Yul played the mastermind role perfectly, even trading an elimination for a vote. In a very close game, he managed to win out over the challenge dominator and nature lover Ozzy in a 5-4 win. There were key elements that played into Yul's victory, from his strong friendship with Becky, to Aitu's domination at challenges after the mutiny. By far the most important thing that gave Yul his win was finding the individual immunity idol on Exile Island and using it to sway Jonathan to mutiny again.

We got a chance to talk to the winner of Survivor: Cook Islands about what it was like to be a part of one of the best Survivors in a while. He talked about the challenges he faced, the bonds he made and what he is up to next.

IGN TV: How do you think it came out?

Yul: In retrospect, I'm really happy with the way things turned out. My fear upfront was that either there would just be a lot of ethnic strife or that one ethnic tribe would end up dominating and wiping out all the other tribes. And at one point in the game, it certainly looked like that was going to happen. It looked like the Raros, the Caucasian tribe, had gotten back together. Two of the Caucasians on our alliance had defected to join their original tribe members and it looked like they were systematically eliminating all the minorities from the game. I don't believe for a second that anyone on the show had any kind of racist inclinations or attitudes. But for people watching back home, I was afraid that if the Caucasians ended up going to the final four after voting off all the minorities in the game, it would just send a very dangerous message and that a lot of people might come away with regrettable conclusions about race in this country. I'm really glad that ultimately our alliance, which was made up of a coalition of different people from different ethnicities, really were able to overcome our individual differences and stick tight together and get all the way to the end together. For me, that was kind of a very happy ending. I'm glad that the group of people who made it to the end represented a broad spectrum of different communities. I think that was a great ending to a great story. I'm hoping that if anyone takes anything away from watching the show, it really does kind of demonstrate that it's not so much your skin color that determines who you are and who your friends are, but it's really the values and the goals sort of underlying the individual personalities.

IGN TV: You had also voiced your concerns about being stereotyped. How do you think you came out the end of it?

Yul: From feedback I've heard from different people, I'm very happy. I wanted to set kind of a positive example for people in my community and people that look like me. For the most part, that looks like the case. For me, as an Asian-American male, the prevailing stereotypes in TV that I saw growing up were sort of the computer geek who couldn't get a date or the kung-fu master who couldn't speak English or the flamboyantly gay Asian-American male, like the guy on Entourage. I just wanted to kind of show everyone that we aren't all like that. There are certain qualities that go into being Asian-American that fit along that are positive: hard working, relatively humble and intelligent. Those are I think positive qualities that I hoped to convey on the show but at the same time I was hoping to crossover boundaries and try to portray someone who was also athletic and sociable and not completely lacking in social skills.

There were two sets of audiences I was hoping to reach. In communities like in New York City, where there is a very diverse culture, I didn't really have any concerns because there are a lot of people out there who are just exposed to different ethnic groups and have a broader base of understanding. I'm more worried about people within their community who looked on TV and didn't see anyone they could look up to or emulate and also people living in middle America that might not have a lot of exposure to minorities or other ethnic groups. And for those people, their understanding and conception about minorities are largely formulated based on what they see around them and if they only see the caricatures on TV, then I think they might extrapolate based on that in regards to questions about minorities as a whole. And it was kind of for those people that I had more concerns. If they only saw on TV a minority who is acting a certain quality that wasn't typically seen as being positive, I didn't want them to jump to conclusions about everyone within that community.

IGN TV: It was also mentioned in the finale that you were picked as one of People Magazine's sexiest men alive. What do you think about that?

Yul: I think someone must have fallen asleep at the wheel because I don't quite understand how I could have snuck into something like that. On an abstract level, I'm glad that there have been more minorities, including Asian-American men, getting into that issue. I think it's kind of funny that I would make it in there because I know myself and I don't consider myself to be sexy. I do hear that I'm quite popular among the geriatric generation. Certainly, a lot of grandmothers have been telling me that 'if I were 30 years younger and still had a full set of teeth, I'd be all over you.' So it's nice to know that there's at least one segment of the population that thinks I'm sexy. I think most of the younger ladies seem to be going for Ozzy. (laughs) I think I'm a very progressive person in terms of my politics, but I think I'm a little more old school in terms of the way I interact with people. I kind of believe in having manners and treating people with courtesy. It seems like it sort of hearkens back to a different generation. Someone like Ozzy, I think, definitely is much more of a cultural icon and he is sort of like the James Dean mold. He's a loner, a rugged individualist who does his own thing and could care less what people think about him.

