Living in Korea was a big adjustment because a coffee is going to be a little more pricey than what it is in the States. Wages aren't as high either.

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.

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.

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.

When I go to Korea and they say, 'Sing like a Korean person,' I can't do it. I didn't grow up with that sound.

When people outside Korea think of 'K-pop,' most of them expect 'idols' with several members in a group, dancing in sync.

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.

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.

When you first make money, you're just excited that you have it and just buy things on a whim. You don't really think about the implications that taxes have, because when you owe money, all of a sudden all of the money in your account - it's gone!

Whenever I write my music, it's always been in English first and then I take it into Korean.

In Korea, I'm not a K-pop artist, I'm just an artist.

Traveling has been a really big part of my upbringing and I've been fortunate enough to travel for different reasons. I'd like to think that it has had an impact on my character and personality, which ultimately affects my music.

It's so wild to be able to say that I can do shows in front of thousands of people and have them sing my songs in Korean and in English - that is wild to me.

In a way, I'm overly ambitious, selfish in a way. I think because I am so active, I think that's what keeps my brain going and I can bounce things off of each other.

No matter what you do, you should enjoy it. You should really find passion in it.

Typically in Korea when I perform I have a full band, a ten-piece band, and that's a completely different monster in itself to prepare and rehearse.

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, which as you can imagine, was not the most diverse place to grow up in as a Korean American.

I'm just looking for that one song that I know everybody's going to be like, 'Damn, that's a good song.'

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.'

Coming to Korea and becoming a singer, I always had two big goals personally. One was to be able to make it at some point so that I could do good things - I was always raised with an interest in social impact, philanthropy. The other thing was to be able to take my music and do it on a global scale.

For the first four or five years I was in Korea, I took a lot of direction from my management and label in terms of what people want. I found myself trying to fit into that thing I never felt comfortable with because the critique I got was that I was too American, and too sophisticated and polished in terms of my musicality and it won't sell.

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.

There was a point when dancing to music became cheesy after the boy band era of NSync and Backstreet Boys, but there were always those who craved that kind of visual satisfaction. K-Pop really filled that void, because it's so geared to spectacle.

I learned Spanish as my second language from middle school through high school. I grew up volunteering at homeless shelters and tutoring kids of Latin immigrants in Atlanta, who didn't speak any English. That prepared me for when I traveled.

I don't know why I feel the need to try and do everything. But I kind of have this mentality that you live once, and I have a lot of things that I want to do and there's a lot of things that I want to try. So I have to at least give it a shot before I don't try at all or like, give up on things.

So Mandarin, I picked it up, I spent a year in Beijing studying but then when you don't use it, languages, you just kinda forget it all.

Korean, yes, I am now fluent in Korean. I was not always. When I got to Korea, I was constantly put on TV shows not knowing what was going on. So that forced me to learn Korean so I could stop looking like an idiot.

Being a hungry artist, you don't have the luxury of buying whatever you want. There were years of me doing a lot of odd jobs, this and that just to make ends meet.

I think representation is something that's absolutely needed. I felt like with K-pop being so hot, we could leverage that to potentially do something bigger with music in the States that people could latch onto.

I love BTS, they're my friends.

People around me tell me that I need a bigger persona and to act a little more A-listy because 'that's where you are but you don't act that way, so people undervalue you.' But that's not me.

Even within K-pop, there should be more representation. It's not just groups, and it's not just incredibly produced, highly choreographed pieces. There are vocalists, there's R&B, there's hip-hop, there are other types of people and voices. There's space for all of that to be shared and to be appreciated.

I'm the type of person that if I feel strongly about something and if I really want to do something, I'm just gonna do it. And if it works out, amazing, and it's like 'I told you so,' but if it doesn't work out, that's fine.

I'm active on social media because that's such a big reason why K-pop and Korean music performs the way it does.

Oftentimes you're breaking out because your face is lacking moisture or hydration.

The coolest thing for me now is when I'm in the States and I meet other Asian-Americans who are like, 'Dude, thank you so much for doing what you do. I love your music, I love whatever. But whatever you do, we're gonna support you because there aren't many Asian faces doing music.'

Asian-Americans are fighting for space and fighting for visibility and for acceptance.

Even throughout college and post-college, I've always been incredibly hyperactive. Even at Boston College, I was involved in so many different organizations and initiatives.

I know people are going to be like, 'why do you have so many songs with the word 'you' in it? 'Idea Of You,' 'Into You,' 'Like You,' 'You-Who'... Well, sorry, but it just works out that way.

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.

I think Korea is so focused on just the charts, and what's going to chart and what's not, and I'm sure it's like that way in the States as well, to a certain degree. But I enjoy working in the States a little bit more. Because it's more about making music that is the right sound and the right fit to me, not so much just chasing the charts.

I had always wanted to pursue music. It was always a dream, but it was always a dream in the sense of, when you're young, 'I want to be president' or 'I want to be an astronaut and fly to Mars.' That's what it was to me.

I think there are probably ghosts in the world. I have not seen one but I feel like I felt the presence of one. In Korea there's been a superstition that ghosts love music, so they're always in a studio or a dance-training place.

I would be criticized, like, 'You don't talk Korean enough. You sound very American. You sound very white in your music.' And I'm like, 'Whoa.'

A lot of my peers, be seniors or juniors, they'll text me or they'll call me and they'll say, 'Thank you for doing the music that you do because it pushes the genre forward in different ways.' It's a very rewarding thing to hear.

I've always been very passionate about trying to have Asian-Americans or Asian faces be more prominent in mainstream media.

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.

When you think of Gallant's music and his voice, you don't automatically think, 'Oh, Eric Nam would be great a fit' or 'Hey! Tablo would be an amazing fit.'

We recognize that there have been acts in the past that are Asian or Korean who tried to go, 'Hey, I'm a huge star in Korea, I'm a huge star in Asia so you guys need to respect me for being a huge star there.' But I don't know. As much as we may be big, we have to be very humble and start from the ground up in the States.