Hi Dongmin! It's funny to be doing this interview with you. We've known each other since our student days in Milan almost ten years ago, and we've shared quite a journey along the way. For those who may not know you yet, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and what you do today?
Hi, it really is surreal to be sitting down for an interview with you of all people. I'm Kang Dongmin (Domenico Kang is my Italian name). I was born and raised in a city just outside Seoul, and as you know, I moved to Milan in my late twenties to study fashion. Today, I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of PAP Magazine, splitting my time between Seoul and Milan. PAP is a global digital magazine built on editorial and archiving, covering fashion, beauty, art, and culture. It started with collaborating with creative teams around the world to produce editorials every month, and it's since grown into curation, articles, celebrity news, and brand campaigns through PAP Studios. To put it simply: my job is building a space where creative people come together and share inspiration.

Let's start from the beginning. You were born and raised in Seoul, a city that today is often seen as one of the world's most influential cultural capitals. What was Seoul like when you were growing up? Was fashion, image, and personal style already an important part of everyday life?
When I was a teenager, in the late '90s and early 2000s, Korea wasn't the trend-leading country it is now. You know that as well as I do. But I think the seeds were already being planted back then. The Dongdaemun (DDP) area was kind of a holy ground for kids who loved fashion, and honestly the roots of today's Korean fashion were already growing right there. My friends and I loved dressing up. I still vividly remember buying whatever was trending and showing it off to each other. It wasn't anything grand, but looking back, that was my first real sense of "style."

Korea's influence on global culture has grown enormously over the past decade, from fashion and beauty to music and entertainment. Does the world's fascination with Korean culture surprise you, or did you always feel this moment would eventually come?
Honestly, it's both. It surprises me, but there's also a sense of "of course this happened." When I was a teenager, Korea was following trends, not making them. But even then, places like Dongdaemun were already boiling with this intense energy. Koreans have a particular speed and persistence. They absorb something insanely fast and then remake it in their own way. Whether it's music, fashion, or beauty, once it crossed a tipping point, it just exploded all at once. So I don't see this as a lucky trend. I see it as energy that had been building for a long time, finally showing its true shape.

I know you're a private person and haven't spoken about this much publicly. What were your childhood and teenage years actually like? Were you drawn to fashion and art early, or did it come later? And when was the first moment you thought: this is the world I want to be in?
Honestly, when I was young, I was more of an athlete than a fashion kid. I did care about dressing up and how I looked, but I was completely obsessed with football. I played on the school team and basically grew up doing nothing but sports. In high school I even spent two years at a prep academy trying to get into a sports university. But I didn't get the result I wanted, and I drifted for a while after that.

The turning point came after I finished my military service. One of the friends I met around then, a guy named Choi Paper, was really into fashion, and we'd always go shopping together. That's how I naturally fell into loving fashion myself. There wasn't some grand moment where I decided "I have to be in this world" — it was more that what I loved slowly shifted over time.

You grew up in a family of veterinarians, which is quite different from the path you eventually chose. How did your parents react when you decided to pursue a creative career? Were they supportive from the beginning, or did it take time for them to understand your direction?
Since I'd already failed the sports-university route, my family really didn't want me heading into another arts-and-athletics path. So I enrolled in business school and spent my twenties more or less the way my parents wanted. But the more I fell for fashion, the less business studies held my attention. I'd spend five, six hours a day digging through online communities and blogs, studying nothing but fashion, thinking about nothing but fashion.

Then, at some point, it hit me that I couldn't keep living a life I didn't actually want. I convinced my parents, and at the relatively late age of my late twenties, I set off to study in Italy. It wasn't an easy decision, and it definitely wasn't an easy thing to convince them of. But looking back now, finding the courage to do it was the real starting point of PAP.

How did you decide to move to Milan? And what were those early years actually like  studying, figuring it out, being far from home for the first time?
I actually wanted to go to London at first. I thought London fashion suited me better. But the girlfriend I was dating at the time was moving to Milan to study, so I decided on Milan too. I didn't have a long runway to prepare, and Marangoni being a school you could get into with relatively short prep played a part as well. The truth is, what mattered most to me back then was simply getting out of Korea and learning European fashion culture firsthand. That was the whole point, so whether it was Paris, London, Milan, or New York. Any one of them was fine by me.

