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Dream catcher

The Straits Times on 21 Feb 2012

Kim Suyoung is travelling the world interviewing people about their dreams and will compile her experience into a book

From being chased by police through the streets of Isfahan in Iran to receiving five marriage proposals in Uzbekistan and Jordan, author Kim Suyoung, 31, has expe- rienced her fair share of adventure during her travels for her project, Dream Panorama.

It involves her travelling around the world for a year, “collecting” the dreams and aspirations of peo- ple she meets. She will eventually compile her inter- views and travel experiences into a book in July.

“I want to inspire people in developed countries to strive for their dreams, just like their counter- parts from poorer countries,” says Kim, who was in Singapore last week as part of the project.

She embarked on Dream Panorama after quitting her job as a manager who does sales and marketing at Royal Dutch Shell in London in April last year.

“I believe that this project will inspire many people, so I wanted to travel for a longer period of time,” she says.

Since June last year, the spunky South Korean has travelled to more than 20 countries, spanning Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She has so far interviewed 260 people of 55 nationalities.

Her travels are largely funded by a grant of $110,000 from the Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Fund. The fund, which is sponsored by the whisky brand, aims to inspire individuals to turn their dreams into reality.

She was one of the five winners in the contest, which was held in South Korea in November 2010. Contestants had to submit their proposals, which underwent four rounds of judging.

Kim, who mostly travels alone, finds her interviewees from interesting profiles on couch- surfing websites, references from friends and requests posted by individuals on the project’s Face- book page and website, dreampanorama.com.

In less developed countries, she simply hits the streets in search of people to speak to as “that is where the life is”, she says.

Among those who have made an especially strong impression on her is an 80-year-old Palestinian woman called Mrs Badeaa whom she met in Aida Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. She was forced out of her home 63 years ago after the town in which she lived was occupied by Israel.

She has been living in a refugee camp since and, according to Kim, “she clutches her house key and still believes that she can go back home to die there”.

Aside from asking people about what they wish for, Kim has been using her travels as an opportuni- ty to live out some of her own dreams.

One of them was to appear in a Bollywood film. While in Mumbai in December last year for more than two months, the Aishwarya Rai fan snagged a 30-second dancing role in an as-yet-untitled movie directed by Sudhir Mishra.

Kim, who learnt Bollywood dancing from well-known Bollywood choreographer Shiamak Davar while in Mumbai, says: “It involved around 10 rounds of meeting people related to the director to get this role, but I also met a lot of wannabe actresses who shared their life stories with me.”

It was also in Mumbai that she says she found the “city of dreams”.

She recounted that people, from slum labourers to aspiring Bollywood actors, strive to achieve their dreams despite the tough living conditions.

She says: “Everyone there has a story to tell and you could see that they are very driven to become rich and successful.”

In contrast, she found the dreams of the six Singaporeans she interviewed during her stay here to be less inspiring.

“Many Singaporeans dream of owning a condominium apartment. Perhaps it is because life is relatively more smooth-sailing here,” she says.

The same cannot be said of life on the road for Kim. In Isfahan, Iran, she was chased for 30 minutes by a police car. The reason: She was on a motorcy- cle with her male Iranian host and it is frowned up- on for strangers of the opposite sex to be in close contact in the conservative Muslim society.

She recalls: “My host could have gone to jail. He was running for his life, I was so scared.” They managed to escape the police car after it got stopped at a traffic light.

As for the marriage proposals, one involved a Jordanian border guard who offered 300 camels in exchange for her hand in marriage.

After completing her book in July, she hopes to travel to the United States later this year for a second book of interviews. She also hopes to revisit all her interviewees in 10 years to see how their lives have changed.

“The past 10 months of my life have been equiva- lent to living 10 years of my normal life,” she says. “I have realised that happiness can come from small pleasures in life.”

kengohsz@sph.com.sg

Original link:  http://www.straitstimes.com/Premium/Premium_20120221.html (requires login)

Corrections:

– Noted amount is Singapore dollars (not US dollars)

– Suyoung took dance classes at Shiamak dance school, not personally from Shiamak Dhavar

– “Less inspiring” was very relative and superficial impression about Singaporeans in general but not particularly about the 6 interviewees in Singapore for this project

 

 

A dream of dreamers

Today on Sunday (Singapore), 19 Feb 2012

For three travellers on unusual journeys, it’s the strangers they meet who make all the difference. First, meet Kim Suyoung, who is going around the world compiling the dreams of ordinary individuals

Walking down the crowded streets of Mumbai, Kim Suyoung (top left), 30, met a seven-year-old girl from the slums selling flowers, the burden of being her family’s sole breadwinner on her frail shoulders.As they talked, Suyoung asked what her dreams and ambitions were. The girl replied that she wanted enough milk and bread to feed her family.”I said, ‘No, what’s your dream? Imagine you have milk and bread and money. What would you like to do?’ She kept saying ‘milk and bread’. She just couldn’t think beyond that,” Suyoung recalled. It was the same sense of sadness and frustration she felt each time she met other members of marginalised communities who just could not grasp the concept of a dream.

