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| Cho Hwan-gyu |
The vast majority of amateur athletes never manage to trun professional and have to find jobs, sometimes related to their sports but more often not.
Cho Hwan-gyu, a 33-year-old hairstylist at a popular franchised beauty salon has 13 years in the business. But before his current job he was a wrestler, training in "ssireum," Korea's traditional wrestling, for more than 10 years from the age of 9.
Although he was talented and one of the top prospects in the sport, he realized his limited potential relatively early on.
"I was quite good at ssireum and I always made the quarterfinals or semifinals, defeating strong opponents. But I could not make it to the final, which simply discouraged me," Cho recalled.
After several failures despite his hard work, he lost interest in wrestling and decided to quit. Rather than finding happiness, his most difficult times awaited him.
"I couldn't work out what I was going to do next because all that I had cared about for 10 years was ssireum." he said.
The savior was his elder sister, who had worked as a hairdresser since he was a middle school student.
"It was one of my few pleasures to watch my sister do others' hair. I'd always thought she looked attractive when she was holding scissors," he said.
But his sister did not like the idea and was concerned that he could find the job boring.
Despite all her opposition, Cho started to learn hair dressing.
He started his career at a small salon, but it didn't take too long before Cho realized the local shop was too small for him to satisfy his desire to be a decent stylist. The longer he worked in the industry, the more he became conscious that there was a similarity between ssireum and hair dressing.
"Ssireum is all about power and balance. Being a hairstylist also requires physical strength and perseverance," Cho said.
He pointed out the job is not as attractive as it looks and standing all day along and taking care for customers with a smile is the most difficult part unless you enjoy it.
"I'm still in the process of becoming more professional," he said. "I just do my best to satisfy the customers."
