Jinny Lab: Building the Space I Have Been Dreaming Of Since I Was Twenty

Ever since I was young, I wanted a space of my own.

Not simply a room with a door.

I wanted a place where the things I loved could gather, where the stories I believed in could accumulate, and where someone could come in, stay for a while, and perhaps leave with a new thought.

This was not an era when anyone could create a personal channel with a few taps.

Building a homepage felt like a grand undertaking. You had to write HTML tags line by line, add a message board, choose background music, and check the visitor counter. To some people, it may have been a small hobby. To me, it felt like building a world.

That was when the idea first took hold.

One day, I would create my own portal — a place connected by the things I cared about.

When I began studying computer engineering at university, sometime around the age of twenty, I created my first email address.

I needed a name that could exist on the internet.

It was only an ID, but I spent a long time thinking about it. An online name felt like an identity. It felt like the name by which the digital world would know me.

That was how I came up with sdjinny.

It included my initials, but to me it carried another meaning as well.

Special Day Jinny.

A Jinny who appears on someone’s special day.

Like the genie who emerges from a magic lamp to grant a wish, I wanted to become someone who could offer a small help, an unexpected possibility, or a meaningful connection at the moment someone needed it most.

At that time, I did not yet know what kind of person I would become.

I did not know what I would be capable of.

But I hoped that someday, my ideas, skills, stories, and experiences would meet someone else’s needs.

And then, a long time passed.

I became a journalist.

I traveled through the field and tried to look beyond what people were saying. I wanted to understand why they were saying it. Rather than stopping at a single presentation slide, I tried to find the interests, tensions, and context hidden behind it.

I wanted to read an event not merely as news, but as a sign of how the times were moving.

Later, I moved into the corporate world.

There, I learned a different kind of language.

I worked where policy and regulation, industry and markets, organizations and competing interests met. At times, I had to speak as an attacker — explaining a company’s strengths, opportunities, and ambitions. At other times, I had to speak as a defender — identifying risks and preventing problems before they grew larger.

The perspective of a reporter studying the field and the perspective of someone thinking about corporate strategy were different.

But the question I kept returning to was always the same.

What is the real nature of the problem?

And what needs to be connected in order to solve it?

Today, I work in AX business development at KT.

AX transformation is not simply about introducing a new technology. It is about changing how organizations work, how they meet customers, how data moves, and how decisions are made.

Understanding technology alone is not enough.

You have to understand industries. You have to understand the language of the field. You have to explain what change actually means for businesses and for people.

That is why I still keep digging.

I dig into technology.

I dig into industry.

I dig into policy.

I dig into people’s discomforts, desires, and unanswered questions.

One phrase I have come to value deeply is Gyeokmul Chiji — 格物致知.

It means:

To investigate things thoroughly and arrive at true knowledge.

People often say that if you want something badly enough, it will come true.

But as I have lived, I have learned that desperation is not simply wanting something intensely.

It is holding on to one small hope even when disappointment feels overwhelming. It is refusing to let go when you feel as though everything may collapse, when the thought of giving up covers everything else.

Looking back, the things that eventually came true in my life were often preceded by the hardest periods.

My life as a journalist was like that.

My new challenges in the corporate world were like that.

Returning to study was like that, too.

There were moments when I thought nothing would work. There were moments when I wanted to stop.

But somehow, if I remained there long enough, another path eventually appeared.

So now, I have come to believe something.

The things we truly want do not suddenly arrive one day as miracles.

They become real at the end of the time we refused to give up.

That is how Jinny Lab began.

At first, they were small experiments.

MoneyLab began from a simple desire to create a space where people could understand money and the economy more easily.

MetaX began from my wish to turn ideas about media systems and content operations into an actual service.

And the International Metaverse Society platform began from a question: could an academic society connect research, education, events, members, content, and community into one meaningful value chain?

The three projects may appear different.

But to me, they all began with the same question.

How can good information be connected more effectively?

How can people meet, learn, and create together more easily?

How can technology become a tool that transforms someone’s idea into reality?

By building these projects myself, I learned something important.

You can begin before you are perfect.

Planning only comes alive when it meets execution.

And in the age of AI, it is not only important to know how to build something. It is even more important to know what should be built, and why.

AI has changed many things.

In the past, building even a simple website required the time of developers, designers, planners, and operators. Today, with good questions, concrete planning, and the persistence to revise again and again, it is possible to turn ideas into reality much faster.

So, in my late forties, I made another decision.

I decided to finally build the space that my twenty-year-old self had dreamed of.

Its name had to be Jinny Lab.

Jinny Lab is not simply a personal homepage.

It is a place where the facts I have verified as a journalist, the industrial changes I have examined in the corporate world, the meeting point between technology and business that I encounter through AX business development at KT, and the possibilities of the metaverse, AI, and digital assets that I explore through research all come together.

Above all, it will be a place that collects stories I can believe in.

In an age overflowing with information, I want Jinny Lab to contain only stories that I have examined carefully.

Not simply repeating someone’s words, but checking the materials and context behind them.

Not simply introducing the latest technology trend, but thinking seriously about what that trend changes in industry and in human life.

It will also be a small portal built around my own interests.

AI and AX.

The metaverse and digital assets.

Policy and industry.

Writing and community.

The people, experiences, and stories that have accumulated throughout my life.

I hope that many people can connect more warmly through this place.

I want it to become a space where knowledge and opportunity can be shared.

For someone who wants to begin writing but cannot find the courage to write the first sentence.

For someone who wants to turn an idea into a real service using AI.

For someone who is searching for the next step.

I want Jinny Lab to become a small laboratory for possibility.

Brunch has been a precious space for me.

It helped me become a person who writes.

Through Brunch, I met many readers. I learned how to organize my thoughts into words. I discovered that a sentence I wrote could reach someone I had never met.

But platforms change. Algorithms change. Subscriber counts rise and fall.

And so, I no longer want to be only someone writing inside someone else’s platform.

I want to become someone who builds a space under my own name.

I will write stories on Brunch.

I will build a world through Jinny Lab.

And from that world, I will send new stories back into society.

That is the cycle I want to create.

Not Kakao’s space.

Not Google’s space.

Not anyone else’s space.

A space that I own.

When I was twenty, I wanted to build my own portal.

At the time, I lacked the technical ability. I lacked experience. I did not even know what I would put inside it.

But now I know.

A space is not something you wait to fill before you build it.

You build it first, and then you fill it with your life.

The day of perfect preparation never comes.

And the moment you think it is too late may actually be the most appropriate moment to begin.

Jinny Lab, jinnylab.kr, is my declaration of departure.

It will hold the stories of the technologies and industries I have explored.

It will record the facts I have checked and the questions I continue to carry.

Someone’s idea may become a service there.

Someone’s story may become a piece of writing.

Old relationships may reconnect, and new ones may begin.

And someday, I hope this space will grow into something even slightly closer to the world my twenty-year-old self once imagined.

I may not be able to grant wishes like the genie from a magic lamp.

But if someone who enters this space can make their thoughts a little clearer, or find the courage to begin the next thing, that will be enough.

Dreams we long for do not become real simply because we wait for them.

They become real when the person who refuses to give up finally builds them with their own hands.

Jinny Lab is a promise I made to myself many years ago.

A promise to create a space of my own.

A place where the stories I believe in, the things I love, and the possibilities still waiting to be made can gather in one place.

In 2026, at the age of forty-seven, I decided not to postpone that promise any longer.

On June 28, 2026, Jinny Lab opens its first page.

Written by Gwanghwamun Deok