For Kim Young-joon, the 36-year-old founder and chair of Pablo Air, volunteering for South Korea’s Army special forces was an easy decision.

“I don’t really like doing what others usually do,” Kim said in an interview with The Korea Herald at the company’s office in Incheon last week. While Korean men typically complete their mandatory military service through conscription, Kim chose the more demanding route of volunteering as an officer in the special forces.

“I like adventures, so I was looking for a hardcore option,” he said. “I thought being in the special forces would push my limits in terms of perseverance and physical ability.”

Kim served for five years in the Army’s special forces and was deployed to the Akh unit, a South Korean military unit stationed in the United Arab Emirates. After completing his service, Kim began thinking about how to combine his interests in aviation, computer engineering and security.

The answer, he said, was drones — or what he describes as “flying computers.”

While studying software engineering as an undergraduate in 2015, Kim arranged his classes from Monday to Wednesday so he could work at a drone startup as a developer from Thursday to Sunday.

After graduating, he founded Pablo Air in 2018.

Kim credits his special forces experience with giving him the stamina to maintain a demanding work schedule.

“That’s what kept me going for over 10 years,” he said with a smile.

전문보기: 코리아헤럴드, Pablo Air aims higer with AI drone swarms