From War In Korea to The American Dream Part II
Audio Version
Article Version:
A conversation with Dr. Ik-Whan G. Kwon, author of My Story: A Journey from War in Korea to America In Search for A Dream
Hosted by Tony Kalinowski & David Alexander | theretirementinsiders.com
Part Two of our conversation with Dr. Kwon goes deeper. Past the resume and into the operating system behind a life well built. War survivor. Scholar. Mentor. Husband, father of five, grandfather of many. And still, by every measure, a man in forward motion. What he shares here is not advice. It is a field tested framework for living well.
FAITH
Trust Is Not Naivety. It's Your Highest Leverage Asset.
Most high achievers treat trust like a liability. Something to be rationed, protected and extended only after evidence is presented. Dr. Kwon has built his entire life on the opposite premise. And the results speak for themselves.
For Kwon, faith is not primarily theological. It starts with people. "Deep down, I believe everyone has decency," he said. "I I’ve gotten hurt from time to time but the loss is not mine. The loss belongs to those who take advantage of someone's weakness." That reframe alone is worth contemplation. The person who betrays trust carries the cost. The person who extends it keeps the upside.
His proof? A stranger, eating alone on the other side of a restaurant. Kwon walked over and asked if he could join him. The man looked at him like he was crazy. Two decades later, they still meet for lunch at the same table in the same restaurant, nearly every month.
"There is no stranger. Everybody is kind of in your circle if you let them."
When it comes to spiritual faith, Kwon's path is equally pragmatic. Raised Buddhist in Korea, he arrived in America in 1968 and couldn't find a Buddhist temple in St. Louis. When he married his wife Jackie, a Catholic, they made a deliberate decision together. They chose Catholicism. Not by default, but by design. "Faith in religion played a very important role," he said. "It is a great source of comfort to find something I was struggling to find."
The lesson for high performers, stop waiting to trust until you've mitigated all risk. Trust isn't a feeling. It's a strategy. Deploy it intentionally.
FAMILY & FRIENDSHIP
You Don't Build a Legacy. You Host One.
In Part One, Dr. Kwon told the story of his mentor, Professor David McCord Wright, the Harvard economist who sponsored his journey to America. In Part Two, he revealed what happened on Christmas Eve 1968. Kwon, unfamiliar with American holiday customs, showed up at the Wrights' home on December 24th in his finest Korean attire a full day early for Christmas dinner.
Rather than turn him away, Professor Wright looked at his wife Catherine and said: "We have a very special guest on a very special day. Let's do Christmas dinner now." They cooked. They talked. They welcomed him fully.
"He never invited anybody for Christmas dinner. Not once. Until me."
Kwon spent the next 30+ years paying that forward. Every Thanksgiving, he and Jackie opened their home in St. Louis to every foreign student on campus who had nowhere to go. At peak years, 40 students from dozens of countries crowded their home. Nobody touched the turkey but everyone sang. American folk songs. Korean folk songs. Songs from every corner of the world.
The tradition only ended when Jackie was pregnant and physically couldn't manage it. That Thanksgiving season, students knocked on his office door: "Should we go to your house?"
Today, when Kwon travels abroad to Korea, to Europe and more former students wait for him at airports. They take him to dinner. They still sing the songs. Relationships don't expire when the semester ends. They compound.
Takeaway: Legacy isn't what you leave behind. It's what you model while you're still in the room.
GENEROSITY & FINANCE
The Highest ROI Is the One You Give Away.
Kwon is not a man who talks about generosity in the abstract. He funds it. Specifically, meticulously and with the same intention he brought to building a career.
He established the Kwon Scholarship Foundation at Saint Louis University seeded not with his own fortune, but with $50 and $100 donations from former students over decades, now exceeding $100,000. Each year, it sponsors two students at $2,500 each.
He funds Native American students in Oklahoma ensuring they have clean water and sanitary conditions. He sponsors a high school in Belize, where $1,000 covers four years of tuition. One of those students is graduating this June. Kwon is flying there to attend and to ask her: "What's next? I don't want you to go help in the kitchen. I want to help you grow."
"If I spent so much on my children's education why would it be different for anyone else?"
His philosophy on money is precise: education is not a cost. It is the highest returning asset class available to a human being. He proved it with $1.2 million spent sending five daughters to Penn, Boston College and Fordham. He's proving it again with $100 month sent directly to each grandchild through their parents, every single month. "Some months I was late," he laughed. "And the grandkids called me: 'Grandpa, where's my money?'"
The framework: Spend on people's growth. Especially when you can't afford to. The dividend never stops coming.
FITNESS
Still in the Game At Every Age.
Kwon doesn't just play golf. Every other day, he's at the gym by his own admission, the oldest one there, "huffing and puffing." But what keeps him going is not willpower. It's perspective.
"I see seniors using a cane, using a wheelchair still exercising. And I think: if they can do it, why can't I?" That's not inspiration. That's competitive recalibration.
He has never used alcohol. Never touched drugs. He wakes at 5 a.m. every day, weekends included. He never skips breakfast. When he visits his daughters, they already have his breakfast prepared because they know.
RETIREMENT DONE RIGHT
Retirement Is a Continuum. Not a Finish Line.
When Tony asked Dr. Kwon for his single most important piece of advice for retirees, the answer required no thought:
"Retirement is an extension of your activity. It is not disjointed. You continue with different purpose, different direction, different intensity. But you must keep moving. The day you stop moving mentally, you are dead. Literally dead."
He is not speaking metaphorically. In 30 years of post-retirement, Kwon has published 20 academic articles. He has maintained contact with over 350 former students each receiving a handwritten card every December. Many write back. Many tell him they are trying to live the way he lives.
He watches no more than two hours of television a day. He reads voraciously. He golfs. He travels. He mentors. He gives.
At retirement, you may feel like you have won the 40 year ‘retirement game.’Retirement can feel like being handed a consolation trophy and told to enjoy it. Kwon's model rejects that entirely. You don't retire from the game. You change the arena.
The reframe: Retirement isn't a reward for a life well lived. It's the next assignment. Treat it like one.
Live Well
Finishing well is not about luck. It is the compounded result of thousands of choices made over a long period of time. Trust people. Invest in education. Open your home. Stay in motion. Give more than you keep.
Dr. Ik-Whan G. Kwon arrived in America with $50 and a handwritten letter. He built something that money cannot buy. A life where everyone he has ever known is still trying to reach him.
Purchase Dr. Kwon’s book here.