Preface 005
011 before entering

1.
Elementary School - Life Goals Are Determined 014
2.
Middle and High School - I'm Far From Being Special 032
3.
University - I want to become a singer 050
4.
Star - Long-Term Strategy 068
5.
Ttanttara - 076 in vinyl pants
6.
Businessman - JYP Entertainment 084
7.
Marriage - a dream come true.
But… 094
8.
Entering the US - The First Despair 102
9.
Divorce - Broken Dreams 114
10.
The Bible - Deciding to Believe (2012) 124
11.
The Church - Unintentionally Created 152
12.
Born - Finally Believe (2017) 158
13.
Salvation - Who Goes to Heaven? 166
14.
Faith - The Difference Between Believing and Being Believed 184
15.
The True Church - How to Distinguish It? 196
16.
Salvation and Works - Can Salvation Be Revoked? 222
17.
My Life - What Do I Live For? 236

JYP ways
1.
Health - Don't Seek the Good, Avoid the Bad 250
2.
Music - Start with the Heart, Finish with the Mind 269
3.
Business - A Community of Values, Not an Economic Community 278
4.
Christian Life 286
? To Pastor John Piper 303

A man who ran towards a vain dream eventually collapsed
The journey to finding the true answers to life again

Park Jin-young, now I'm talking about my life!

Park Jin-young.
He sings, composes, writes lyrics and produces music.
And he becomes the first person in the company to lead the organization.
Many people sing the songs he composed, and the groups he fostered have influenced people all over the world.
To some, he is a singer, and to others, he is a senior, producer, and teacher.
He has been making music for quite some time.
100 songs, 200 songs, 10 years, 20 years, I have been continuously making music and sending it out to people.
He consoled and comforted the public about happiness, pain, sadness, and love.
In short, he existed 'making music'.
And as you know, the conclusion was a success.

Perhaps success is a natural outcome for him.
He did not settle.
I was more concerned about the present than the past, and the future more than that.
I have been searching for the public's hearts and predicting the coming sentiments.
A life that everyone would envy.
A life of respect and honor.
However, even for him, an unavoidable failure came.
Despair comes unexpectedly, without any effort on your part.
All her efforts in the US were in vain, and her perfect marriage ended in divorce.
The brakes were applied to him as he ran towards his vain dream of achieving perfect and eternal happiness.
I couldn't go any further.
It was completely blocked.
A lonely and empty wind blew through a large hole in my heart.
I tried to focus on different things, but they didn't last long.
There was no answer in sight.
Then suddenly, I thought.


'What should I live for?'
'Why was I born?'
'Who created me and why?'

Questions that would be asked only in adolescence came to me as I was approaching forty.
He decided to work hard to find the answer to the question.
As he always did, he didn't just give in, but kept trying to find a definitive answer.
He did not ignore the questions that came to him.
The beginning of the answer he found was 'knowing' the truth of life.
Until I knew that, I could not be free from this mental illness.
At that time, there was a Bible placed in front of him.

This book contains the journey of Jinyoung Park, a singer, composer, producer, and leader of JYP Entertainment, to 'know' the truth of life as he discovers it through the narrative of his life of success and failure.
The truth of life realized through the unseen twists and turns of a glamorous star's life.
This book will serve as a guide within the biblical faith for many who are wandering in the sickness of their hearts because they do not know how to 'know' the pieces of truth and how to do so.
As Park Jin-young said, this book was published with Park Jin-young's earnest wish that it would become "a clear reason to live for someone who is lonely, anxious, fearful, and depressed."

Perfect and eternal happiness, my love

“Everything I did was for this goal.
The goal was love.
(…) If love was a vague fantasy for others, for me it was a fantasy that I believed I had to achieve and could achieve; if for others love was one of many goals to achieve, for me it was the one and only goal.” (_p.30)

When I was young, not only my appearance but also my thoughts were different.
The goal was clear.
My first love in elementary school.
My whole body trembled with the emotion I was feeling for the first time.
A love that pushes away everything in the heart as time passes.
A feeling of love that makes making your parents happy or dancing to Michael Jackson seem like nothing special.
But after being severely rejected, I realized how powerful feelings of attraction can be.
It became his firm goal in life to develop these feelings into love, and to do so, he had to become a special and wonderful man.
The idea that in order to get the most special love in the world, you have to become the most special person yourself.
It's a feeling everyone has felt at least once, but unfortunately, that goal didn't budge until he was forty.


