My mentor is Dr. Jin-Sung Luke Kim. More than any single piece of advice, what he gave me was a vision — he showed me, by example, that endoscopic spine surgery was not a niche detour but a legitimate and expansive path. Watching him work, I came to understand that the field had a future worth dedicating a career to. That clarity of direction, at a time when I was still finding my way, was the most valuable thing any mentor could have offered.

I first attended NASS around 2019 and have made a point of returning whenever the opportunity arises. What struck me most was the culture of the society itself — a meeting genuinely driven by surgeons, with far less interference from industry or regulatory constraints than I was accustomed to at home in Korea. That sense of surgeon-led dialogue and intellectual freedom has kept me coming back.

The accomplishment I am most proud of is my very first NASS presentation. In 2016, as a clinical instructor early in my career, I had a paper accepted for podium presentation — my first Best Paper designation. Standing at that podium was a formative moment. It was the first time I truly believed that the work I was doing could hold its own on an international stage, and it set the direction for everything that followed.