When I first arrived, the hardest part was definitely the language. My English and Italian were both shaky, so I learned the language and studied fashion by basically throwing myself at it head-on. During the intensive course before starting my master's, I barely slept. Maybe three hours a night? The other students couldn't understand why I pushed myself that hard, but I genuinely believed this was the last chance of my life. There were so many cultural differences and it was tough, but looking back, all of those hard things became the nourishment that made me who I am.

Let's get into PAP. How did it really start? Not the polished version,  the actual beginning. And what makes it different from everything else that exists?
Let me be honest, there was no grand plan. Around that time I was running an Instagram account where I archived things that inspired me. At the same time, I was doing everything I could to become a proper professional stylist. And through that, I came to realize just how important a "platform" is. I understood that if a publication had my back, the range of what I could do would expand enormously.

But as you'd know, getting that kind of support from a publication wasn't easy. I worked so hard trying to get pull letters for samples, but the return on the time I was pouring in just wasn't there. So at some point I thought, "You know what, if it's going to be like this, I'll just make my own magazine." That's how I named my archive account "PAP Magazine" and started developing the Instagram like an actual magazine.

And strangely enough, followers who appreciated my taste grew at a speed I never imagined. Creators wanting to collaborate with PAP started flooding in. Honestly, I still can't quite believe how it got to this point. I think simply doing what I wanted to do, over and over, without overthinking it, is what ultimately created this result.

What makes PAP different is that we're not a magazine looking down from above. We don't dictate trends. We stand right next to the people making things. Like the PAP slogan goes, "Different minds, one obsession: creativity." We come from different backgrounds and different fields, but we're bound by that one thing: being obsessed with creativity. That's the core that hasn't changed once in ten years.

Building something from scratch in a city like Milan  -where the fashion industry demands you prove yourself, and where being an outsider is never invisible- how hard was it in the beginning? What did those early years of building PAP look like on the ground?
Back then, the general perception of Asians in Milan wasn't as warm as it is now. Bias against Asians was far more common, and to many Italians, I was simply "that Asian outsider who dresses strangely." Since I already loved standing-out, eye-catching styles, I had to endure an extra share of cold stares and prejudice.

To start my career as a stylist, I went around knocking on PR agency doors, trying to borrow clothes for shoots. But the doors of Milan's fashion world, so steeped in history, tradition, and conservatism, weren't going to open easily for a young Asian student with a thin portfolio. Once, when I visited a PR agency, the staff thought I couldn't understand Italian and whispered cynically among themselves, "Quel ragazzo asiatico è di nuovo qui, perché continua a venire a disturbarci?", "That Asian kid is here again, why does he keep coming and bothering us?" That cold air is still vivid in my memory.

But I pushed through with my particular stubbornness. I started by knocking on the smallest independent PR agencies, and with the few clothes I managed to borrow, I'd stay up all night creating high-quality results. As I proved my worth through nothing but skill and visuals, their prejudice and attitude toward me started to shift. slowly, but surely. Over time they came to recognize me as a creator, and eventually we built enough trust that they'd readily offer me good pieces first.

Around that period, working for a year and a half as an assistant to two local editors, learning the inner workings of the fashion system with my whole body, became a huge asset too. Grinding it out in the field like that, I came to a fundamental realization: if I wanted to bring the editorials I envisioned to life without constraints, I'd ultimately need my own platform. That realization is exactly what led to the magazine called PAP.

When you think about those early Milan years, are there any moments, people, collaborations, or experiences that particularly stand out for you?
A few people come to mind. First, Javier (Veleiro C.)He helped me so much in my early Milan days. He was practically my teacher. He taught me a lot of the language and a lot about Western culture. Without him, the person I am now would absolutely not exist.

Then there's Alessandro (Lo Faro). When I was trying to make something happen as a stylist, he did a lot of personal projects and magazine shoots with me. He's an incredibly sharp photographer with a brilliant aesthetic eye, and I learned a lot from him about seeing things from a new perspective.

And finally, Naz (Kisnisci). That's you (laughs). Working on the magazine with you was when I first thought I should turn PAP, which had basically been a hobby, into a business. You're genuinely smart, and you love taking on new challenges, which is exactly why I'm so excited to see where Balcone goes next.

At some point PAP stopped being just an editorial project and became something much larger, a fashion, media, and culture platform. How did that expansion happen? Was it planned, or did it follow the work?  
The work led the way. At first, I only did editorials, but as I kept making them, questions naturally came up. Who's seeing this work? What more do they want? That's how curation got added, then articles, then celebrity news. As the audience grew, I could see they wanted to do more than just look. They wanted to participate. So now we're moving toward being a platform that shares inspiration together, rather than a magazine that hands out information one way. It wasn't that I wrote a strategy document first and then moved. It's more than the work kept opening the next door.

