Cyber pen pal becomes wife

Hi PenPal founder Choi Sang-chul, right, poses with his wife Yuki Tanaka at their home in Daejeon. / Courtesy of Hi PenPal

By Kim Yoo-chul

For many, a pen pal is just a thing of the past.

Nowadays, it's hard to find people who regularly write to each other through postal mail. Most people make and build relationship by using various social media.

One Korean man decided to transform the traditional pen pal to the cyber world by opening a free international pen pal website.

"I believed online friendship via pen pals could become a real one. As a pen pal has come in all ages and cultures, it is still an effective communication tool to learn something and to form real friendships on a stable and steady base," said Choi Sang-chul, founder of Hi PenPal, a free international pen pal website, in a telephone interview, Thursday.

Once registered, a member can check other members' personal profile, picture and other details and ask someone to become his or her cyber pen pal.

"I just wanted to connect a sense of analog to the Internet," he said.

Due to health problems, Choi had to quit high school, which made him feel lonely and became a pen pal with a boy in the United Kingdom.

"After quitting high school, there was nothing I could do due to health problems. At that time, I was desperate to communicate with people who understand how I feel," said the 36-year-old founder.

After having a couple of good friends online, Choi opened his own pen pal site in 2006 where he met his wife Yuki Tanaka who manages the site together with Choi at his home in the provincial city of Daejeon.

Choi's wife is Japanese. Tanaka was his pal on the website. She registered to the site in 2009 and came to Korea after she was fascinated by Korean dramas.

At Sogang University in Seoul, Tanaka completed a Korean language program. Choi proposed to her on the last day of her Korean course and she accepted it.

"Some 270,000 people are registered and the site is getting popular in the United States, Europe as well as in Asia. The site offers 10 languages," he said.

Choi is well aware of "unethical issues" in online dating sites.

"I am monitoring the site and filtering on a real time basis. As it's required to put mobile phone numbers for registration, I directly report to cyber police if issues come out," according to the founder.

Amid the explosive growth for mobile devices, Hi PenPal is enthusiastic about the next phase of its growth as the founder is developing solutions and systems that will be activated on tablets.

"Search giant Google is providing advertizing services and half of the profit is coming from mobile devices.

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