I Am a Cult Leader.

The first thing you should know about me is that I am a cult leader—or at least, that’s what my pen name says.

After all, “cult leader” is hardly a compliment. It usually brings to mind someone who wants followers, demands loyalty, and asks people to stop thinking for themselves. If that’s what the title means, then I may be the least qualified cult leader you’ll ever meet.

Years ago, I visited one of my former students. As soon as I walked through the door, her young son, who had an intellectual disability, looked at me, smiled, and greeted me enthusiastically.

“Kyoju-nim!”

His mother immediately smiled and tried to correct him. “Not Kyoju. It’s Kyosu—Professor.” She encouraged him to try again, but we both knew it wasn’t an easy sound for him to pronounce. I stopped her. “It’s okay.” Then I laughed. The pronunciation didn’t matter. Being remembered did.

From that day on, I quietly embraced the name ‘The Cult Leader.’

Before becoming a novelist, I spent many years as a professor in Special Education. Much of my work centered on helping people see the person before the label. In English, we call it People First Language—placing the person before the disability. That idea shaped not only the way I taught, but also the way I tried to live. Labels have their place. People always come first.

Over the years, many students came to see me. A few stayed in touch for a long time. Others disappeared completely after graduation. Occasionally, someone would tell me that those who never came back must have been ungrateful. I never agreed.

If they no longer needed me, perhaps I had done my job. A teacher should not create lifelong followers. There is a Korean word I have always loved.

‘Hasan.’

People often translate it as ‘going down the mountain,’ but that misses its heart. Hasan is the moment a teacher turns to a student and says,

“You have learned all I can teach you.

Now go.

Serve the world with what you have learned.”

A teacher’s greatest success is not being remembered forever. It is becoming unnecessary. It is watching a student go farther than the teacher ever could. That has always been my definition of ‘Hasan.’

Perhaps that is why I never wanted followers, even after becoming a writer. I don’t write stories so people will agree with me. I write because stories sometimes help us hear thoughts that explanations cannot. Stories should not hand readers answers. It should quietly return the questions to the people who own them.

That is also why I kept the name ‘The Cult Leader.’ Every time I see it, it reminds me of the kind of leader I never wanted to become. If people finish one of my stories believing everything I say, I have probably failed. But if they close the book trusting themselves a little more than before, then the story has done exactly what it was meant to do.

So yes, I am a cult leader.

Just not the kind you’re expecting.

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Don’t believe me.

Just choose.

— The Cult Leader