Himalaya Odyssey (6/6)

What Lies at the Summit

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Altitude: 5,416m. The summit of Thorong La Pass.

“Take the photo and get down! You’ll get frostbite!”

The guide shouted at the top of his lungs, but his voice was scattered by the wind.

The euphoria of conquest we had imagined was nowhere to be found. Only a screaming, biting wind welcomed us. The five-colored Lung-ta (Tibetan prayer flags) flapped like screams. If we didn’t lean our full weight against it, it felt like we would be blown away instantly.

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“The sun is coming up. The winds will get stronger soon. We have to move before then!”

True to its name, this was a “Pass.” The symbolic destination we had walked ten days to reach did not permit us to stay, even for a moment. Everyone was preparing to flee rather than savor the joy.

In that chaos, my father and I hurriedly took a picture holding the Korean flag. Then, as if chased, we began our descent.

Only when we reached a ridge where the wind had died down did my father stop and look back at the summit. Catching his rough breath, he spoke.

“Yung. You saw it, didn’t you? The summit is inherently empty.”

He was staring at the vacant peak.

“So many people run themselves to death aiming for the peak, but often, there is nothing there when you arrive. It is so fierce and harsh that it is hard to even stand on your own two feet.”

His gaze seemed to look past the mountain peak, toward some point in the corporate management he had dedicated his life to. After a brief silence, he spoke again.

“People look up to it, but in reality, it is a place you walk into on your own two feet, choosing to be solitary.” “If you run believing happiness is waiting at that peak, you will regret it 100%.”

It felt like a blow to the head.

This was not a comment on hiking. It was advice—chilling yet fervent, like a final testament—passed from a veteran founder who had stood at the peak, to the successor just starting on that path.

The “most splendid emptiness” that can only be spoken of by those who have been to the top.

How long did we walk? Away from the chaos of the summit, as I caught my breath, the wind that had filled my ears vanished, leaving only silence.

In that moment, I felt it. An invisible baton had passed from his hand to mine. On that cold, lonely summit, we had performed the most sublime ritual of generational succession.

Epilogue: Back in the Ruined Place, Again.

The journey is over. I have returned to Korea. My familiar room, my desk. The same ‘ruined place’ where my team left and the project stalled just before the startup launch.

Nothing has changed. The proposal on the monitor is still frozen. The team’s desks are empty. The bank balance, the opaque future—it is all exactly the same.

But I have changed.

I open my laptop. The cursor blinks, stiflingly. As if shouting, “Give me something, anything.” Before, that metronome-like blinking would have triggered anxiety. The fear of “Will this work? What if I fail?” would have suffocated me.

But now, I know.

This pitch-black darkness, where the future is invisible, is God’s mercy designed to keep me from giving up. I do only the work of the ‘single step’ that I can take today.

When the loneliness of being alone washes over me, I close my eyes.

I recall the ‘lantern lights’ twinkling in the darkness of Tilicho at 2 AM.

Right. I am not alone. Even at this moment, countless fellow entrepreneurs are climbing this mountain, fighting their own battles. And my wonderful father and the seniors who walked this path before me are with me. We are witnesses for one another.

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And above all, I no longer run solely for the summit. Because I have seen that the peak called success is ultimately a lonely, empty place. If the place you risk your life to reach holds only emptiness, then happiness must be found elsewhere. I learned with my whole body that it lies not on that wind-swept peak, but in this process itself—in the joy of walking while leaning on each other’s breath.