Born in
Knoxville, Tennessee, he moved to
Korea when he was about five years old.His hometown was
Gwacheon where he "had a very normal childhood."He went through public schools, spending six years at Gwacheon Elementary School and two years at Munwon Middle School, before returning to Knoxville and graduating from
Bearden High School. His doodles during these years were frowned upon, but are now his source of income and pleasure. On a return visit to Knoxville in 2003, Hwang was awarded an Appalachian Arts Fellow Award at World's Fair Park by then-mayor
Victor Ashe. Ashe proclaimed, "Mr. Hwang's work is impressioned hundreds of millions of times each week, and reaches all corners of the globe. He is arguably Knoxville's most persistent artist."
His actual position was Google's international webmaster, which made him responsible for all of their international content and kept him quite busy.Today, he is in charge of all of Google's webmasters, and designing the logos is only about 20 percent of his job.