Joyful Life in Korea
Joyful Life started out after visiting Korea five years ago on a tourist visa, when I was mid-burnout from more than 30 years in tech and trying to recover.
What I found in South Korea kept me going back, again and again, until I finally moved there in 2025 to commence a start up business. I couldn’t figure out what it was about South Korea that made it so special until I started learning about the cultural values and practices that help maintain a thriving, connected community within the contrasts of a rapidly growing high tech society, one that also struggles with it’s own social isolation and digital addiction problems.
The most impressive of these is jeong, a concept that’s uniquely Korean. Roughly speaking it could be ‘kindness’ or ‘generosity’ or ‘compassion’. South Korean’s don’t like to give it a single definition, and that’s why everyone I ask gives me their own. It’s built into so many aspects of Korean life, but for me, the warmth of strangers and the welcome into communities is what makes it so valuable.
What jeong has taught me and what I’ve experienced in South Korea has changed my life completely.
This is where I invite you to participate in what I’ve created from those experiences.
Coaching for adults ready to rebuild what a digital life erodes.
Most digital wellbeing advice is based on managing your productivity to have fewer notifications, better habits, and more discipline. It’s an example of the way you’re being treated in today’s society - like a machine with a productivity problem, not a human being.
Joyful Life starts not with restriction, but with looking at what’s missing. Human needs are far more complex than the digital boxes that we’re squeezing into for the majority of our day. This program starts with an assessment based on your quality of life before investigating where your digital habits have crowded out what actually inspires and fulfils you. The program integrates CBT techniques to reconnect you to yourself and a life that’s rewarding and deeply meaningful, together with applying Korean cultural values that refresh community and social belonging.
This is not a detox and not a set of rules. It’s a way back to a joyful life that’s you at your most human.
Joyful Life Program
“She has been more than just an English teacher to me - she has been a trusted advisor. I work in the field of climate change, and whenever I prepared for overseas meetings and events, she always took the time to research relevant articles and information to help me better understand my subject. In particular, she shared valuable insights from her experience in Australia, which broadened my perspective on food and organic waste treatment. She genuinely cared for my progress, especially when we worked together to prepare a speech for an international event I attended. I sincerely recommend her as an English teacher.”
Seoul, South Korea
Policy and climate advocate for food system decarbonisation
Before Joyful Life was a philosophy, I was navigating visa offices and the options for accommodation, working out what I needed to be a founder, and setting up life as a foreigner. Everything was written in a language I didn’t understand and the way processes and services work was vastly different to anything I was familiar with. I was learning, slowly and painfully, how a culture works from the inside out.
This guide is a starting point for the things I wish someone had told me when I moved to South Korea. All the small adjustments and considerations that nobody puts in a brochure and nobody teaches in online forums and groups, unless you happen to know the question that needs asking and somebody happens to have the answer.
Whether you're relocating, considering it, you’d like advice on becoming a founder, or you’re simply curious about the place where Jeong Life started, this is your entry point.
