Survivor Live Internet Talk Show with Yul Kwon
Winner:  Survivor: Cook Islands
Segment 2 Transcript

JM:  If only you could see what happens during commercial break.

DR:  You accused Yul of being a politician and a diplomat.  You seem to agree with some of it but I'm sure some of it rubbed you the wrong way, constantly hearing that.

Yul:  Yeah, honestly, I did a lot of things just because it was nice to do.  There's nothing more beyond that.

JM:  Even Jeff said you're the U.N. here, make things okay.

DR:  And let's talk about the hat.  There's been a lot of debate about the hat.  I said, look he put the hat down there, he didn't put a big note on it. 

JM:  They said you announced that you were going to take it.

Yul:  No. Well, in general, I think Survivor is very authentic, they don't manipulate you into doing things that you wouldn't normally do.  This is one instance where I felt like I was being set up.  Jonathan asked for his hat back and I figured that if I had something that meant a lot to me I'd want someone to bring it back to me.  I tried to give it to the crew on the island.  "Hey can you guys give this to Jonathan?"  They never would.  So before Tribal Council I asked, "can you guys just hand it to him?"  They're like, "let me get back to you about that."  They go off for about an hour.  Obviously they're discussing it with Jeff and everyone else.  They go, "No, we're not going to do it.  You can do whatever you want.  You can give it to him at Tribal Council if you want."  I go, "I don't want to give it to him at Tribal Council."  "Well, we're not going to play into all of that."  So I put it on the jury box.  I just left it there and no one would have known.  The jury comes in and Jeff says, "Yul makes a bold power play."  And people are saying, why didn't I just tell him that.  I did.  We had this long conversation about it.  He keeping asking me, "Are you denying there's any strategic value, there's no way that it could help you?" 

JM:  He'll keep going at you until he gets what he wants. 

Yul:  And that's the only stuff that they included on the show.

Caller:  I'm a huge fan because you just lend a quality to the show...strategy...mind-bending.  I especially loved the way you interacted with Jonathan, convincing him to flip over.  It was like a movie.  My question is this, so Yul, you're put on a gorgeous island to play a game but did you ever enjoy the island with your friends Becky and Sundra?  Did you ever take the time to get to enjoy it?

Yul:  Yeah, absolutely.  There's a lot of downtime on the island.  You spend a lot strategizing, collecting food, building fires but you have a lot of time where you can just really enjoy it. We spent hours just looking at the stars on the raft.  Sundra and I would go out to walk around the island, or Becky, or whoever.  It's a beautiful place.  Sometimes...especially when I went to Exile Island...when you're by yourself, you just step back and realize, I am in a gorgeous place.  I'm so lucky to be here.  It kind of makes you a little bit teary eyed. 

DR:  Everyone agrees that you played a great mental strategic game.  You talked to me in your comments before the game about being good at the puzzle stuff.  But if you look at those individual immunities that involved puzzles you weren't really a force and what I asked you about this, we heard comments about maybe you let Ozzy take over in the challenges.  We're you holding back or were you just not performing in those challenges or what's the deal?

Yul:  I wouldn't say I threw any challenges because that would sort of imply that I could have won them but then I deliberately lost.  I don't know if I could have beaten Ozzy in any of those challenges.  I believe he's the best challenge demon ever to play the game. 

JM:  He's not human.

Yul:  He's not human and he's a smart guy, too.  After we merged it didn't make sense for me to win any individual ICs because I didn't need it.  I had the idol, the hidden immunity idol.  No one was ever talking about or threatening to get it out of my hands.  If I won it would just paint a bigger target on my back and it put me in the awkward position of feeling that I had to give it to someone else in my tribe.  Who would I give it to?  If I had given it to Becky it would make Sundra and Ozzy feel on the outside.  If I kept it to myself everyone would think I was being selfish.  I wanted to keep the alliance tight.  If I won the IC it didn't do me any good.  To the extent that anyone in our alliance was talking about voting someone out of our alliance, it was always Ozzy because he was such a big target.  From my perspective that was fine.  I wanted to stay underneath the radar. I didn't want to play up the image of being the godfather and the challenge demon. 

JM:  That's why I mention why people who have the idol sometimes doesn't need to play that hard in the challenges because then you have the idol and immunity and it's a double threat.  