IGN TV: Ozzy did say he played more of a social game than they showed, though?

Yul: Yeah. I think, for both of our cases, I think they've been playing us up and setting up the contrast between me being kind of like the puppetmaster and the brain and Ozzy being the physically dominant person and I think, for him, they've been playing up his prowess at the challenges, his physical strength and agility and playing down his social strategy side and for me, it's kind of been the opposite. I think they've been playing up me as being the manipulator and using me as a foil to underscore how dominant Ozzy has been in the challenges. I don't think I'm a schmuck on challenges. I think if Ozzy hadn't been around, I probably wouldn't have been dominant on the challenges. Not to the extent that he was by any means, but physically stronger. For me, that was also part of strategy too.

My goal with regard to challenges, it changed depending on the circumstances. In the first third of the game, when we were divided onto different teams, I wanted to do well, but I was more than happy to let someone else get most of the glory. My biggest fear coming into the game was that I would be picked off fairly quickly as a threat once we merged and I wanted to try to deflect attention away. So for me, what I was really trying to do was trying to form part of the core alliance that was really controlling our tribe but to do it in such a way that I wasn't an overt threat to anyone.

So I think I did a pretty good job deflecting the attention away from me onto Jonathan and playing him up as sort of the being the strategic mastermind and sort of the evil genius. And I think that worked out pretty well because he kind of took any attention away from me because everyone was fearing that he was manipulating everyone and I think I did pretty good job deflecting attention from me onto Ozzy. I let him just go ahead and take the lead on all the challenges and really become kind of like the challenge strength and that served my interest because it took attention away from me as being a potential threat on challenges as well.

Once the mutiny happened, at that point, we had to win it. I think everyone was just going completely balls out and I was certainly giving my absolute best effort to win those challenges.

Once we got into the merge, though, and once we gained control, my perch changed again. For me, there was no upside to winning the individual challenges because I had the hidden immunity idol and no one ever considered trying to flush it out of my hands. We had a tight alliance and I spent a lot of time really trying to make sure everyone felt that they were included in the decision making process, that they felt a sense of ownership. They never felt that they were going to be threatened by me and I think I did a pretty good job getting everyone to believe that I really was working in the best interest of the alliance and that I would use the idol to get all four of us to the final four, which, in fact, was my intention.

So I don't think anyone really had the incentive to try to get the idol out of my hands and since I knew I had the idol, I never needed any individual immunity, and if I won it, then that would put me in a very awkward position where I'd feel a lot of pressure to give it up to somebody, someone in my alliance. But then, the question would be, who would I give that to? If I give it to Becky, that could potentially splinter our alliance because it could cause Sundra and Ozzy to feel on the outside. If I gave it to Sundra, same thing with the other two. So, for me, having Ozzy around and winning all the challenges actually worked very well in my favor because it painted a bigger target on his back, took attention away from me, and within our alliance, to the extent anyone ever talked about voting someone off of our alliance, it was always Ozzy because they saw him as being such a big physical threat. It was always kind of directing attention away from me. So, for me, that was a good thing. The only thing I wanted was to make sure that there was no Raro member who made it to the final, because I felt that if Adam, Parvati or Candice got to the end, there were so many Raro members on the jury, they would all vote for them to win.

IGN TV: Even though they had a hand in voting some of them off, like Brad and Jenny?

Yul: I think what would have happened, for example, if Adam had gotten to the end, Parvati would have gotten his vote, Candice would have gotten his vote, Nate would have gotten his vote, I don't know about the other guys, but there would basically be a very strong core block of people who would vote for them and that, for me, was the biggest threat. I felt that going against anyone in my alliance, Becky, Sundra, or Ozzy, I stood a pretty good shot of winning against any one of them. I knew Ozzy would be a very tough challenge and a very tough competitor, but I felt I would have a very good shot against him. I thought that my worst shot would be against any one of the Raro members. So that was sort of the worst case scenario that I absolutely wanted to avoid and Ozzy was the single best hedge against that happening, the single best insurance I had, to prevent any of the Raro members from winning a streak of ICs, to getting to the end.

