Beyond the Beaten Path: How a Passion for Public Service Led Me Down a Different Road

I became curious about urban planning because of the eco-city of Curitiba in Brazil, which I encountered in my English textbook when I was a high school student. The case of Curitiba, which created a sustainable city through urban planning, led to my interest in the urban environment in which I live. This interest led to my advancement to university and my major in urban planning.

However, the department I went to was one that studied not only urban planning but also real estate. Therefore, I had to study real estate even if I didn’t want to, but the more I studied, the more I became obsessed with the idea that “the real estate industry is an industry where people who pursue private interests rather than public interests should work.” So I only aimed to get a job as an urban planning civil servant or the Korea Housing and Urban Corporation.

Before graduation, I wanted to gain internship experience related to urban planning before starting full-fledged job preparation. By chance, I saw an internship posting for a company that provides consulting on urban planning, so I applied, and I was converted to a full-time employee at this company and have been working there for four years.

Oh, didn’t you say you were working at a construction company? That’s right. It was a consulting company and a new construction company. Contrary to my desire to do urban planning consulting, I suddenly jumped into real estate development work. At first, I thought I would gain social experience, but later, I continued working, grateful for the good boss and colleagues I met by chance. However, now, the me of the past who dreamed of becoming a public official has disappeared, and I have grown into a real estate developer.

Before I started working for the developer, I had two big misconceptions: one was about myself and the other was about the real estate development industry.

There is one major difference between the work of an event organizer and ordinary office life. It is that due to the characteristic of real estate being ‘individual (real estate cannot be completely identical)’, it is difficult to apply the same work methods of the past and new solutions must always be found. It can be seen as having the opposite nature from public service work where work is routine. Contrary to my vague expectation that I would fit well with routine work, as I experienced actual development work, I realized that I am a person who seeks newness rather than familiarity.

For Koreans, the job of a real estate developer has the image of a ‘fraudster’. I will describe this later, but I would like to say that it is half true and half misunderstanding. After experiencing a private enterprise that aims to contribute to society through real estate development, my thoughts changed from “the real estate industry is an industry where people who pursue private interests rather than the public interest should work” to “the real estate industry is an industry where people who pursue public interests should strive to achieve harmony with private interests.”

The real estate development industry is one where you learn a lot through practice rather than academics. Therefore, I think it is very difficult to nurture your dreams by just hearing an explanation of ‘what is this job like?’ However, if you are interested in improving the city’s appearance and living environment – if you want to design and build a building appropriate for a specific piece of land – and if you prefer daily challenges rather than familiarity, I would like to cautiously suggest that we shed the ‘fraud’ image together as real estate developers.