That growth came from centralized planning, an emphasis on exports, ambitious industrialization goals, and a dedicated, well-educated labor force. It succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of President Park Chung-hee when he unleashed the economic juggernaut on the world in the early 1960s. Korea 1.0 specialized in building cars and ships — big brawny industries that took advantage of the country’s disciplined work ethic and its low wages.
The work ethic is still there. But the low wages are gone.
Park served as president between 1963 and 1979 and let a huge push toward economic development. At this point in the country’s young history, the Park administration faced criticism that it was focusing solely on the well-being and modernization of the cities, at the expense of rural villages and farmers.
It is estimated that the same amount of money it took to launch the rocket in April, approximately $500M, would have been enough to pay for food for half the population for a year.
In the US, it is remembered as “the Forgotten War.” That despite the fact that more than 60K Americans died on Korean soil (more than died in Vietnam, a war that nobody has forgotten).
Both stances might seem irrational to the outside world, but remember the context of long-term negotiations. Both sides feel that they make better long-term progress when they take such stances, even if it leaves short-term negotiations over specific objectives in shambles.
The South, on the other hand, has made many concession to archrival Japan, allows American soldiers on its land, and seems — to the jaded observer — to worship nothing besides money. Few Southerners will discuss this hypothesis openly, but catch them in their unguarded moments and many will betray an admiration for the North as the ultimate rebel brother who has given up everything else but has stayed true as a Korean patriot. When that’s the inner attitude toward the North, there’s little wonder that the South seems to think that bribery is the right way to handle affairs with its neighbor.
Like people, countries are shaped more by their traumas than their periods of stability. To understand modern South Korea, the full impact of the 1997-98 financial crisis that ravaged its financial standing must be understood. One part recession, one part currency disaster, and one part general hysteria, the crisis shook Korea to its core.
Today’s vibrant, varied, and muscle-bound Korean financial system is a direct product of the confusion, uncertainty, and terror of those days in late 1997 when the whole country teetered on the precipice.
Thailand was the first domino to fall. A glance at the economic fundamentals of the country would have told any even-keeled investor that the country was trying to maintain an unsustainable link between its currency and the US dollar. Because of a flood of foreign capital into Bangkok, the central government had to keep buying the Thai baht on the open market to maintain its parity with the dollar. If that parity were broken and the baht were allowed to float, it would destroy that country’s export industry — and those very companies whose shares the foreign investors were most interested in buying.
Ever since the early 1960s, Korea had averaged between 6-8% annual growth. To fuel that growth, the country had settled on a system of massive, low-interest loans from the banking system to the industrial sector. The banks were able to support this system on a permanent basis because of guarantees provided by the government.
Kim Young-sam, the incumbent, had to fight against Kim Dae-jung, the long-time opposition leader who had run for president, and lost, twice before. In an effort to show the country that he was on top of the crisis and was aware how bad it was, Kim addressed the nation just a week before election. “We are entering a period of bone-carving pain.”
Another major “reform” demanded by the IMF was the adoption of a high-interest-rate policy by the government. South Korea, like the other Asian tiger economies of HK, Taiwan, and Singapore, had long favored relatively low interest rates as a method of fueling economic growth. As long as factories could borrow money cheaply, they would continue to ramp up capacity and expand their operations.
The IMF felt that it was a time for a change when it came to interest rates. The fundamental problem of the currency crisis was that dollar-denominated capital fled the country en masse. The only way to lure it back to South Korea was to increase interest rates — drastically — and thus recompense the foreign banks with a reward for taking on the risk of lending to a country in the midst of a financial catastrophe.
The problem was that the high-interest-rate simply didn’t work. Faced with borrowing money at rates of as much as 40%, Korean industrialists simply decided not to borrow. With most Asian nations recovering from their own crises, there was not much demand for Korea’s exports in the first half of 1998, so there was little reason to expand capacity that was already too much for the given demand of products. Korean businesses, in other words, were cutting back, not ramping up.
Daewoo was doubly handicapped by the fact that its CEO had been a prominent supporter of former president Kim Young-san. When Kim Dae-jung won then presidential election, his administration had little incentive to rescue the dying corporation.