So, from my perspective, it was great to have Ozzy there because he was, again, so dominant in the challenges that he would make sure none of the Raros would win. Even if he got to the end with me, I thought had a good shoot against him, which ended up being the case. He took attention away from me. No one ever thought of me as being a threat and so no one ever considered trying to vote me out. And I think that would have been the case even if I didn't have the idol. So for me, on the individual challenges, at that point, my goal was really to come in second place behind Ozzy. What I wanted to do is stay close enough such that if Ozzy faltered for some reason, I could go ahead and win the IC and prevent any of the Raros from winning the individual immunity, but if Ozzy was winning, that's great because it, again, none of the Raros would win the individual immunity and he would be the one kind of making the bigger target on his back. It kind of worked out really well from my perspective. I'm not in any way trying to take anything away from Ozzy. Even if I went completely flat-out balls-hard, I doubt I could have beaten him. The guy is so amazingly dominant on these challenges. But again, it worked out in my interest, too, because again, there's no reason for me to win the ICs and if I did, I think it actually would have weakened my position in the tribe.

IGN TV: How do you think the show represented you and your personality?

Yul: I think for most of the season, it was fairly accurate. It's hard for me to be objective, so I've asked a lot of my friends whether they thought the way I came across on TV was consistent with who I really am and for the most part, they said yes. They think the way that I was portrayed is pretty close to how my true character is. I think most people felt that I was kind of being toned down so more of the goofier side of my personality, the funnier side, hasn't really been shown.

IGN TV: Oh, the dancing was pretty funny.

Yul: (laughs) Yeah, that came out later, I think. That was helpful in adding some color to my personality. I think toward the end they started playing up the whole 'Godfather'/puppetmaster image and I noticed a lot more manipulation I think in terms of putting statements together or taking things out of context that gave me a little bit more of a dictatorial or sinister color. I think that was a little bit more manipulated. I don't think I really changed my demeanor or the way I related with people over the course of the game. But I think they were trying to set up a showdown between the 'Godfather' and the dominator.

I think, too, the whole 'Godfather' thing, I don't think it was accurate. I think if you asked anyone in my tribe, the way I like to interact with people and the way I tried to lead my tribe was really to solicit everyone's opinions and achieving consensus and having a very collaborative approach to decision making. To me, that's just more natural to my personality and also, I thought it was effective in the game in terms of keeping our tribe very, very tight. If I really acted like a dictator or a 'Godfather', told people what to do, I think people would have felt threatened. They'd feel like, you know what, he is too much in control of the game, we're going to have to vote him out. As long as people felt a sense of ownership and felt that their voices were being heard and that their opinions were respected and they had control over their own fate, there was no incentive to get out of our alliance. Everyone felt like they were in control; that no one was going to blindside them. Even after that whole 'Godfather' thing came up, I think if you asked anyone in my alliance what my leadership style was like, I don't think anyone would say it changed at all from how it was before.

I think externally, what happened, was with the Raro members, to them, it looked like I was running things, like I was pulling all the strings. And so they started attaching the whole 'Godfather' label onto me. And I tried to deny it at first, because it really wasn't the way I was leading my tribe. I realized that the more I started denying it, the more they felt that I was lying to them and that I was being deceitful. So I finally said, you know what, if it's going to stick no matter what, I might as well just embrace it and use it to my advantage. And at that point, I started externally to them, not to my alliance, well fine, I'm the Godfather, if you want me to do these favors. And it worked out well. We made a decision to vote out Jonathan. I think I could, if I really was dead set on it, saved him if I wanted to. But at that point, it made a lot of strategic sense to get rid of Jonathan anyways and I might as well get credit for it and a vote from Adam on the jury. That was the swing vote that actually got me the win.

IGN TV: Was is more Becky and Sundra that wanted to get rid of Jonathan then?

Yul: Actually, it really was a consensus thing. If it was strategic for that point, it made sense for me to get rid of Jonathan then. I know people have been saying 'why did you get rid of Jonathan? He would have made a perfect final two goat, you would have won in a landslide against him.' And I think that actually was not a viable outcome, because that would require a lot of different things.