Yul:  I think that's true.  I think that's an entirely valid point.  I do believe in my case, though, even if I didn't have the idol, I don't think anyone would have voted me out.  I don't think the idol was saving me in the sense that...

JM:  It was just helping? 

Yul:  I just think that people felt that I was including them, we were all working together and I was working for the benefit of the entire alliance.  So I don't think the idol was protecting me from being voted out by my own alliance.  I think they felt like we were all part of the same tribe. 

DR:  You talked about giving it to someone and that might cause hard feelings.  You did offer to give it to someone.  Let's take a look at this clip and talk about it.  Is this the case of some funky editing going on?  When exactly did this happen?  What are the circumstances? 

<clip of Yul offering Becky the Immunity Idol which would guarantee her spot in the final three>

DR:  The way that's presented, Yul, we see this last minute heavy thought going into this and what's going to happen.  Is that the case?

Yul:  This is sort of the situation that I was dreading, honestly.  What if it came down to Becky and Sundra and then I had a prior commitment to giving the idol to Becky if she ever needed it. 

JM:  She [Sundra] said she would have been surprised if you wouldn't have offered it.  One of the challenges people questioned was the one where you had to hold your own weight and you were one of the first people out.  Everyone's like, what's going on, it was surprising.  But like you said, that wasn't a factor?

Yul:  I didn't intentionally drop it.  Jonathan kind of moved and I slipped.  At the same time, that wasn't something that we needed to win.  It was for like a bottle of wine or something like that.  I didn't want to seem any stronger because people had already sent me to Exile Island because they had identified me as the strongest member on the strongest tribe.  I didn't want to be in that role.  This is the kind of situation that I was really scared of because it could have split our alliance.  Right?  I wanted to stay tight with our alliance and we had such a beautiful story with the underdogs staying together, getting to the end.  I didn't want us to deceive or backstab one another.  Everyone agreed that they'd do a fire-making challenge to resolve the tie.  But then I felt obligated because I had told Becky I would give her the idol if she needed it.  I was worried if she accepted that it would be such a bad way to end this whole story.  We'd be backstabbing Sundra who we both considered to be friends.  It wouldn't help Becky because people would perceive her as not having earned her way into the finals.  It would hurt me because it would make me look manipulative.  What they didn't show was that quickly after that we talked about it and quickly decided it was a bad idea. 

JM:  Did Sundra and Ozzy know that you offered it to her and she said "no"?

Yul:  No. Right after we had that...they showed that little snippet...I told her, "Look, Becky, I don't think it's a good idea if you take it. It's not the way we want to play the game and it's not going to help us strategically."  We talked about it.  We completely agreed, we're going to end this way, we're just going to go with the fire-making challenge. 

JM:  The fire-making challenge ended up taking quite some time. 

DR:  Yeah, wow.

JM:  And Yul was telling us before the show started that they were actually allowed to offer advice to Becky and Sundra because Jeff was like... ugggghhh. 

Caller:  Congratulations on winning.  I was supporting you the entire season based on your integrity and loyalty.  It's just basically a real feel good story.  Survivor had the most diverse cast this season...did any of the tribes, particularly Aitu, converse about the different backgrounds each of you had?  I really enjoyed the first few episodes but after both merges not so much was really discussed about it.

Yul:  I think when we were in our original tribes there was a lot of conversation within each of our tribes about our ethnicity, our culture, how we wanted to represent.  I think all of us felt an additional pressure and responsibility to try to represent our communities.  Especially because all of us felt there weren't a lot of minorities on TV in general.  To the extent that they were portrayed on TV it was playing up a lot of stereotypes and caricatures.  After the merge happened the race issue went out the door.  I don't believe anyone really thought about it.  And I don't believe anyone on this show is racist in any sense.  I was thinking it would be really unfortunate if at the end of the season, you know Candice and Jonathan flipped and it looked like they were trying to align with their original white tribe.  It wasn't racially motivated at all.  They just wanted to go back to the people they had bonded with because they spent a lot of time together. 

