Mark Dake grew up in Toronto, Canada, playing ice hockey and tennis and hoping to make the big leagues. Not nearly proficient enough in either sport, he was forced to get a real job. He coached tennis in Canada, Austria, Germany, Qatar and the U.S., and was a newspaper sports reporter in Lake Tahoe, California. He generally didn’t stay in one place for long.
In 1995, living in Long Beach, California, Dake answered an ad in the Los Angeles Times seeking Westerners to teach English in South Korea. Three weeks later he was in Seoul. He discovered that Koreans are energetic and hard charging, and Seoul vibrant and pulsating ? the city never sleeps. He taught young Korean students at an after-school academy beginning at 2:00 p.m. daily, so he got to sleep in late. Life didn’t get much better than this.
Dake has spent parts of three largely enjoyable decades living and teaching in this ancient, mountainous land. He also served as a copy editor at The Korea Herald and Yonhap, the national news agency. He occasionally spends summers teaching tennis in Toronto. He’s visited thirty-seven countries but still hasn’t figured out where to settle down.