First, it would require me to screw over Sundra or Becky or Ozzy at some point in order to keep Jonathan with me all the way. I think strategically, that didn't make sense, because it would have cracked our alliance, it would have cost me their votes on the jury and for me, that was especially dangerous, because people saw me as playing a relatively clean and ethical game and if they saw me screwing over my alliance to get Jonathan to the end with me, I think that would have cost me a lot of other votes.

Another thing is that Jonathan is a very smart guy and a very strong player and I don't think that's giving him enough credit. He wouldn't have sit idly by and let me take him to the final two just so that I could beat him. I think he would have been very, very active in organizing a movement against me to get me out of the game, to get the idol out of my hands, so that he could go to the final two with Becky or Sundra who he felt he would have a pretty strong case against. He could say to the jury 'look, I played a strong game, I screwed over everyone else, but I was a player and I worked hard to be here whereas the other two were riding coattails.' I think that was the argument he wanted to make and I knew that he was going to try to blow me out of the game at some point in order to get to the final two with Becky or Sundra.

So the reality is, to get to the final two with me I think would have been probably impossible. And it wasn't the final two, it turned out it would have been the final three. So, to me, it really made sense to get rid of Jonathan then. I saw him as being the bigger strategic threat, the only person who really would have been able to think far enough ahead to get the idol out of my hands and I wasn't prepared to screw over people in my alliance. So, at that point, it made sense to get him off and, at that time, Adam and Parvati had both come up to me and said 'if you don't vote him off, then we're going to hold you responsible. If you guys get to the end, Ozzy is our number one pick, followed by Sundra, then Becky and then you're dead last.' I knew at that point that I had to do something to try and get their votes, so I made the deal to get rid of Jonathan. Both of them gave me their word that they would vote for me.

Parvati, I didn't put a whole lot of faith in her word. I knew that she had a thing for Ozzy and I figured that that was kind of a throwaway vote. Adam, I felt like was a pretty straight-up kind of guy. He's a guy, once he gives his word, pretty much keeps it. I thought, I think it's going to be a close vote, it made sense for me to get rid of Jonathan anyways, it would make the rest of my alliance happy and it would get me that extra vote. I made that deal and I actually think, aside from getting Jonathan to flip, it was probably the best strategic move I made within the game because ultimately it got me the win.

IGN TV: Do you have any regrets?

Yul: Not really. I really do think I played a game where I didn't make any mistakes. There definitely were times I took risks but I think the risks were justified and it ultimately worked out. It was my intention to try to play the game with as much integrity as I could. I never said that I wasn't going to lie. I think it's sort of naïve to think you can play Survivor without manipulating people. But I really do think that I did my best to try to treat people with respect and courtesy. I never lied unless I felt that it was absolutely necessary. I never did anything in a mean spirited kind of way.

One thing that did kind of bother me was that a lot of things I just did because I just felt that it was the right thing to do, just to be nice, like Jonathan's hat. That was completely blown out of proportion. He asked for his hat back and even if I knew he would never vote for me on the jury, I still would have given his hat back. If I had lost something that had sentimental value to me, I'd want someone to bring it back for me. I tried to give the hat to the crewmembers before tribal council and like 'can you guys just give him the hat?' And they were like very sneaky about it, and they were like 'let's get back to you' and they talked for an hour and they came back and said 'if you want to give the hat back, you have to give him the hat back at tribal council' and I was like 'what's the big deal, it's just a hat?' So I left it on the jury box before the jury came in. They wouldn't have known that I left the hat for Jonathan until Jeff Probst said something about it and then they made this huge, big deal about it. So, that was kind of frustrating for me.

IGN TV: Do you think Jonathan voted for you instead of Ozzy because you are more mature than Ozzy?

Yul: I think so. I think Jonathan is someone who really appreciates the game for what it is. He really appreciates the gameplay and strategy. We spent a lot of time talking about strategy and I think for both of us, it was incredibly stimulating and exciting and we both respected each other as both people and as gameplayers. I think we were both aligned in how we view Survivor. It's fundamentally a social game and a game about strategy. If it was a physical game, then you would just have a bunch of alpha males competing with one another in something like the Olympics. You just get the best athletes to do it. The reason why Survivor is such an interesting game is because it's like a microcosm of our society. It's all about relationships and how people really look at one another, how people perceive one another versus how others perceive them. I think the finale was great because it really set up a contrast between two different approaches to the game and fortunately, in my case, I think I had a fair majority of people who appreciated the strategy side of it and I think Jonathan was definitely someone who was a good gameplayer and could appreciate good gameplay in turn.

