems. By 15, she had dropped out of school and ran away from home. When she returned to school, she had aspirations to become a journalist, but her family and friends didn’t support her goals.

“When I was young, no one encouraged me to have a dream,” Kim recalls. “Koreans are very ambitious people, but my father used to say that this proverb about this insect can only eat this one type of plant. Meaning, being from this small family with these circumstance, you can’t have a big dream.”

But Kim continued to dream. She eventually landed a job with Donga Daily, South Korea’s leading newspaper, and became their youngest freelance journalist while she was in university, earning an award for the “Best Article of 2000.” However, her subsequent job with Goldman Sachs was tainted when she received a cancer diagnosis. Following her recovery, Kim knew she wanted something more.

“People say they have a dream, but my question is what do you really want in your life? Because we could die any moment,” Kim said. She resigned from Goldman Sachs and set off to fulfill her first of 73 dreams: moving to London.

“The first [dream] is always the hardest but the most important as well. For me, the first one was to leave Korea and see the world. It was hard, because I was working for Goldman Sachs, a very prestigious career…but I knew this wasn’t what I wanted. I knew that if I died, this wouldn’t be where I wanted to be. Once I made the first decision, I became very free, and that made me a more free person, and things became easier. It became a life of choice.”

Inspiring others

Kim went on to publish Write Your Dreams, Write Your Future, which became a bestseller in South Korea. Immediately following the book, emails and letters poured in from around the word. People wanted to fulfill their dreams…but didn’t know how.

Kim noticed two main themes in people’s messages. “Mostly, people were saying ‘I have a dream, but I don’t have money, time, I’m married, etcetera’…all these reasons. The second thing; I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what my dream is. I thought, I can’t be a solution to everyone, but I can be an inspiration. I am one person, one life, but I can show so many more—there are seven billion people in the world, seven billion ways of life. People don’t know what’s out there,” Kim said.

The Dream Panorama project

And so Kim embarked on Dream Panorama. The project, sponsored by Johnnie Walker’s “Keep Walking Fund,” documents Kim and her crew’s year-long road trip from London to Seoul. Since June, Kim and her team of photographers and filmmakers have been journeying through Europe, Eurasia, and parts of the Middle East, spontaneously meeting and interviewing dreamers from all walks of life. As of her arrival in Beirut, Kim had interviewed 127 people from over 45 nationalities; meeting them in 43 cities in 13 countries.

“In the beginning, I had no idea how to go about interviewing people, but it just worked. Many times, it just happens in the street…I just build a rapport [with an interviewee], and its gotten better and better. I feel like I’m carrying 127 lives in my heart and mind all the time,” Kim said.

And each life has had its own story, from heartbreaking to heartwarming, inspiring to puzzling. There is Dioni, a 61-year-old Greek woman, who lost her 29-year-old son Panos to cancer a few years ago. Since then, she has helped found schools in Kenya and Nepal through a charity in his name, ‘Panos & Cressida for Life’.” Her dream is to help children in honor of her son, but it is too difficult for her to travel the difficult terrain to see the results of her work so far. Kim will visit the Nepalese schools later this year to photograph and record them for Dioni.

There is Emma a 26-year-old Nigerian who crossed the Sahara and Mediterranean to come to Europe and live in Rome. He now sells socks for a living, and dreams only of returning home.

And 43-year-old Paolo, a chemical engineer in Napoli, whose dream is marry a woman 20 years younger than him, because “it makes getting older better.”

And then there is Marina, the 23-year-old Georgian woman, whose dream is simply to see the Eiffel Tower. “There are some people who live next to the Eiffel Tower, but she doesn’t even know anyone who’s been to France,” Kim said.

“Sharing these stories, I’m sure people might not find everyone’s story inspiring, but I think they will find someone with the same background or dream, and think, despite all these obstacles and challenges, she’s working on it…it gives encouragement, and connects people,” Kim said. “Also, by having their stories now made public, it makes them make a promise more to themselves to make their dreams possible. Ten years later, I’ll come back to the same people, to see if their dreams have been fulfilled.”

Kim comes to Beirut

Kim’s arrival in Beirut was serendipitous, following trouble with her original plans to travel through Syria. She got to the country days after a trip through Iran, and couldn’t help but remark on her first impressions.

“Lebanese people, they’ve been through so much with the civil war, war with Israel…and yet they are really impressive, and open-minded,” Kim said.

Kim spent her week in Beirut primarily interviewing people in the media and arts, and continued on her journey of dreams into Jordan. By November, she plans on getting to Mumbai, India, where another one of her own dreams awaits.

“My biggest aspiration of this journey is to be a Bollywood dancer. First I have to get in shape, climbing part of Mt. Everest and doing yoga training for a month. I’ll start auditions, learn Hindi…I’m giving myself a minimum of one month to find an opportunity,” Kim said. “This isn’t a part of the filming process, it’s for me. I’m still fulfilling my dreams.”

“Having gone through such discouragement I realized that having a dream is a process, and you have to have it officially, it is so important, it makes so much difference— just having the belief is so much.”