About Paul S. Chun

The short version

My name is Paul. I live in Berlin, though I’m originally from Northern California.

I’m doing my best to successfully balance helping maximize the fulfillment of my kids’ potential, writing software that solves real problems and being the trailing spouse in a diplomatic family.

My main interest right now is domain-specific languages within business contexts. I’m putting my money where my mouth is by utilizing them to build a solution for those who make a living teaching lessons and hate the scheduling portion of their jobs.

The longer version

I’m Paul. I was almost a Peter, but my father made a last-minute judgment call to name me Paul after seeing what I looked like when I was born, and apparently I looked like a Paul.

Central Valley

This occurred in the eighties in California’s Central Valley, though my parents were both immigrants from South Korea. The region where I was born is exceptionally diverse, and despite having moved away in Kindergarten, its elements still feel the most like what I’d call home: relentless sunshine during the day, cool evenings, flat land and the smell of hot grapes permeating the air all just “feel correct.”

Marin County

My parents’ marriage ended abruptly, leading my mother, sister and me to relocate to Marin County, where we couch surfed at my uncle’s apartment. My sister and I were told that we’d be back home in the Central Valley in a week, but that didn’t end up happening. At least I don’t believe it did - in the years that followed, I’d sometimes wonder if I was still dreaming and I’d wake up and be back to my Kindergartner self. Sometimes I do still wonder, though it’d be frustrating to wake up a Kindergartner and discover that everything I’ve learned about this world was a very in-depth hallucination (though one could argue that that’s the case for everyone anyway).

At the end of that school year, my mom found a one-bedroom apartment a block down the road from my uncle’s place, and the three of us called that place home for a year. This was a very formative year for me: I was a first grader. I wrote my first poem about a dragon on a wagon, and I remember the sense of both dread and pride as my teacher read it aloud to the other students. The teacher suggested to my mother that I should skip a grade, and my mother refused on the grounds that I was skinny and wouldn’t be able to defend myself against the bigger kids.

Then the following year, we moved to the condo where I would say I did most of my growing up, at least physically.

West Lafayette, Indiana

I have mixed feelings about my time at Purdue. On the one hand, Purdue opened my eyes to the rest of the world. I met plenty of people from pretty much everywhere: Indiana, India, Indonesia. I also learned to love upper-division Math.

On the flip side, it was NOT cheap. As I studied something that I could have studied basically anywhere, I do have a sense of regret of not taking advantage of the Western Undergraduate Exchange and getting out of dodge in a far more affordable fashion.

Marin Again

Upon graduation, I went back to my hometown and took a job in PHP and ColdFusion that was walking distance (which, in the United States, is a miracle). It only took a few months to make me realize I wasn’t about that, so I applied to some Ph.D. programs in Math.

Seoul

While awaiting responses from graduate schools, I figured it was now-or-never to learn the language of my heritage and gain the ability to communicate with my relatives, so I applied to Seoul National University’s language program and, with luck, gained acceptance.

San Francisco

I didn’t end up getting into a single Ph.D. program, but I did get into the Master’s program in Math at San Francisco State, so I went there for a term. To fund my life, I did part-time software development for a company called Heyzap. I ended up realizing I don’t like Math enough to pursue a career in it, especially when the parties at Heyzap were lit and they also gave me money, so I ended up working for them full time.

More than anything, though, living in the Sunset at this point in my life was wonderful. On days where I felt overwhelmed, I’d take a walk down to the beach at night and lay down in the dunes, listening to the waves and looking at the lights of the buildings along the Great Highway.

Eugene, Oregon

I read my acceptance letter to the University of Oregon at San Francisco’s now-shuttered Westfield Mall, eating a bowl of chili from San Francisco Soup Company at the food court. My heart jumped for joy – I had a socially acceptable out.

Berlin

I moved to Berlin shortly after graduating from my Master’s program in early 2013 to work on a startup with two very wonderful guys from Paderborn. Our software mutated a few times over the following years, but eventually we came up with a marketing intelligence SaaS that showed you how you and your competitors perform on social media with the idea that you could learn what your audience really engages with. Unfortunately, we were unable to make Rivalfox into a sustainable business, so we shuttered in 2016.

However, as I learned to love Berlin, I ended up taking Germany’s offer of permanent residence and decided to make the city my home. In the years that followed, I stayed in Berlin while working remotely for a company in San Francisco.

Tokyo

My then-girlfriend, now wife warned me that she was applying to work in the foreign service of Germany. She got in. We then moved to Tokyo.

Berlin Again

The condition of my permanent residence is that I don’t leave for longer than six month stretch. I was uncertain if being on a mission for Germany abroad would count as being in Germany. Turns out it does – the immigrations agent welcomed me back and looked at me strangely when I asked if my permanent residence was still valid. “PERMANENT residence,” he insisted.

And now I’m back home.

Who Knows?

The diplomatic lifestyle means that we expect to move around quite a bit more, so, assuming good health, this page will expand in the years to come.

Posted July 24, 2026