Spark

DaeKeun (Sam) Chung ’03 believes God chose him at an early age to be an agent of renewal in his own family, though he did not know it at the time. At 13, he moved from South Korea to Hong Kong to study as an international student. Chung had grown up an atheist but attended church every week with his host father, a church elder. 

Many years later, Chung sat at his mother’s death bed at a Buddhist university hospital in Korea. Distraught and needing to seek reconciliation with his parents, he stepped into a small, neighboring church to pray. After he returned home to Melbourne, Australia, the church members he had met continued visiting the ICU to pray over his mom, even though she was not conscious. Right after Christmas, Chung’s mom woke and accepted Christ with a nod of her head. His father had the words “It is well” engraved on his wife’s headstone and began attending that same church. 

“I have often felt like Moses in the wilderness, especially the wilderness part of it,” Chung says. “But I have also seen the waters parted in my life.”

Chung, a lawyer, recently relocated from Singapore to his company’s headquarters in California. He serves as senior legal counsel for Agilent, a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics, and applied markets that serves customers in over 100 countries. 

Chung is responsible for structuring, drafting, and negotiating commercial transactions in the areas involving strategic collaborations, complex supply agreements, and marketing arrangements in a business savvy and compliant manner. 

In 2023, his Singapore in-house legal team was named one of Southeast Asia’s top in-house legal teams by The Legal 500, a research group that assesses the capabilities of law firms around the world. In May, just before his relocation to California, his team was also named a finalist for the ALB SE Asia Law Award 2024, in the category of Healthcare and Pharmaceutical In-House Team of the Year. 

Success, however, has not always come easily; Chung’s vocational path felt anything but certain in his teens and twenties. He worked hard in school, but, at 18, he felt uncertain about where to attend college and applied to Calvin University on a friend’s dare. 

“We were going through the best U.S. colleges guide, you know the big, thick book, and we found Calvin. My friend dared me to write an application to a place named after him. We were just joking.” 

Chung found a home within the international student community at Calvin and majored in political science. College highlights included worshiping on the Mosaic Floor, participating in Rangeela, and serving as secretary of the International Student Association Committee. He also enjoyed a semester abroad in Beijing, a month at the United Nations headquarters, and an externship in Washington, D.C. His favorite class at Calvin, however, was Children’s Literature. 

Chung hoped to become a journalist, but his father suggested law, a career path with more financial security. From the beginning, Chung felt uncertain about the pursuit, but at every turn, he says, God directed him. 

Chung’s education and career have taken him around the world—over the last 12 years, he and his family have lived at 10 addresses. With every move, God placed mentors in his life that shaped his career and formed his faith. He now finds opportunities to do the same for others. 

“Things have not always turned out the way I wanted. I have learned to sit down and listen for God in quiet whispers. Not because God is distant, but because to hear a whisper, you have to be very close to the one speaking.” 

Chung says although uncertainty has been a part of his life, choosing a career in law was a byproduct of some of those challenging moments. “Sometimes we just have to take a deep breath and push through each day, appreciating God’s goodness reflected in the people and the nature around us.”