From the Netherlands to South Korea

Lucy Jeon's Self-Made Expats podcast is about foreigners who built a life abroad from scratch. In S2-05 she has Mark on to talk through nine years in Korea at the time of recording: the last-minute exchange that started it, the culture shocks, Dutch and Korean work culture compared, and why he prefers Busan to Seoul after four years in the capital.

The second half is career: marketing by day and bartending by night in the early years, more than 20 movies and 15 commercials, a startup backed by a Korean government program, and the ed-tech role he held at the time (the show notes still carry the old company name). Lucy closes with practical advice for anyone moving to Korea and Mark's stoic take on how to handle it.