IGN TV: Candice was exchanging a lot of flirty looks with Adam, did you ever see that?

Yul: No, no, I had no idea. When Candice mutinied, I was blown away, completely blindsided. I couldn't understand why it would make any strategic sense for her to do that. If she wanted to defect, it made a lot more strategic sense for her to wait until after the merge. Her head was not on the chopping block, she was part of the core alliance. She could have gone into the merge and had the option of staying with our alliance or joining the other alliance or she could have played both of us at the same time. It didn't make any sense to me. I had no idea that they had this love thing going on. And even Jonathan didn't know. I think, watching the show, they obviously had been showing this on TV and so it makes it sort of obvious the fact that they were exchanging all these looks and all that kind of stuff. The reality is, when it actually happened to us, we had no idea.

IGN TV: Were you worried about Candice's loyalty before the mutiny?

Yul: We were actually, because, Candice seemed really anxious. Like really, really worried. She kept suspecting that Jonathan had some sort of secret alliance going on with Cao Boi and she was getting really scared that her head was on the chopping block. Becky and I were both like 'Candice, just calm down. There's no reason Jonathan would ally with Cao Boi. That makes no sense at all. He's a smart guy. He's not going to align himself with someone who hates his guts.' She just started getting more and more nervous. I think she started getting threatened by me and Becky, the fact that we were tight. I think she just felt like she had more control over Adam and Parvati and felt that if she went over there, she would be the one running things.

There was also some sort of a misunderstanding. I don't know if this is true or not, but for me, there was this one point where I was having a conversation with Jonathan about game theory and something called the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma is kind of this well-known element of game theory. For me, I was just kind of making a point to Jonathan. The whole point of prisoner's dilemma, you have an option of cooperating with one person or defecting against them. If you have just one iteration of the game, it always makes rational sense to defect. The point I was trying to make is that over multiple iterations, if you play the game over and over and over again, it actually makes more sense to cooperate with one another. It was a point I was trying to make to Jonathan. For me, the point was to say that, look, it makes sense for both of us to work with one another because it serves both of our interests. Somehow, he had a conversation with Candice where he kind of summarized this to Candice, but something got lost in the translation and Candice came away from it thinking that basically I was saying I was going to defect, backstab. And so she felt paranoid that as soon as the merge happened, we were going to run over to Brad and screw over Candice and Jonathan and so she got really scared and that's why she flipped over. I think it's a combination of that and this whole thing she had with Adam that caused her to mutiny when she did.

IGN TV: Aitu became the underdogs after the mutiny. Did you ever imagine you'd manage a way out of that and win?

Yul: I honestly didn't think that it was going to turn out this way. I thought that we would all get eliminated pretty quickly and the fact that we were able to come back really meant a lot to me. I was really worried towards the end that things would just end up getting ugly again. I'm so glad it didn't. If there had been final two, there would have been a lot of pressure on who won the immunity challenge to pick someone else, and it probably wouldn't have made for such an interesting finale.

IGN TV: Did you have any romantic interest in Becky?

Yul: (laughs) Oh no, it was strictly friendship, brother and sister. Coming into the game, I knew for sure there was no way I was going to get romantically involved with anyone because that just really would be a bad move. Candice, I think, is a very smart person. She has a lot of great qualities. She's a good person. I think if she came into the game a few years older, she would have done much, much better. She's 23 years old, she's had one boyfriend before she came into the game. Everyone kind of goes through things where they fall for someone they really shouldn't have fallen for. That happens in their private lives and you get a chance to move on and it's no big deal. I feel badly for her that something like this happened on national TV where everyone is watching. It really did mess up her whole game. There's no reason she shouldn't have gone to the end. In our original alliance, Becky and I were committed to going with her to the final four.

IGN TV: You wouldn't have switched over to align with Brad and Jenny?