They are among the 365 people from around the world whose dreams the 30-year-old Korean is compiling for her Dream Panorama, a personal project that will see her trotting the globe for 365 days while attempting to give real time updates on Facebook and Twitter – an effort that’s become harder since her iPhone was snatched in Lebanon.

Winning sponsorship from the Johnnie Walker Keep Walking fund, she began her journey in June last year in England, leaving her riverside apartment and managerial job at Shell Chemicals. As of the middle of this month, she had been to 20 countries, including Singapore.

She finds her dreamers on the streets of the real world, as well as in cyberspace through netizens’ recommendations, and via friends. Ten years after meeting these 365 dreamers, Suyoung intends to retrace her footsteps and find out if they have managed to achieve their dreams. Some she meanwhile keeps in touch with, through Facebook and email.

NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE RICH

That each dreamer has inspired her is plain on her face, as she earnestly retells their stories: The elderly lady in Armenia whose only dream was to see her sons again; the 20-something Iranian man who wanted to be a musician, even though no music is allowed in public places in Iran unless it is traditional or religious; the young man who said he wanted to be a neurologist “in the free state of Palestine”, placing the dreams of those who want liberation alongside his own.

Before embarking on the project, Suyoung admits, she’d thought everyone wanted to be rich. In six years of living luxuriously in London, the people she met there typically aspired to retire early, have a yacht or become a millionaire.

When she met village children on her travels, she expected them to say they wanted to get out of the slums. Instead, they wanted to be engineers or doctors. By contrast, there was the famous talk show host in Lebanon who wanted to move to a village and live a quiet life.

INDECENT PROPOSALS, AND THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

The journey has been a test of her faith in people. A few freelancers she hired ran off with her money and, on occasion, the men she intended to interview ended up making indecent proposals. “A lot of people try to take advantage of me because I’m a young, foreign woman. I go to meet some people, but then I realise they just want to sleep with me.”

In Mumbai, she was chased by a pack of dogs and got her clothes bitten off, and got into a car accident with a cow.

At other times, she gets by on the kindness of strangers. Travelling alone, she often finds herself being fed and taken care of by the locals – she has crashed in new friends’ homes, a Bedouin tent in Jordan, a bamboo hut in Goa, a chateau in France. “It makes me realise how people live, and you connect to more stories and people,” she said.

While she keeps her followers updated on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, sometimes they shape her path too: Someone suggested she come to Singapore after a difficult time in Myanmar where she ran out of money.

RUNAWAY REBEL

Growing up in Kwangjoo, South Korea, Suyoung had no dreams of her own.

Born to a struggling family of four children, her father was a construction worker, while her mother did odd jobs. When she was 10, they went on the run from debtors after her dad, who tried to start a business, went bankrupt. They settled in a small village, living “in a hole with no toilet, no kitchen, nothing”.

The once quiet and timid child snapped. In middle school, she turned rebellious, getting involved in gang activities, motorcycle rallies and fights. “I ended up at the police station so many times I cannot even count,” she laughed. She pointed out the fading scars from stab wounds and motorcycle burns all over her body.

She ran away from home and got into alcoholism and drugs. Then one day, she heard a song by one of her idols – aptly titled Come Back Home.

“I hated the whole world. But this song said that, because you are still young, you deserve a better future. It just went straight to my heart,” she said. “Nobody told me I could have a good future. My family was poor … I was kind of guaranteed to have a pretty difficult life. But this song, for the first time, made me realise I could have a good life.”

FINALLY, A GOAL

Returning home, it wasn’t easy to change her ways. Her former gang-mates would show up at her house and try to snatch her away. Her relationship with her parents was badly fractured. Entering high school a year later than her peers made it tough to connect with them.

“This is silly to say but, once a gang leader … it wasn’t easy to accept being an ordinary student. I considered quitting many times,” Suyoung said.

It was after reading an article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that she finally found a goal in life: To become a journalist.

Friends and teachers discouraged her, saying no one from her vocational high school had ever managed to go to university. Her parents could not pay for textbooks either – so she dug for them in other people’s trash. “Now that I had a goal, I couldn’t just walk away from it.”