DR:  One of the reasons I picked Yul to win is because he was the only one who figured out before the game the racial twist.  I figured it out on the plane because I'm just a Survivor geek and if you see four or five Asian people.  But you were the only person who figured it out and you had some interesting comments about it, too.  You said, "I hope to God it's not going to be a war of the races.  I'm not sure how I feel about that."  And you were very conflicted about it and you discussed it on the reunion show.  Obviously it played out probably better than anyone could have imagined. 

JM:  I never thought race would ever become an issue.  It's always tough to represent any kind of group and it's a lot of pressure. 

Yul:  Absolutely and I'm so happy with the way things turned out because in some small way it hopefully proved that it's not really your cultural background that determines who you are or who your friends are.  If you look at our tribe, the reason why we bonded is because we had similar values, similar work ethics.  Jonathan realized that he wasn't as close to the members of his Raro alliance in terms of how he thought and his personality.  He wanted to come over to our side because he felt that we were more deserving.

JM:  He said that he would want to have one of you win if it wasn't him. 

<Probst's Thoughts>

Jeff Probst:  Yul.  Again, if you check the tape, I said early on, Yul could win this game and I'd be happy if he won it.  I liked Yul from the very beginning.  I liked the way he spoke, I like how smart he is, and I like the fact that he challenged us in the beginning and said, "I don't really know if this is a good idea because I don't want to be a part of perpetuating stereotypes."  I think early on Yul took it upon himself to make sure that didn't happen.  I remember an argument between you and Cao Boi where Cao Boi was making Asian jokes and you were saying, "This isn't right.  We are Asian.  We shouldn't be perpetuating this."  And Cao Boi argued that you gotta have a sense of humor.  And you said, "Not at the expense of an ethnic group."  I'm not taking sides on either side of that argument but I love that you were able to risk losing this game by offending people by standing up for what you believe in.  You're a likable guy.  You're definitely someone you could root for to win and regardless how you did on the show I think there are people that are probably inspired by how you played the game. 

Yul:  That was very nice of him.

DR:  It's interesting that he brought up, when you were on your first tribe, that really is where the racial dynamics were playing up the most.  It seemed to be almost Becky and Cao Boi getting into it a little bit.  You were sort of the peace keeper in the middle.  Tell me about that.

Yul:  My understanding is that Becky reminded Cao Boi of his first wife who he couldn't stand.  That's why they had some conflicts and he wanted to boot her out.  Even within these kind of ethnicities there are clearly differences in personalities and perspectives on life.  I think it's the individual person who determines who you bond with and what you want out of this game. 

DR:  You're called Asian-Americans.  Asia, not a small place.  A lot of different countries.

JM:  And all the ethnic jokes were made by everyone's own tribe. 

Yul:  I understand Cao Boi's point, too.  You gotta have a sense of humor.  You can't walk around with a stick up your ass or a chip on your shoulder all the time.  But my fear was for a lot of people in America who haven't had a lot of exposure to other minorities.  If all you see are these jokes on TV and they assume that those are true, they want have a broad level of experience to show them what people are really like. 

JM:  Maybe if it wasn't on TV it wouldn't have been such a sensitive subject.  And we still never heard the punch line to Cao Boi's joke.

Caller:  I heard that you wanted to do something with charities.  Could you tell us about that?

Yul:  I feel very lucky to be here right now.  I think I played a good game but how many people get opportunities like this?  I think there are many more people out there in the world who are more deserving than I am and could use the money more than I could.  I just really want to make sure that I use this opportunity and this platform that I have to try to raise awareness for issues that are important within my community and the community at large and to really try to help other people out.  There are a couple of charities that I'm very passionate about.  My best friend in college died from leukemia because he needed a bone marrow transplant.  If you're a minority in this country your chances of finding a bone marrow donor are very, very slim.  I've always been very close to that issue.  I'd like to do what I can to try to support them financially and use whatever position I have as kind of a speaker to try to get other people aware about this issue. 

DR:  That's great and what we didn't hear at Tribal Council.  We heard Ozzy say what he was going to do with the money.  We're there final speeches at Tribal Council?  We didn't see them.

Yul:  There were.  Final Tribal Council went on for quite awhile but they definitely edited it down.

JM:  Is there just nothing significant in the final speeches?

Yul:  They probably just cut it to include the essentials. 

DR:  We're going to take one last quick break. 

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