“Why do I walk this path?”
Hello, this is Healing Santa, Kim Ji-yu.
Ahead of 2027, I took out the question “Why do I walk this path?” once again.
At the start of that question is Viktor Frankl, whom I met as a third-year university student; at its root is my beloved and respected father’s teaching, Hongik Ingan (“widely benefit humanity”); and in my answer today are the people I met in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2025, after receiving mentoring from President Kim Ki-chan.
1. Meeting Viktor Frankl as a third-year university student
Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which I read in my third year of university. The story of a psychiatrist who, even in the most wretched place of Auschwitz, held on to the meaning of life by picturing the day he would see his wife again left me, a university student, heavy-hearted for a long time.
The sentence from Nietzsche he held on to: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” That day I resolved, “I too must live a meaningful life.”
Frankl spoke of three ways in which people discover meaning: creating or doing something, experiencing love and encounter with someone, and the attitude we choose in the face of unavoidable suffering. Those three paths appeared again and again throughout my life.
2. The question I met again in a time of stopping
2018: a car accident. My brain was injured, and amid dizziness and headaches I had to stop everything for a while. Then Frankl’s questions came to me again: “Even in this suffering, what will I live for?” “What will I leave behind in the world?”
On a day when even my appetite had disappeared, a slice of yellow melon my mother handed me woke up my senses. In that moment I was sure again: “Food can become art in life, a healing tool that helps people and saves lives.” In May 2021 I held a Zoom lecture, “Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy Meets Neuroscience,” to share that realization.
And starting over again at “life age one,” I held on to the words attributed to King Sejong, “Connect, and great things will happen!” At the entrepreneurship CEO program of the Korea-Indonesia Management Association (KiMA), I heard a lecture by Lee Sang-deok, Commissioner of the Overseas Koreans Agency and former Korean Ambassador to Indonesia, and through President Kim Ki-chan’s connection I visited the commissioner for advice. Thanks to the commissioner’s kind introduction, I met Minister Park Su-deok of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Indonesia.
“Jihwaja!” Now the theme was Jakarta! Carrying the theme I had embraced while learning President Kim Ki-chan’s human-centered entrepreneurship, I headed for Indonesia.
3. A star I launched in Jakarta
- April 2025
April 12: the 90th Open Lecture of the Korea–Indonesia Cultural Institute, a sudden “flash lecture” arranged by Director Sagong Kyung. A welcome written on banana leaves, a table decorated with petals, and even a warm opening message from Minister Park Su-deok. With Dr. Kim Min-yong, I shared “PuNolChi, the psychology on the dining table.”
People who have lived in Indonesia for 50, 40, 35, 30 and 14 years. How could such long years fit into a single hour? Listening to the stories on each person’s plate, I greeted them in my heart: “Great people of Korea, thanks to you, the Korea of today exists.”
I went to teach something, but it was a time when I came back with an even greater gift. That day I launched a star in Jakarta.
- July 2025
On July 12, at the Joseph Cultural Center of the Korean Catholic Church of St. Joseph, I gave a PuNolChi Mind Journey lecture, “Positive Psychology on the Dining Table: Joyful and Fun, Awakening Creative Intuition.” Before the lecture I meditated with PuNolChi for three hours and wrote a column, “Life as Art, the Heart as Healing.” On July 15, I joined the opening of Global Café Sahabat, a bridge of Korea–Indonesia friendship at the Human-Centered K-Entrepreneurship Center that President Kim Ki-chan founded at President University. “Make empathy your fuel, and connect!” New connections followed, just as those words said. Before leaving, I met the principal of the Jakarta Korean International School and came to hold in my heart PuNolChi emotion coaching for adolescents who learn slowly.
- November 2025
The story that began in April was tied up in Jakarta in November. On November 29, at the IKCS 2025 Literary Awards of the Korea–Indonesia Cultural Institute, we presented the awards of the first PuNolChi Mind Journey International Contest, PuKaSi, organized by the Korea Food Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Students of the Korean Language Education Department at Universitas Indonesia sent works they had expressed with food, captured with a camera and left as poems.
Seeing a short poem written in Korean, a small heart placed on a plate, bloom again at the fingertips of young people across the sea, I thought, “This is my reason to live.”
4. Hongik Ingan, taught by my father
My father, who at fourteen came south from Hwanghae Province, separated from his parents, and taught children for nearly 50 years until he became principal of a school in a remote mountain area. Since childhood I heard these words until they were drilled into my ears: “Live with your heart set on benefiting the world widely.” So I have always lived holding on to “learn so that you can give to others.”
On the November 2025 morning I left for Jakarta, I ate a breakfast my 90-year-old father had made with his own hands and headed for the airport. I was the happiest daughter in the world. Now my father is 91 and my mother is 90. The table I share with them is my life’s greatest teacher and gift.
2027: the resolutions of Healing Santa, Dr. Kim Ji-yu
5. Hongik Ingan on Frankl’s three paths of meaning
Placing my father’s Hongik Ingan on the three paths of meaning Frankl described, I confirm my resolutions for 2027.
The question I asked as a third-year university student: “What meaning will I live?” The me of 2027 wants to answer: “I will live with a table that saves people and a heart that benefits the world.”
With both hands together I thank Commissioner Lee Sang-deok of the Overseas Koreans Agency, Minister Park Su-deok and Director Sagong Kyung, who opened the way to Jakarta; President Kim Ki-chan, who connected me through human-centered entrepreneurship; Dr. Kim Min-yong, who always walks beside me; and my beloved and respected father, who taught me Hongik Ingan with his whole life.
I hope 2027 will be a year of sharing what I have prepared, working actively, growing together and contributing to a healthy and beautiful world.
With love, Healing Santa Kim Ji-yu
This story was first posted in the Haengbok Yeolgi activity news board of the healing space Haengbok Yeolgi cafe and was edited for this page.