Ken Jennings Reveals Full Circle Moments as He Gives Tour of Childhood Town

Ken Jennings took Jeopardy! fans on a tour of his hometown and revealed a few full-circle moments in the process. He took a trip down memory lane during a recent visit there.

“Ready for a trip down memory lane? @whoiskenjennings takes us on a mini-tour of his childhood neighborhood in Korea ahead of an upcoming category this week,” the Instagram post was captioned.

“Hey! We are in Seoul, Korea. We’ve been in Korea all week, but mostly on military installations,” Jennings said in the video. “This is my first chance to hang out here in my childhood hometown of Seoul. Jennings grew up in South Korea due to his father’s job. Because they lived on a military base, one of the few channels they would get would be the one that aired Jeopardy!.

“We’re going to check out the bookstore up there where I used to hang out. It’s right by my neighborhood. So, my school bus stop is there, my old apartment, some shopping. It should be fun! Come on,” he said.

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The first stop was the bus stop where he and his siblings would catch the bus every morning. The game show host revealed that when they got dropped off, they would be across the street. He would run up the hill to his home because Jeopardy! was going to be on American Forces Network TV.

“I did not want to miss appointment television,” Jennings said. Talk about a full-circle moment. Jennings rushed home to watch the show that he would not only become the highest winner of, but also the host of.

He then went on to say a lot of his and his family’s clothing in the ’80s came from the store, Victory Town, which “somehow still exists.”

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Another full-circle moment came when Jennings visited his childhood bookstore, the Itaewon Foreign Bookstore. “Looks about like it did in the ’80s, honestly,” he said. “I lived about 10 minutes up the hill.”

Jennings shared that when he would walk home to the Army base, he would stop in the bookstore and pick up a copy of Mad Magazine or comics or something that a GI had left.

“The woman who is running the shop this morning is the daughter of the couple who ran the store when I was here. I remember them well,” Jennings said about the full-circle moment.

Many fans in the comments were shocked to find out that Jennings did not grow up in the States. “Huge Ken lorebomb just dropped,” one fan said.

“Ken Jennings and I sharing childhood hometowns unexpectedly making my day,” another commented.

“Wait, I didn’t know he was from Seoul?” a third added.

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