무대에 서기 전에Before I Take the Stage

I have not named the other contestants or the judges in this essay.

The problem I was given

Let me go back a little, to 2021. In MathKorea’s final live teaching assessment, I explained one particularly difficult calculus problem. I remember receiving it about a day beforehand. More than ten people, including the company’s head, sat in front of me.

I arranged the solution so that a wider range of students could follow it, not only those already strong at maths. I was teaching before judges, but what I needed to show them was how I would explain something to students. Both solving the problem and communicating the solution were being assessed.

A web banner had led me there. It was the second half of 2021, around the time I was preparing for the essay entrance exam and the CSAT. Daesung MyMac and Daesung Academy were jointly holding the first MathKorea open selection for maths instructors. I was an instructor, so I applied. There was no grand story behind it.

I did not come first

The process ran through an application, a written test, a teaching video, then a live problem-solving lesson and an in-depth interview. I remember thinking how thoroughly they selected people. Unlike the essay exam, where I wrote answers on my own, this time I was being assessed as I explained.

The awards ceremony was on 29 December 2021. I was one of two runners-up and received five million won and a trophy. I did not come first. First prize carried a hundred million won and an online course launch on Daesung MyMac. I received the result by phone and text.

My thoughts were that I had been selected by the country’s leading education company and that I should work hard. Students may have different ideas about which company is best, but that was how I felt that day. What comes first in my memory is having been selected, rather than having missed first place.

Winning a prize and launching an online course were not the same thing. I could put MathKorea in my biography, but the platform offered to the winner did not immediately become mine. I continued teaching in classrooms and live courses. The medical-track lessons I described earlier took place in those intervening years.

Work to do before December

The Daesung MyMac courses were confirmed in early 2026 through discussions with company executives. They are scheduled to begin on 14 December 2026. I am preparing courses for grades 10 and 11 covering the full CSAT maths range, Algebra, Calculus I, and Probability and Statistics, alongside Common Maths 1 and 2. From the 2028 CSAT, maths is examined across Algebra, Calculus I, and Probability and Statistics, so this stage of school study connects directly with preparation for that exam.

I also have a personal ambition to expand into Calculus II and Geometry. What I hope to do later needs to remain distinct from the courses already confirmed. Having a plan is not a reason to talk as though those lessons are already available.

These days, I move between the office, company headquarters for filming, and home. Work continues after I get home. A few years ago, I presented a lesson on one problem in a selection contest. Now I am preparing a course that students will keep returning to. Having won a prize does not do that preparation for me.

What worries me is whether students will like my lessons. I cannot see their faces through the camera. I have been told I teach too fast; I have also had to ask again when students said they understood. I want to prepare with those students in mind, on the other side of the screen.

Preparing together

I founded Trinity MathsLab in the first half of 2026 because I needed a team for the course launch. The name came from the college where I studied mathematics. We reduced the team to core staff and made our working arrangements more efficient. I will not disclose the headcount. We share the work of developing lessons, filming them and looking after students.

I had been developing ways to follow students whom I could not see through a camera, and needed people to put them into practice with me. I will not describe unpublished methods here first. A company name or a new tool is one thing; whether it actually helps students is something that still needs to be checked.

I have decided not to exaggerate. I will not claim effects that do not exist or promise that a method can replace effort. I need to keep that standard alongside my wish for the courses to sell well. Wanting to sell them should not change what I tell students.

What I would say to myself before this launch remains the same: “You can do this. You are doing well already. Don’t give up; keep going as you are.” I cannot settle the outcome in advance, but there is work to do now: preparing at the office, filming at headquarters and carrying on at home.