After a 1998 visit to the country, Stiglitz made the argument that high interest rates were killing the country’s economy. He even went so far as to suggest that the WB was deaf to a cultural difference — that low interest rates were a necessary part of the Asian economic structure and that forcing it to change was merely a misguided attempt at converting the continent to an “Anglo-Saxon” model of banking.
Korea’s automakers, once known only for being the lowest-cost manufacturers, had transformed into brands that had a reputation for high quality. The same phenomenon happened in other industries, from appliances to electronic goods.
Despite the loss, Lim was treated like a hero back home. He showed Korean pride by avoiding the humiliation of internationally walking Ichiro. He showed that no Korean pitcher bows down to Japan.
Whether it is baseball or cell phone sales, the competition between Korea and Japan is fierce.
Instead, Japan followed a path of extreme caution in its economic policies. The Japanese people were encouraged to save all of their extra income rather than spend it, a tact that reduced the ability of the consumer to feed more economic growth. Even more harmful was the fact that most Japanese chose to save their money in low-interest-bearing accounts in the bank of the country’s post office. Trillions of dollars worth of savings were kept in the post office’s bank, essentially removing all that money from circulating in the economy. Japan’s growth slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether. The 1990s are known in Japan as the “lost decade,” but the 2000s haven’t been much better to the country. It has essentially had zero growth since the 1980s.
Above all else, however, Korea must avoid trying to conserve its gains and instead always push for new growth. When looking at the example of Japan, Koreans should know that in safety is decline.
Compared to the Asian tigers of Taiwan, Singapore, and HK, which quickly modernized in the decades after WW2, China suffered from decades of political unrest followed by strict, radical communist rule that put ideology above everything else, including economic health.
China’s economic modernization officially began in 1978 — almost 2 decades after Park Chung-hee had launched his aggressive push for Korean industrialization and export-based growth.
Leaders in both Korea and China used the strong arm of the military and centralized government to push their agendas. President Park’s policies weren’t universally liked, and he and other military dictators showed little tolerance for political opposition. One the whole, however, the economic reforms in Korea were far more visionary and effective.
The birth of the Kwangju uprising, like the Tiananmen Square protest, was more complex than simply a push for democracy. But the response was similar in both cases. The military came and used force to end the rebellion. In both cases, hundreds of protesters died.
Korea-America trade is sliding in importance as both countries concentrate on China as their primary trade partner. Every facet of the relationship between the US and Korea is going through a period of diminishment.
For many decades, South Korea depended on the US for its defense and its economic stability, as well as for psychological support as it grew in size and strength. The main reason the US is considered less important today is because South Korea has reached maturity. The 2 countries are now going through an awkward stage, not unlike a parent sending a child off to college, a bittersweet but necessary moment.
With the appearance of a new, cheap source of the root, demand exploded in Europe as ginseng became common to use as a tea and coffee supplement. Even China began importing large quantities.
Meanwhile, back in Korea, a financial disaster erupted. The Korean farmers who had lived off ginseng profits for centuries suddenly saw a massive decline in the value of their product. The royal treasury also saw tax revenues plummet. It was hard times for all.
The story didn’t end there, though. In China, medicinal distributors noticed that North American ginsen wasn’t getting the same results as the old-fashioned Korean ginseng.
As for Korea, it was forced for the first time in centuries to build new businesses and grow new crops. Global trade, the country learned, was not very kind to you if you didn’t have a diversified economy.
The ginseng bubble and its implosion of the 17th and early-18th centuries was not the first example of global trade and its fickle personality.
The prospect of renegotiating such a tightly argued agreement, which took more than a decade to reach, are very dim. When Obama called for a renegotiation, he was really calling for the treaty to be cancelled.
The details of the telephone-book-size pact are numerous and intricate, but the most important elements revolve around food, cars, and services. Korea agreed to fully open its market to most US foodstuffs, including corn and soybeans. Agreeing to this provision was a tremendous sacrifice on the Korean side because the country has long held a protectionist stance against food imports.
They want a rule that says if you sell one car in Korea, then we get to sell one car in Korea. They just don’t understand that this is a “free” trade pact, not a “regulated” trade pact.