Eventually, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Yonsei University. While there, she became the youngest freelance journalist at Donga Daily and won best article of the year. She worked at more than 30 jobs, from emceeing to real estate.

FROM CANCER TO KILIMANJARO

But shortly after she joined Goldman Sachs Korea, at 24, she had a cancer scare. Though she made a swift recovery, it left her feeling unsettled with life. “Like Gandhi said, ‘be the change … in the world’. Rather than reporting the changes, I wanted to be the change myself.” She looked at me and laughed: “Sorry, no offence.”

Suyoung wrote down her bucket list of 73 dreams (which later grew to 83) and started crossing them out. One of the first things she did was move to London to get her masters. She has since climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, learnt Spanish in Latin America and built a house for her parents.

This year-long road trip has also been an opportunity for Suyoung to fulfil more of her own dreams, such as appearing in a Bollywood film and becoming a certified Yogi.

In 2010, she published a book, Write Your Dreams, Write Your Future. It became a best-seller in her homeland, and the response gave her the idea to start Dream Panorama. “Many people emailed me and said they either don’t have a dream or don’t have the means to achieve it. I realise I cannot provide them solutions, but what I can do is give them inspiration.”

The project will be turned into a travelling exhibition, book and documentary series, after Suyoung completes her journey in Seoul this May.

Original link:

http://www.todayonline.com/Sunday/FaceintheCrowd/EDC120219-0000004/A-dream-of-dreamers

[Press] Hibr.me “Suyoung wants to be a Bollywood dancer.”

http://www.hibr.me/content/suyoung-kim-inspiring-world-dream

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.”

[Press] Yerevan.ru “A girl who knows everything about other people’s dreams”

DREAMPANORAMA was featured on Yerevan.ru, the online newspaper of Armenia in Russian

http://yerevan.ru/2011/08/23/mechty-sbyvayutsya-ty-tolko-zapishi/

Here’s English translation (with a few corrections)

A girl who knows everything about other people’s dreams

Chasing worldly goods in a daily hustle and chores we often forget about our own desires and dreams, partly incarnating them only during the summer vacations. I am sure everyone for once thought about, figuratively, pulling the tight tie off and leaving the boardroom, making at least a small step towards the incarnation of some crazy dream.

To sort your cherished wishes out, it is necessary to create your own “dream-list”, advises Suyoung Kim, an expert on dreams. Suyoung is the founder of Dream Panorama project. It is a road trip adventure which aim is to find out what people are dreaming of and what they are doing to make their dreams come true. Together with the world-famous brand “Johnnie Walker” Suyoung Kim walks confidently in different cities of the world, collecting “statistics” about the cherished dreams of people who belong to different nationalities and faiths.

Suyoung approached in a resolute step to Swan Lake, where we had an appointment. She did not feel confused in a foreign country, the young Korean woman liked Armenia. She got here by accident. Due to the unstable political situation in Syria, which Suyoung had intended to visit on her way from Turkey, young Korean woman changed her plans and decided to experience at first hand the hospitality of Armenians and Georgians.

In a few days of her stay in the South Caucasus, Suyoung, who grew up in a Korean provincial village, noticed the similarity of the plight of the peasants of Korea and the Transcaucasian countries. “I had to walk for a couple of hours to get to the school,” she admitted, “Here and in neighboring Georgia, the conditions are almost the same.” It is the desire to escape from the poverty that surrounded her has made ​​her just the way she is, a self-confident, independent, cheerful and very positive “dreamer.”

She began to dream at the moment when an old issue of the local newspaper fell into her hands. Carried away by the news, trouble-maker Suyoung, who had a lot of bad habits and nasty stories in the past, decided to become a journalist. The mockery of friends and distrust of parents did not prevent Suyoung from entering the most prestigious Korean university. The problem of paying for the education was solved as if by magic; after a television show in which she won a tidy sum of money, Suyoung has become a Korean slumdog millionaire.

Then everything went as in a fairytale… work in the most famous Korean newspaper, the prize for the best article, continuing education in the UK, working in well-known company Goldman Sachs. “Dreams do come true if you record them. Spoken desire leads to nowhere “, the author of the Korean bestseller “Write your dreams, write your future” believes.

This book was sold 150,000 copies. We can’t reveal the secrets of the “American Dream” by Korean student so far, the book has not been translated into English and Russian yet. “But don’t give up,” says Suyoung, “Just write down your dream.” She often adds new dreams to her own list. Today her list numbers 83 dreams, Suyoung has been traveling for a long time and has already been to 50 countries.