A singer wearing vinyl pants

“Brother Kim Chang-hwan called me into his office and told me that he would scrap the three-member group I was preparing.
It felt like the sky was falling.
“I cried out, ‘How could this be? What should I do?’ But the answer I got was, ‘You go to a good school.’” (p.60)

Maybe I was lucky.
Kim Chang-hwan, who was a club DJ, asked me if I had ever thought about becoming a singer.
Although he was confused, he asked himself.
'Do I have the talent to be a singer?' I loved dancing and singing, but I wasn't sure I could become a professional.
Yet, deep down inside, something powerful was pushing him forward.
If he becomes a singer and stands on stage, and if he becomes a popular singer and a star, wouldn't he be able to become the most special man in the world he's always dreamed of?
And then, coincidentally, I met composer Kim Hyung-seok.
Thanks to that, I was able to learn the basics of being a singer and composer, and I was able to debut as a full-time singer.
And then, the woman of destiny appeared before me.

“Just a few months after the Totojul broadcast, it took first place on all music ranking programs.
I became a star.
And my dream, which I had given up on because it seemed impossible, came back to life.
“I felt like I could be the most special man in the world again.” (p.65-66)

The title 'Yeon Dae-saeng' and the modifier 'dance singer' were added, followed by the modifiers 'musician', 'producer', and 'businessman'.
It seemed like I was getting closer to my goal with each modifier added to the end.
Every song he released became a hit, his album sales increased, his popularity soared, and just in time, his contract expired, so he founded JYP Entertainment.
And she is the kind of person I would never get tired of even if I lived with her for the rest of my life.
For this special woman, he wanted to succeed.
No, it had to succeed.


Despair that comes unexpectedly

“I had to experience worse rejection every day than when I was auditioning as a singer before my debut.
It was harder to become a star and then be treated as an unknown than to be treated as an unknown when you were unknown.
“I had long since forgotten the title of popular singer, and all the bubbles that had been growing inside me had disappeared.” (_p.108)

There were many twists and turns.
It didn't go well at first.
Being treated coldly was a daily occurrence.
It was a time when American record labels were unfamiliar with Korea, let alone K-pop.
No one knew about the popular Korean singer 'Park Jin-young'.
Rather, the fact that he was a famous composer in Korea was a disadvantage.
The odds of being chosen were high for someone who just looked like a new American composer.
When things felt hopeless, a record label made an offer, and the song he wrote with that offer ended up being included on Mase's album Welcome Back, which reached number 4 on Billboard.
Word of mouth spread and the American media began to take interest.
The network is moving and people are starting to find it.
First of all, Rain and Wonder Girls rushed to advance.

Was it just bad luck?
In the United States, where we had made great strides, the Lehman Brothers incident suddenly occurred.
Global financial markets collapsed, major American record labels were scrambling to recover their investments, and all K-pop projects were scrapped.
The plan to enter the US market, which had been in the works for five years, disappeared like a bubble.
Enough money disappeared to shake the company.
Ridicule and criticism poured in, calling it a reckless challenge.
For the first time, he felt frustrated and helpless.
And then I came back to Korea.

Among the answers of biblical faith

“In the end, I shattered the dream I had consistently dreamed of since childhood.
“I left her side, stabbing her with the sword of selfishness and irresponsibility, the righteous, truthful, wise, and wonderful person, the person I loved and who loved me above all else.” (p. 119)

What is luck? Is there a god who controls it? He had to know.
Until I found that clear answer, nothing could fill the void in my heart.
When I couldn't think of any more ways to eliminate the empty space, I had no choice but to face it.
After 40 years of unrealistic fantasies about love and marriage numbing my soul, the questions I should have asked in adolescence finally hit me hard.
What am I supposed to live for? Why was I born? Who created me, and why?
I chose the Bible as my guide to escape from this 'madness'.
And then a very faint, dim ray of light began to appear within it.

“After going through things like entering the US and getting divorced, I found a definite answer and started living with strength again.
(…) Thanks to holding onto the Bible and digging into it for two years, whenever people asked me questions about the Bible, I was able to open the Bible and find the answers.
“I was a pretty decent Christian in people’s eyes.” (p.144)