President Lee, who had at first purposely ignored the demonstrations, struggled with how to respond. At first he demanded an end to the demonstrations for the sake of public order. Nobody left. Then he issued an apology for making the beef decision unilaterally. Nobody left. Lee’s approval ratings plummeted to below 20%.
Finally, in early June, Lee appeared on national TV to apologize publicly. He announced that his entire senior advisory staff had resigned in disgrace. He also declared that Korea would limit its beef imports to only cattle that were 30 months of age or younger, which supposedly made them less prone to mad cow disease. At first, nobody left. But the enthusiasm and excitement of the earlier demonstrations did seem to dissipate. Then slowly, over the course of the summer, the crowds got smaller and smaller and the night battles with the police got tamer and tamer. By the end of the summer, the entire affair was over.
Hyundai is barreling ahead to gain global market share in the automobile industry, and it is following a textbook business model established by the Japanese makers: Start with small economy cars, move up to midsize cars, and then enter the luxury market.
When General Park Chung-hee was elected president in 1963, he decided that his country would make cars and become a world economic leader. To the American diplomats in Seoul, and even to naysayers among his own economic advisers who claimed Korea could not move away from a farming economy, Park’s dream was a fantasy. One diplomatic cable sent back to Washington shortly after the 1961 military coup referred to Korea’s economy as “a basket case” that will always require US aid to keep its people from choosing communism. Yet Park persevered. Over several decades, and through several administrations, Seoul pursued — and attained — the car dream.
Yet the journey was far more turbulent than Park had envisioned. To him, it was simple. Build the steel industry to supply the raw product. Build the road system and then build the cars. But even after Korean companies accomplished all that, they still had to survive in the vicious world of consumer sales and brand management. Not all of them did survive. One that did, Hyundai Motor Corporation, did so by changing its own culture and rules.
According to development economists, the quickest way to pull an undeveloped, rural society out of poverty is to build roads. And that was President Park’s biggest goal in the early 1970s. He wanted roads, and he wanted them built quickly. The crown jewel of that plan was the Busan-Seoul highway, an 8-lane, 266-mile-long expressway that he envisioned after visiting West Germany and traveling the autobahn.
In other countries, a project of this magnitude would typically take 5 years, maybe 3 at the least. Hyundai got 2 years and 2 months to complete the task.
The building of the Kyungbu Expressway is now a piece of nation-building lore in South Korea. Engineers worked triple shifts, the amount of construction equipment in Korea more than doubled, and the entire country breathlessly awaited and read reports about the previous day’s progress in the morning newspapers.
All of the cars in Korea, both men knew, would barely fill up a portion of this new highway. Park turned to Chung: “What do you know about making cars?”
With visions of his youthful days spent in the auto repair shop probably running through his mind, Chung is said to have simply replied: “I can do it.”
With the success of the Pony in Korea, Hyundai aimed for the all-important export market. Chung’s advisers recommended a half-decade-long preparatory plan that involved significant market research and a brand-new design that could be customized for each country’s conditions. Chung overruled them and instead ordered that exports commence immediately in 30 countries simultaneously.
The result was again a smashing success.
Chung Ju-yung had done it. From abject poverty — and after multiple bankruptcies — he built a successful construction and engineering giant. Then he transformed that company of broad-shouldered construction workers into a successful automobile manufacturer. He had come in first, with Daewoo close behind, in the race to build the first Korean car that could sell on the international markets. And just as important, Korea was now recognized as the industrial giant that it had somehow willed itself to become.
The story should have ended here, with Korean determination and cleverness spurring worldwide success. But in business, stories rarely end. They just enter another stage.
In the car business, both Hyundai and Daewoo were chagrined to discover, the next stage after a successful product launch is building brand loyalty.
The very reason automobile manufacturing was so appealing to Korea’s economic planners in the 1960s was the same reason that Hyundai was having quality problems. At the time, subcontractors made 40% of the car parts. And those subcontractors had also built their businesses from scratch in coordination with Hyundai’s car business creation. They had done so in exchange for guaranteed contracts. So they produced substandard parts either because of a lack of incentive (the Hyundai contract was guaranteed, anyway) or a lack of ability.
And North America consumers were starting to notice. The Hyundai Excel became known as having the worst repair record of any car. Owning an Excel wasn’t a badge of honor for someone who could otherwise not afford a car. It became a badge of shame. In Korea, people bought Hyundais anyway out of a sense of patriotism. American car buyers had no such loyalties.