When COVID hit, you moved back to Seoul after years in Milan. How was that transition going back to a city you knew intimately but had left behind? And how did that move change PAP?
Honestly, when COVID brought me back to Korea, I felt completely lost. Italy had ground to a halt at that point, and that state dragged on for quite a while. Coming back to Korea almost like I was being chased, I survived by trying whatever opportunities I could get my hands on. It was a really hard time. Then one day someone around me suggested, "Why don't we create PAP Korea?" and that's how a new challenge began. Looking back, that disorienting return is what ended up bringing PAP onto a completely new stage: Korea.

I remember PAP operating from a small office in Gangnam during those early Seoul days. At what point did you realise that PAP was starting to gain real momentum and recognition in Korea?
The truth is, not long after starting PAP Korea, a huge problem blew up. My business partner, the CEO, embezzled and burned through all the money we'd raised. I borrowed money from people around me and paid it all back. At the time I was the editor-in-chief, not the CEO, but people had invested looking at me and the PAP name, so I couldn't let that name be tarnished. And my own pride wouldn't allow it to end ruined like that.

COVID was just starting to settle a bit, so folding PAP Korea and going back to Milan was genuinely one option. But I'm the kind of person who has to see things through once I start, and with the thought that I had to take responsibility for the few staff who'd followed me, I ended up driving PAP Korea forward on my own. At first I got by bouncing around a cramped shared office. Six months of that, and then a like-minded friend came along and we shared an office together. Two years later, we moved into our own independent space. It's still not big, but it's exactly the right size for where we are now.

Back then PAP already had a certain reputation in Europe, but in Korea, outside of a handful of fashion-industry people, almost no one knew us. So it was basically starting again from zero. In Europe and other more conservative countries, there's still this air of not fully recognizing digital media as legitimate media. But in Korea, which adopts everything so fast, the prejudice against digital media is disappearing quickly. Even big corporations that already own legacy magazines are spinning up several digital magazines each to represent their companies.

I run a magazine that, at least for now, hasn't taken corporate investment, one that my editors and I built with our own hands. When people around us recognize us as real media, invite us to shows, and ask us to collaborate on all sorts of events, that's when I feel it: "Ah, we're being recognized." I feel endless gratitude for those things, while also knowing full well that there's still a long way to go before I reach where I'm aiming.

From the outside, fashion often looks glamorous and effortless. What's the biggest lesson your career has actually taught you?
That the person who goes all the way to the end is the one who's left standing. Behind the glamorous moments there are countless hours no one ever sees. Even when I nearly lost everything in the early days of PAP Korea, what kept me going in the end wasn't talent or luck, it was the stubbornness of seeing through what I'd started. This industry, I think, is one where persistence, pushing your talent all the way through, ends up making the difference more than dazzling talent does.

Do you have a favourite saying in Korean? Write it in the original, and tell us what it means :) 
I have a few.

First, "우물을 파도 한 우물을 파라" (umureul pado han umureul para). It means: don't test the waters all over the place, dig deep into the one goal you've set until you finally strike water.

Second, "칼을 뽑았으면 무라도 베어야 한다" (kareul ppobasseumyeon murado beeoya handa). This is something my father used to say to me every day. It means: once you've drawn your blade, don't let it fizzle out, settle it one way or another, cut something.

And it's not exactly a proverb, but there's a line from Jeong Ju-yeong, the founder of Hyundai, one of Korea's biggest conglomerates: "이봐, 해 보기나 했어?" ("Hey, have you even tried it?"). It means you have to actually throw yourself at something before you can know whether it's possible or not. It's a phrase I feel even more keenly running a business. The idea is: don't decide it can't be done, or that we shouldn't bother, before you've even tried. Something that felt difficult might turn out easier than you thought once you actually do it.

Finally, I always end with the same question. If you have one piece of advice for the young creatives trying to find their path today, what would it be? 
I'd tell them: just try it. Most limits are built in your own head before you ever collide with anything. Twelve years ago, becoming a magazine editor-in-chief was an absurd fantasy for me too. So don't wait for the perfect preparation or the perfect moment. Even something you've made as perfectly as you can might not be perfect to someone else, so in the end, there's no such thing as perfect anyway. And one more thing: dig into your own thing, the thing you can do well. Like the saying goes about digging one well deeply, what moves the world in the end is the irreplaceable voice that only you have.