Living the Second Act: A Couple Who Traded Tenure for the World
by Prof. Dr. Youngsuck Kim via Prof. Dr. Young Choi
Some people spend a career building a life. A rarer few have the courage to set it down and begin again. Kim, Youngsuck and his wife, Dr. Cho, Kyung-sook, are among them.
For thirty-three years, Kim served as a tenured professor of music at Mansfield University. By any measure, he had arrived. Yet five years ago, at the height of his standing, he let the position go. “I wanted to see more of the world while I still have the strength,” he explained. Today he and his wife spend nearly half of each year traveling the globe — a second act lived on their own terms.
Step into their home and you enter something closer to a private museum. A nineteenth-century Persian carpet, Handel and Steuben lamps glowing softly, a Renaissance Revival bed, Fabergé craftsmanship, a tapestry more than 170 years old. A vocalist by training, Kim has always been drawn to beauty. “I love things that are lovely and well made,” he says — a sensibility that turned decades of quiet collecting into a life’s passion.
The turning point came in 2019, his sabbatical year. He planned a twelve-month humanities journey through Italy and France, a month each in Florence and Paris. When Cho, herself a retired physician trained at Ewha Womans University’s medical school, heard the plan, she asked simply, “And what about me?” She left her own hospital career behind and joined him on the road.
Since then they have wandered together — the vineyards of Tuscany, the peace of Assisi, the ruins of Rome, the layered history of Europe. Along the way, Kim pared his collection down and traded a large house for a riverside condo, lightening the load for a lighter life.
“I’ve realized how many cultures I never understood,” he reflects. “It’s like waking up from inside an egg. Seeing with your own eyes leaves the deepest impression — so while my body still allows it, I want to keep going.”
Two lives, fully lived, and still unfolding.
Original source: Seoul National University Alumni Association in the USA (Aug. 2026)
https://snuaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/202608.pdf
The story is shared by Prof. Dr. Young Choi (Aug. 09, 2026).
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