10 years earlier, Samsung’s presence at CES was so small and insignificant that its booth was relegated to the far reaches of the conventional hall. But by 2009, it had the largest booth and was the talk of Las Vegas.
His new enterprise, based in the southern Korean mountain city of Daegu, quickly found success as both an exporter and an importer. However, his newfound wealth was completely wiped out by the end of WW2 and the chaos that followed the end of the Japanese occupation. But Lee rebuilt his company, this time headquartered in Seoul. The Korean War then reduced the company to scratch once more, leaving Lee penniless. But again he reformed his company amidst the rubble of postwar Seoul.
Had Lee remained a food trader, his company probably would never have grown much larger than it had been in its early days. But he recognized that a good business prospect is a good business prospect, regardless of the industry. So, 1954, he established a textile mill. Soon, his cloths were able to beat any imported cloth on price, making his product popular among clothes makers. After he had established a foothold in the market, advisers urged him to expand quickly with new factories. Instead, he poured his profits into improving the quality of his fabric, and within a few years the textile arm of Samsung dominated the Korean market and began to export its product overseas.
Samsung Electronics’ first product was a fan that was known to break under the lightest mistreatment. However, the next year’s model was noted for its ruggedness and durability. The company’s relatively simple black-and-white TV sets also had trouble gaining traction because of their poor quality, but Lee soon found that the cheap sets sold like hotcakes in Southeast Asia, so he built the TV division with an emphasis on exports.
At the time, semiconductors were high-tech toys with little real-world value. But Lee knew that someday all appliances would have chips built into them, and he wanted his company to know that industry, too.
Several Japanese chipmakers tried to leapfrog Samsung by concentrating on the next generation, a 1MB chip, but technological hurdles couldn’t be quickly overcome. Samsung was practically alone in the market.
Change everything but your wife and children.
After taking over the reins from his father, the younger Lee wanted to take his group to new heights. He knew that the only way to do that was to make an investment in a new industry in much the same way that Samsung had placed such a big bet on DRAM in the early 1980s.
Samsung would become an automobile manufacturer. The auto industry was a relatively low-growth, low-margin, capital-intensive business that was rife with competition. Lee, however, felt that automobiles fit the Samsung model (that model being initial massive capital investment, a tolerance for low-quality early models, followed by a rigorous pursuit of quality in later models). He also considered the move into cars as his patriotic duty.
Many were opposed, saying that there was no reason to enter such a complex business, there is no reason to take such pains, if I think just of Samsung and myself. But considering our economy, in which exports are so essential, I thought that someone had to enter and upgrade the entire industry.
In June 1993, he called a meeting of all Samsung’s top executives, held at a retreat near Frankfurt, and forced them to watch a video of how poorly Samsung’s washing machines were made. He then launched his Frankfurt Manifesto: Samsung would no longer be a follower; it was time to take the company to the next level and become the leading consumer electronics and appliance brand in the world. Not in Korea. The world. To do that, Samsung had to become known for high-quality, attractively designed products that led the way instead of following in the footsteps of others. Lee said that it was time for Samsung to reconfigure itself from top to bottom. “Change everything, but your wife and children.”
The purchase of an electronic device is based more on status and symbolism than it used to be. The desire to have the newest, flashiest, and most impressive phone is what drives us to make our purchases. Thus the electronics company must be there with multiple products, each of which will appeal to some buyer.
Branding has never been the strong point of Korean companies. Samsung, for instance, first became known in NA and Europe in the 1980s as “that microwave company whose ovens barely ever work.” It would spend billions of dollars in marketing and advertising in the last 2 decades to overcome the perception that it was a manufacturer of cheap products.
They ditched all the negative stereotypes of Asian electronics (cheap, generic, poorly made) and replaced them with all the good ones (well-designed, compact, simple).
He pulled together a team of 40 employees, took them off their usual job, and placed them in a room with LG’s best-selling washing machine. Take this thing apart, he told them, and examine every screw and bolt and determine if it deserves to be there. Then rebuild it from scratch. But don’t rebuild the same machine. Rebuild it as the best washing machine anyone could ever want.
