Tyler Rasch

Early life, education, and work in the U.S.

Rasch was born and raised in the United States; his father was an Austrian immigrant.

He graduated from a college-preparatory high school, The Putney School in Putney, Vermont in 2006. The school sits on a 500-acre working dairy farm, with a student-lead "work program" and the belief that "education is something to be actively pursued rather than passively received." He said of the farm there, " It promotes a work ethic in the Putney School which prepares its students for the real world.”

Being the son of an immigrant and growing up in Vermont, near the Canada–US border, where a lot of people speak English and French, he was interested in other languages at a young age. He first learned French, then at college, traded out different languages every semester, adding Spanish, German, Portuguese and also studied Japanese. He felt that language is useful for learning about other cultures, and decided to focus on a language that would be very different than the U.S. culture. A close friend of his was studying Chinese, so he found a Korean book, and started to learn to write it, which he found easy, but speaking was more difficult.

He had several aspirations for his future, from dreams of being a paleontologist to being a music conductor, and at college application time, had decided to go into the music field, with recordings and CDs prepared. Instead, after meeting a University of Chicago representative who visited his high school, with their long list of language studies and a variety of other things to choose from, he decided to broaden his interest of studies, feeling music too limited.

At the university from 2006, he graduated with a B.S. in International Relations in 2010, while pursuing the goal of becoming a diplomat. While at college, he served in a number of training and intern positions. In 2009, he was a Litigation Intern at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a Program Assistant, then a Program Coordinator at the US-Asia Institute. In 2010, he was an Intern at the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

After graduating, he moved to the Washington metropolitan area where he was Special Assistant to the Ambassador of the Embassy of South Korea, Washington, D.C. from June 2010 – July 2011.

Korean education

In 2008, while still studying at the University of Chicago, in the U.S., he travelled to Seoul for three months to attend the co-ed Korean language studies at Ewha Womans University.

In 2011, Tyler was accepted into the Korean Government Scholarship Program and moved to Seoul. He studied Korean at the Seoul National University Korean Language Education Center, and in 2012, began pursuing his Master's degree in International Relations at Seoul National University (SNU).

Between July 2013 and July 2014, he helped start, and worked with other SNU foreign students, on a webzine about Seoul, "Seoulism", as he stated, "to be a means to gather foreigners and Koreans altogether so that we could become a community to initiate a forum of conversation."

From February - July 2014, he was an Intern at the private think tank, the Institute for Global Economics (IGE) at the World Trade Center Seoul.

Career

On July 7, 2014, he began starring in the new JTBC talk-variety show Non-Summit, that is made of a cast of young men from different countries, living in Seoul, who debate and discuss issues, in Korean, with perspectives they bring from their various cultures, from their native countries. Early promotions noted him as a detailed scholar who read the works of Mencius. He said that Non-Summit supported the government scholarship, including a year of language training, that he and his co-star Ghanaian Sam Okyere were part of, when he started on the show.

Due to the popularity of the show, he made a surprise appearance on "Arguments," another JTBC talk show about current affairs.

In February 2015, he became a recurring member of the cast of the Non-Summit spinoff reality-travel show Where Is My Friend's Home, starring for ten episodes, through April, 2015, for the first two trips to China and to Belgium. In August 2015 he starred in two episodes visiting South Korea's historical Buyeo County. In February 2016, Where Is My Friend's Home announced plans for a United States trip to visit his home in Vermont for a series of episodes.

On February 26, 2015, he became part of the cast of a new tvN talk-variety show Hot Brain: Problematic Men with six men, "boasting a high IQ and unique way of thinking". The show is also referred to as "brain-sexy man" using a newly coined term that is becoming popular in Korea, and Rasch is called "an American student who speaks very fluent and high-standard Korean".

He writes newspaper columns for JoongAng Ilbo, with topics like "study abroad", and guests on talk shows, including Arirang TV's "News Tellers" to discuss education, immigration, jobs, and current affairs issues.

Celebrity and endorsements

He is a model for Subway, Korean made Binggrae yogurt, Yopa, of Yoplait yogurt, and the EDM Study Center.

On March 25, 2015, he attended a Korean Traditional Food Tasting Event hosted by the KTO and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, along with U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert, on one of the Ambassador's first public appearances after recovering from a knife-attack in early March.

In April 2015, he and Non-Summit cast member Ilya Belyakov attended a ceremony for the new "Koreans and Foreigners Together" program as Honorary Culture Sharing Ambassadors of the Korea Foundation.

On January 12, 2016, he and Non-Summit cast members Guillaume Patry, Alberto Mondi and Zhang Yuan, along with Psy and violinist Clara-Jumi Kang, received the Corea Image Communication Institute awards, for their work in bridging cultural understanding between Koreans and non-Koreans.