No matter what job or industry you're in, life is hard, but we're all going through a difficult time and the best thing we can do is pick each other up and move on together.
I had accepted a position as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting in New York. But before I went into that workforce, I decided to take a year off and went to India to do a social enterprise fellowship. It wasn't the best fit, but that was where a TV show in Korea found me and invited me to first come perform.
My parents, or Asian parents in general, they're like, 'You should be a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker' - all that's laid out. As a kid that's what I bought into, which is why I ended up going the corporate route initially.
When I first toured North America, everyone was saying that it was working because there is such as a solid Korean fan base here. The truth is, that is less than five per cent of the audience, which is mixed of all backgrounds.
In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.
Even if you look at 'American Idol,' or 'X-Factor,' or 'The Voice' or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point.
From a strictly business perspective, it's like, 'Even if you leave Eric alone, he'll do stuff. He puts his own album together, he gets his own gigs, he does everything on TV. Let him be, he's fine.'
You know, we never grew up with Asian American role models in the entertainment industry, unfortunately. I'd never seen an Asian face singing on TV.
So the first thing I do when I get out of bed, I will check my phone real quick because I live in Korea, but my stuff is split between L.A. and Korea.
I think one thing I wish would be a little different, and it'll take time, is yes BLACKPINK, BTS, these teams are taking over the world and they're everywhere, but I think at a certain point we need to really push for other artists as well, and really help bring them up further, for this to be a sustainable industry, a sustainable genre.
I was criticized a lot when I was singing in Korean. The producers and people from my agency would point out my accent and tones, and would tell me I sound too American to fit the local market.
I was part of the Atlanta Boy Choir probably like fourth and fifth grade. I personally didn't enjoy the type of music that we were doing. I was more into like whatever was on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.
I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan - I've done nothing even though I speak four languages - English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.
I'm just looking for that one song that I know everybody's going to be like, 'Damn, that's a good song.'