The team went to work. Their task wasn’t just to design a new washing machine. It was to create a new process for building such a machine. That meant supply chains had to be designed and set up for each part. The layout of the factory floor had to be drawn out in every detail, and every motion of each worker had to be choreographed in advance. Shipping routes, in-store marketing material, and after-market warranty servicing work had to be planned in advance.
Impossible, ranted the engineers, a phone needed an antenna and it had to extend outside the device in order to pick up the radio waves. There must be some way to hide the antenna inside the device, Cha used aloud. Absolutely not, the engineers responded, the metals inside the phone would interfere too much with the signal.
It used to be that Japan was the place to find the newest and coolest gadgets. Sometime in the last decade, the global gadget headquarters switched from Tokyo to Seoul. Part of it was due to visionary leadership from the Korean government, which subsidized and supported next-generation software protocols and wireless technologies. But the Korean people played a part, too. South Korea is only one generation removed from abject poverty. Koreans still relate to technological advances with a youthful “wow” as opposed to the tired “so what?” that has become common in NA and Europe. When everything is new, there is a fascination with an an embrace of all things fresh and young. Koreans tend to follow trends and show great interest in what is new, which leads them to be highly adaptable.
Many soon-to-be chaebol recruited Japanese engineers and scientists at above-market rates. Sometimes these Japanese knowledge workers were hired as employees. At other times they were hired as weekend consultants. Friday-night flights from Japan to Seoul were often packed with these moonlighting workers, who would then return by plane late on Sunday night and spent the workweek at their regular jobs.
While other countries also made broadband a technology goal, Korea had a distinct advantage: apartment buildings. More than 60% of Koreans live in urban multistory apartment buildings, the highest rate in the world for a non-city-state.
But the Internet drive didn’t stop there. In addition to wiring homes, the government also subsidized classes for every citizen who wanted them. The classes taught housewives, senior citizens, and schoolchildren how to navigate the web. Thus Korea, in addition to having the highest rate of broadband access in the world, also has one of the highest computer literacy rates.
The Korean way of developing new markets is different from other countries. In NA and Europe, new technologies are introduced by private companies. If the public adopts the new technology, the government might step in to tax it an ensure that a single standard of interconnection is maintained. But the private markets take the first step toward legitimizing the technology through public acceptance.
In Korea, the government is often involved with technological development from day one. The government selects a promising technology, provides funding for R&D, and then works to get company buy-in.
None of the other government-selected IT 839 technologies can be considered to be a raging success.
There’s another aspect to Korean digital culture as well: piracy. It is very rare for people in Korea to pay for software. It’s even common for government offices and corporate HQs to use illegally copied word processors and databases. The same is true for games.
The thing that kept me watching was, particularly in the daily dramas… a definitely lack of explicit sex. Therefore the writers are forced to tell a story because they can’t have people jumping from bed to bed. American TV has just gotten to be too much, with sex and the violence and the language. People just want almost — without sounding cliched — almost a return to solid values and morals. Korean dramas do kind of me of TV, I guess, in the 1950s.
They also convey an air of confidence and nationalism. Not only are the actors and actresses gorgeous and successful, they are proud to be Korean, and that attracts admiration.
It was the drama that drew me into the Korean culture. It wasn’t the Korean culture that drew me into the drama.
In 2007, CJ Entertainment invested in 36 films. But only 5 of them made a profit.
Koreans work extremely long hours — more than any other developed countries. And that’s even after a significant reduction over the years.
And they worked nonstop. When faced with tight deadlines and big orders, workers got amphetamine shots to stay awake all night at the sewing machines. In a month, they could only take 2 Sundays off.
Korea’s labor issues have largely been seen as a detractor for firms looking to move to Korea. And the unions have been labeled by both foreigners and natives as militants because of extreme measures such as kidnappings and violence.
That’s because going out to drink with a colleague or business partner is the way to establish trust.
As one American living in Seoul puts it, “It’s like they don’t trust you unless they’ve gotten drunk with you.”
People say one thing but mean another. Body language is subtle but important. Often people communicate without words, and it is a person’s job to try to figure out the other person’s feelings. Given these formalities, getting drunk is one way for people to let down their guard and see each other’s true personalities. Then they can establish trust — and the workplace and business deals are built upon relationships and trust.
