Paul Lee

Even though he is very much in his element, Paul Lee would rather be commanding troops on Empire Total War than learning how to deliver the news stories that he reads constantly.

“I love TV, media, the news and really nerdy geeky stuff, like technology and video games,” he says while looking at a reddit forum for the video game Assassins Creed. Lee isn’t only on reddit for video game assistance. It is his favorite website and facilitates most of his interests. Paul’s various fascinations with weird world news, hilarious exploits of strange politicians, and funny pictures of pets each have a section on reddit. Lee has played guitar for five years, and uses jam session sound cloud files on reddit to work with other musicians when trying not to do homework.

Paul is in his Junior Year at Eugene College and hopes to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in History. Lee is minoring in writing, which is not surprising considering some of his tuition payments came from a prize he won from a contest administered by Random House for writing an original graphic novel. Even though he is an award winning comic book author, he is more interested in history than in writing another graphic novel.

“My family always tells me to never forget where you came from,” says Lee with a proud expression on his face while looking at a page for famous Korean military heroes on his mini PC. Lee was born in Kansas to parents who had previously emigrated from South Korea. While growing up in Kansas, Paul was the only non-white student in his school, which he was in till moving to NY in sixth grade. “If, I hadn’t been taught Korean by my mother in our basement growing up, my cultural identity would be very minimal,” adds Lee.

After Lee moved to Queens, NY he met more Koreans than he ever would have imagined. Paul’s father became the minister at the United Methodist Korean Church in Astoria and his mother worked for the church as a missionary and teacher. She has traveled to Southeast Asia and South America. Lee had previously been a member of the church band, as with most 20 year olds school has to come first. “I would rather write music and tour with a band over anything I’m doing now, but I guess I have realistic or limited expectations for myself,” Lee jokes.