Yul: Brad, I was also very tight with. Jenny, I was not tight with at the time. From the original Puka tribe, Brad, Becky and myself were very tight, we wanted to go to the end. And once we got to the Aitu, Becky and I formed an alliance with Jonathan and Candice and I'm not sure exactly how it would have played out, but from my perspective, I would have wanted the final five to have consisted of us five. I'm not sure how it would have played out going to the very end. I think we did consider Candice to be a friend and I had every intention of going very far into the game with her. Unfortunately for her, I think she's very young, she kind of allowed her emotions to complicate her game and that ultimately it cost her. I think Becky and I, we are both older, I think we both recognize that sometimes you have to put aside your feelings to play the game. I think when it comes to the game, we have a very, very strong friendship and I think we have a friendship outside of the game that will last the rest of our lives but the whole romantic kind of angle never factored into it.

IGN TV: You seemed to have a much better opinion of Jonathan and an easier time building a relationship with him. Why do you think that was?

Yul: You know, it's the weirdest thing. I kind of didn't understand it myself. I like Jonathan a lot. I just felt like he was a very honest, up front kind of guy, really smart and he was actually a very caring person. And I couldn't understand why everyone thought he was this evil fiend. I've heard him referred to as an evil fiend with psycho killer eyes. I just didn't get it. I spent so much time defending him within our original alliance. And then when he mutinied, then I was like 'oh my god, they were right, I was completely off base on this.' I feel like I'm a pretty good read of people. One of the strengths I thought I brought to the game was the ability to really empathize with other people, understand where they are coming from and to talk to them in a language that they understand. I felt, with Jonathan, I really thought I connected with him. I couldn't understand how I could be so far off. Now that the game's over, I understand why he mutinied. It wasn't because I think I read him wrong. He felt like he had no choice. Candice had left, the numbers were on the other side, he thought Adam had the idol. So he thought he really didn't have a choice but to go onto the winning tribe. At the time, I didn't understand it. I took it very personally. I was very hurt. I considered him to be a friend and I couldn't understand why he left. I didn't know if it always had been an intention to stab me in the back. I was really relieved, to be quite honest, later on when I find out that this wasn't the case. Because I really did think a lot of him as a person and it really bothered me to believe that he had been faking it to me all along. It made me feel much better in general to know that he was a genuine person and it wasn't meant to hurt me on a personal level.

I'm not sure why we clicked. Again, I feel like one of the strengths I brought to the game was the ability to relate to different people with different backgrounds. I felt like we really connected. I thought he was a great intellect who had a great approach and perspective on the game. I thought he was upfront and honest. Outside of the game, he is one of my closest friends. I think the way I perceived him originally was in fact very close to how he is. I think people who originally didn't like him watching the season along with the rest of the country have come to understand that he wasn't faking it. I think he kind of raised suspicions because he was an actor so people assumed that he was acting all the time. We knew he was an actor. We didn't know he had as extensive an acting career as he did before, but we knew he had done some acting before.

IGN TV: Sundra's an actress as well, were you aware of that?

Yul: I can't remember if I did. I don't think I did. I think she kept that quiet. I think actors and lawyers get a bad rap. Becky was a lawyer. I was a lawyer too. I didn't lie to anyone about my background but I didn't volunteer anymore than I had to. I used to practice law for about four to five years and then I switched over to consulting.

IGN TV: The final tribal council seemed to be pretty tame. Did it ever feel like you were being attacked?

Yul: It was a mix. For the most part, it didn't get nasty, which I was happy for. There were certainly some tense moments and it certainly felt like I was being called out on the spot. But for the most part, in most of the tribal councils, I played a very diplomatic face where I didn't say anything offensive. I know that frustrated people because people felt that I was not being honest. To me, it was all part of the game. At tribal council, I pretty much let it all hang out. People had been accusing me of being a hypocrite because they felt that I had made myself out to be Mr. Integrity when in fact I was playing the game really hard. I was deceiving people. The truth of it was I was playing hard. I did try to play with as much integrity as I could, but I never said that I wasn't going to lie. That would just be silly. At tribal council, I was very upfront with everything. I said 'look, I manipulated, I lied to people, I did all those things, but I never did it in a mean spirited way. To the extent that I did do those things, I felt like it was because I had to do them in order to play the game. But other than that, I did try to treat people with courtesy and respect.' I think the final tribal council actually was a good opportunity to really just clear the air and I think that helped diffuse a lot of potential bitterness that people might have had.