However, within the Dream Panorama project she visited only 10 countries so far. “Meeting local residents helps to create a general impression of what I’ve seen,” says Suyoung, “In Europe, people often want something for themselves, for example, a 43-year-old Italian, whose cherished wish was wife twice younger than him. But in Eastern countries, people are more interested in peace on earth and clean air in the sky.” An 83-year-old grandfather Kolya from Byurakan wants “peace around the world”. Suyoung was very impressed by the desire of a 78-year-old grandmother from Noraduz that really wanted all of her children finally visit her, so she wouldn’t have to die with anguish in her heart.

(Above) 78-year-old grandmother from Noraduz wants to see all of her children

(Below) Grandfather Kolya dreams of the world peace

Suyoung realizes her own dreams with enviable constancy; she has already climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, participated in a belly dancing show, even starred in Burmese film. The biggest dream achieved was a house for parents, which Suyoung embodied, although it wasn’t easy.

“Lack of money and lack of talent isn’t an obstacle on the path to realization of your dream”, Suyoung persuades, “People are more likely to suffer from the fact that they do not know what they want.” Suyoung always knows her plans and desires in advance. Dream Panorama project is scheduled for completion by May 2012. The hard work of sorting the collected material, the photo selection and editing will be done after. The results of the annual trip will be presented in the Korean TV documentary, photo exhibit and book.

However, Suyoung is not going to forget about her project even after. Ten years from now she plans to visit the places she has been to and see whether the dreams of the respondents came true and how it affected their lives.

Let’s hope that the dreams of all those thousands of people, whom Suyoung has met, will be fulfilled. And grandmother’s relatives will visit their hometown of Yerevan to celebrate her birthday.

[dreamINTERVIEW#8] Pierre, 30, Paris “I want to explore the earth”

“I want to explore all the countries on the earth”

Dreamer: Pierre, 30, Project manager at a French bank

Location: Paris

Date: 7 June 2011

Pierre is the Parisian. I mean a real Parisian, everything about him just “screams” Paris.  I can’t think of anyone more French than Pierre, even among all my French friends.

He was born in Versaille though, he spent most of his life in Paris. I met him in Melbourne Australia during study abroad program in college while he was doing MBA there. There was something different about him from other European students, especially his pride in being French  was very visible.

Unlike other friends who strived to fix their distinctive accents, he stuck to his French way of speaking English. I struggled a lot to understand him, especially the fact that he doesn’t pronounce ‘h’ – I used to think he was angry when he said he was hungry; so when I first met him, I thought  “Jeez, this guy gets angry quiet often” . But actually, he’s a sweetheart.

Every time I visit Paris, he volunteers to be my Paris tour guide taking me to places where “real Parisians” go.

It was the day we went to Le Tambour, with his friend Emilie, and Diane, who will join dreamTEAM member as photographer.

With lots of laughs, and a couple of glasses of wine, my Paris night couldn’t be jollier.

When he was asked to tell his dream, he answered without hesitation. “My dream? Simply, I just want to explore all the countries on the earth!”

Few days after the interview, he joined trekking tour in Corsica, where his family has second home.

Pursuing his dream, he travels here and there.. If you happen to run into him somewhere exotic, just say, “Ca va?” he would greet  “Tres bien” with a smile as usual.

[dreamINTERVIEW#4] Diana, London “My dream is to travel around the world all my life”

“My dream is to travel around the world all my life.”

Dreamer: Diana, Australian, Lawyer

Date: 4 June 2011

Location: London

Originally from Sydney with Malaysian Chinese backbround, she has lived in so-called “London dream” for 3 years.  Being intelligent and ambitious, Diana has been a high-flying lawyer working for one of the ‘magic circle’ – 5 leading UK-headquartered law firms.

Not to mention, her career was “what millions of lawyers will die for” and  her prestigious investment bank clients paid more than enough for her to pay her bills.

However, she is not really born to be a workaholic; she actually wants a life! She had enough of working long hours , even during the weekends, without having some time for herself.

In the same week of interview, she handed in resignation letter to her employer.

The reason is simple – “I want to be happy”

Talking about dream, she took a few minutes to recall what makes her happy and what she really wants to do:Traveling around the world.

She is now taking an action to fulfill her dream. She is go back to Australia in 3 months for some rest then travel around Latin America for 4 months!!!!

There you go chica!!! Baila! Viaja! Disfruta la vida!

Feel free to leave a comment to encourage her or recommand some “must-see” places in Latin America for her! 😉