Jin Yoon, MD, Diagnostic Radiology Resident

There are so many immigrants who don’t make it out of the poverty lifestyle. Things just really worked out for me.

Jin Yoon has faced many challenges on his journey to medicine and radiology, but he prefers to think about the way things have worked out. “I do feel very lucky,” he says. “Things have just always clicked at the right time for me.”

Now in his second year of the Diagnostic Radiology Residency at Columbia, he traces his good fortune back to the decision his parents made when he was ten years old to uproot the family from their home in South Korea and immigrate to the United States. Their purpose was to give Yoon and his brother more opportunities and a better education. As an elementary school kid with friends and a life in Korea, however, it was not an easy transition.

“We landed in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina,” Yoon says. “I had one English/Korean dictionary. There was no one to ask for translations.”

To support the family in their new country, his parents took on multiple jobs. Yoon and his brother helped out at night. “We would play sports after school until our parents picked us up to go home, shower, and eat dinner,” he explains. “And then all of us would go back out for the night job.”

For a middle-schooler who just wanted to hang out with his friends, the schedule was both grueling and motivating. “Growing up in that environment, I was more driven to succeed, because I just wanted to get out of this cycle of working all the time.”

By high school, their lives had stabilized, and Yoon began to think about a career in medicine—a decision that was influenced by his experience as an immigrant in the American medical system. Both his parents had health issues, and Yoon and his brother took on the additional job of navigating their care. They went to all their parents’ appointments. They found that most doctors did not have interpreters available. “I knew it was going to be a lot of work, and I knew it would be delayed gratification,” he says. “But I also knew that I would be able to take care of my parents in the future.”

During his undergraduate studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was able to complete his pre-med courses and also explore his love for math and engineering. “I told myself, I’ll do my best, but if I fail a class and my GPA doesn’t hold up, then I’ll just make the swap and pursue engineering,” he says, adding, “I got to do almost everything I wanted to do at MIT.”

Yoon did not fail any classes, and he enrolled in Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he thought he would pursue orthopedic surgery. Just as he was realizing that orthopedics was not for him, he received a phone call from a friend who was working in the artificial intelligence lab in the Department of Radiology. Yoon, who had been looking for an AI project, spent a research year in the lab. As he got to know the department, he remembered how much he had enjoyed studying scans and making connections when he was pursuing orthopedics. And at the end of the day, he says, it’s the people that matter the most.

“I just really enjoyed the people here, and I felt that I could thrive.”

Looking back on his first year of residency, Yoon knows he made the right choice. “I think I found the joy of learning this past year, which I had lost during medical school.”

A demanding schedule is nothing new to Yoon, and he manages to find plenty of time to do the things he loves to do. “Time is so important to me,” he says. “I love to spend it well.” He and his fellow second-year residents rotate dinners at each other’s apartments, and he hangs out multiple times a week with his friends from MIT. He enjoys rock climbing, frisbee, or golf, and he will accept any offer to play a game. He is training a new puppy and learning Chinese.

“There are so many immigrants who don’t make it out of the poverty lifestyle,” he says. “Things just really worked out for me.”