IGN TV: What was the hardest thing for you?

Yul: Obviously, it was hard being hungry and tired. I really had a lot of health issues the entire time I was there. I don't think there was a single time where I felt close to being 100%. I think I broke my nose on the first challenge. I had a lot of cuts on my legs that got infected. I needed antibiotics twice during the game. I had a lot of digestion problems. I had almost constant diarrhea and blood in my stool for much of the game. So I was in pretty bad shape. You never heal because you never get a chance to heal. I had an eye infection because I was wearing contacts and dove into the water and got infected, so I had to wear glasses.

I think, in the larger sense, the thing I found the hardest, the most challenging, really were the ethical dimensions. Because I wanted to try to portray a positive image, try to be a positive role model on TV, it gets really hard to do that towards the end when you are manipulating people and deceiving people. I know Jonathan has said that you can't take anything personally in the game, because it's kind of like playing Monopoly or playing poker, there aren't really any villains, right? I don't quite agree with that. I think he's right, clearly, we all came into the game to play. It's not like we are stealing candy from kids or taking lunch money from people who are completely unsuspecting. I know, for Survivor, we all know what it's about.

At the same time, it's not just a poker game. Unlike a poker game, the way you're portrayed on the game and how far you get and how well you do really has a very tangible impact on your real life. I've heard stories of people who have been on Survivor who were portrayed badly and it really destroyed their personal lives. They got so much criticism when they came home and people who met them just thought they were horrible people and all that stuff really matters. It really can have a profound impact on how the rest of your life plays out.

So for me, once we got towards the end where I felt like I really was kind of in control of things, it really weighed on me, the fact that the decision I was making could potentially impact people in their outside lives and so I didn't take it lightly. It really made me very uncomfortable after a while because I felt like I wasn't really qualified. I don't know these people outside the game. I don't know what kind of people they are like, how deserving they are, yet I was making my decisions that really could impact long after this game was over. For me, I really struggled with that. By the end of the whole game, I was pretty happy to go home.

IGN TV: You managed the hunger pretty well?

Yul: I managed it ok. Again, I was having lots of digestion issues, like I had a lot of diarrhea, so whatever I ate just was kind of not staying in. I was just really hungry all the time. One of the mistakes I think I made, strategically, was that I didn't come in with enough body fat. Ozzy fattened up about 15 pounds, same with Candice. Jonathan fattened up until he was about 40 pounds overweight. And it really made a big difference, honestly. Because, for me, when I came in, and our Puka tribe didn't have water for about a week because we didn't bring the map with us when we left the boat, the map to the water well, so we were basically just drinking coconut milk. Coconut milk is a laxative, so that just increased the diarrhea. So Jonathan who had about 40 extra pounds of fat, it really helped him, because he was never as hungry as everyone else, he had more energy and he was just warmer at camp. He could go out into the water and not get cold. Whereas someone like me, I didn't have any extra reserves to draw from, I think it really did take a toll on my body.

IGN TV: Are you sick of coconuts and fish?

Yul: I like fish now, surprisingly. I didn't like fish before I went to the show. I can't stand coconuts. I'll start retching if I drink coconut milk.

IGN TV: What was the temperature like in the Cook Islands?

Yul: It varied. It's winter season over there, but it still obviously can be very warm. During the daytime, when the sun was out, it could get very warm. But usually it was pretty cold. Like at night, we'd all be shivering, and we'd have to cuddle with one another. I remember one night, I was freezing, my hands were shaking. People ask me if I ever hooked up on the show. I tell them the closest I ever got to hooking up was one night when my hands were freezing and shaking, I stuck my hands in Jonathan's armpits. It was like a little slice of heaven, it was so warm. He was like, yeah, just stick them in there. Yeah, he said the warmest parts of the human body are the armpits and the groin. I'm like, 'Yeah, I'll take the armpits.'

IGN TV: How do you feel about being the winner of what is being called one of the best Survivors in a long time and certainly the most diverse one?

Yul: It feels surreal. It still hasn't really hit me yet. I've been sort of on this whirlwind tour of just a lot of interviews and there's been a couple of moments where I just completely sort of forget about it. I know, I'm doing these interviews, I'm talking, but it just doesn't really hit me and then after doing that for a while, I'll be like 'holy cow! I'm the winner of Survivor!' It's so crazy. I just can't believe it. It's a great feeling. I feel incredibly lucky to be in the position I'm in right now. Not everyone gets this opportunity. I'm glad it worked out for me. I just want to make sure I don't take it for granted. I want to make sure my feet are firmly planted on the ground. I don't want to let this get to my head or change me as a person or change the values that I have or the goals I want to achieve in life. It's just a wonderful experience. I got more out of it that I could ever have possibly imagined. I just want to make sure I use all the good things coming out of this responsibly and do it in a way that kind of gives back to the community and really helps make a difference.

IGN TV: What was it like watching the season at home?

Yul: It's weird. Very surreal. My personality is such that I'm not someone who likes attention, really. I don't like being the center of attention and it sort of makes me uncomfortable. I don't crave the spotlight. In a way, it's sort of incredulous to me that I'm actually on a reality show because I wouldn't think of me as being the type of person who would want to be on one in the first place. Watching myself, I feel incredibly self conscious. I'm the type where I listen to myself in voice mail, I go 'oh my god, I sound like such a dork.' And watching myself on TV is like that times 10. Not only do I sound like a dork, I look like a dork. I think over time, I'll become more comfortable with it, but I don't know if I'll ever be totally comfortable with it.

IGN TV: So no acting in your future?

Yul: I don't have any aspirations to be an actor and I don't want to be one of those people who try to extend their fifteen minutes of fame and become a so-called 'reality whore'. I want to do something that has meaning and is impactful and I feel like I have a unique platform now to really address and speak to different issues that are important to me and the community at large. I definitely would like to do that. I recognize that being a public figure gives you a lot more leverage.

IGN TV: Is there politics in your future then?

Yul: A lot of people have asked that question too. I've always been very interested in politics and I've always very much believed in public service. I used to work on the Hill for Joe Lieberman and that was probably the best job I've ever had because I really felt like I was doing something meaningful and made a difference. I would like to go back to public service at some point in my life and really do something that can have an impact in our country. I don't know about running for anything myself. I'm not someone who craves being in the spotlight. I think I'm a relatively private person. I feel like I would be a good politician so far as I think I'm good at building coalitions and getting people to come to a consensus and finding common ground between people. I think I'm, for the most part, very well-intentioned. I make a lot of mistakes but my heart is usually in the right place. But politics can get kind of dirty and I don't think I would enjoy the schmoozing aspect of it or fund-raising or all that glad-handing and back patting and all that. I think that would really get to me. I think my preference would be to work more behind the scenes, find a candidate I really believe in and just kind of take a more hidden role where I really feel like I'm doing good work and helping people but I'm not the public face. But on the other hand, I honestly want to do something that has an impact and again, I recognize that you have a much bigger microphone if you are the public face and you have a lot more control. I wouldn't rule it out but I don't think it would be my first choice.

IGN TV: So what are you going to do in the immediate future?

Yul: In the immediate future, after all this kind of original hoopla and publicity dies down, I really would like to think intelligently about how I can use my current good fortune in a way that's going to benefit my community and society at large. I'd like to spend a lot of time with the non-profits and organizations I feel like are doing good work. For me, one thing that has been very close to my heart is, in college, my best friend died from Leukemia. He needed a bone marrow transplant and if you are a minority in this country, your chances of finding a bone marrow match are very, very low. So, I did a lot of work back then to really increase the level of awareness of the need for more minority bone marrow donors. I'd like to really continue that. I'd like to help out financially and be a spokesperson and an advocate for the association and try to galvanize the Asian-American community and other minority communities to recognize the need for people to get more involved.

And just in general, I love working with kids. One of the reasons I wanted to be on the show was that growing up as a kid, I didn't see people that looked like myself that I wanted to emulate. I'd really like to reach out to children. There's another non-profit that I'm very committed to. It's called Citizens Schools. They basically try to help at-risk middle school youth by providing them with opportunities to be mentored. Things like that, I want to do things where I feel like I'm making a positive contribution and hopefully making a difference.