In Korea, “everybody’s got their buddies.” There was always a middleman. His trips to Korea involved lots of socializing. “You don’t just walk in and sign a deal. It’s the relationship building, the dinners, the drinks, the getting to know you.”
One of the first things you might do is start making a list of newly established businesses, then call them on the phone or walk in the door and ask for a meeting with the manager.
This strategy would never work in Korea. Cold calls don’t get you anywhere.
But beyond the status and success in competition, golf is a businessperson’s game. It has become a necessary part of forging relationships with clients and new partners and sealing business deals. As one president of a semiconductor company put it, he had to learn how to play golf for the sake of his business.
First, the sport has become synonymous with high society and power. Politicians play golf as a way to get to know others in power and to discuss business deals and government issues in a more informal and private setting. In a culture that emphasizes status and image, people who come from wealthy and prominent backgrounds play golf while wearing pricey, name-brand clothing and jewelry to emphasize their position in society.
At one point, developers needed 1K government permits to build a course. It takes 2 years to get the government approvals at a cost of about $2M. You usually have to pay bribes, and even then, you can still lose the project. Sometimes the failure of a golf course project leads to bankruptcies.
Entertaining clients is especially crucial in doing business in Korea. And golf is seen as a perfect way to get a 4-to-5-hour block of time to schmooze and talk deals. In almost every group on the course, 2 of the players are the hosts and the other 2 are the clients or people being entertained. The people hosting clients sometimes purposefully played worse to make their guests feel better.
Nearly all of the professional players from Korea come from wealthy or upper-middle-class families.
Her father worked her hard to develop discipline and a tough mind. She woke up every day at 5:30am, ran up and down 15 flights of stairs in her apartment building, and practiced for hours wherever she could.
To develop in Se-ri an unflinching mental toughness, her father made her hit balls in the cemetery where her grandfather was buried. He also forced her to sleep in a tent overnight at the same cemetery to force her to overcome her fears. He took her to dog fights and often pushed Se-ri to tears. She had no friends or social life. Just golf and a hard-driving father.
He said the Korean women have permanently changed the face of the tour. He credits their work ethic. “The Koreans are the first ones on the range in the morning and the last ones to leave at night.”
Korea, to the best of my knowledge, is a place where women are not going to rise to the upper levels of corporate leadership. If you have a daughter, sports is the only field really open. Dads channel their daughters a lot toward sports and toward golf because there’s economic opportunity there.
In Korea, education has long been the key to a person’s future. What college you attend most often determines your social network and what job you get after school. It also plays a major role in who you will marry and your overall status in society. Education can also be the best way to display filial piety — the virtue of showing respect to your parents. That’s because a person’s education and job reflects on the entire family. Many centuries ago, people who obtained the highest level of education and scored the best on tests became government officials — and that title was inscribed on the family gravestone. This was considered a tremendous mark of honor for the family.
Competition is fierce and kids are pushed to be the best in their class. Some students even live at tutoring school dormitories. If parents identify a special talent in their children, some will devote their lives to turning the child into a star. Behind nearly every famous young Korean star — in sports, music, or acting — you will find parents who have sacrificed deeply to nurture the child’s talents.
But the fact that the students didn’t ask questions about foreign policy, instead quizzing her about relationships and her experience as a woman, shows the priorities of many young women in the country today. And these questions came from the most intelligent and best educated young women in the country. At one point during the event, Clinton said, “I feel more like an advice columnist than secretary of state today.”
Because of US technical superiority (the average North Korean pilot gets only about 20 hours of training time in 1960s vintage planes; US flyboys are not allowed to fly combat missions without more than 600 hours of in-flight training), this fight wouldn’t last very long. But in the first hours of the conflict, it would be fierce.
The other path that Korea can take is the one overgrown with brambles because it is rarely followed. It involves continuing to take great risks. It involves staying lean and hungry, rather than growing fat off the success of Korea 1.0. It involves staying true to the essentials of Korean nature and demonstrating extreme mental discipline, collective sacrifice, and hard work.
SV is based on open access to capital for anyone with a good idea and a strong track record. Korean business culture works very differently:
You want to meet the “movers and shakers” of the industry? You will probably have to meet their secretaries first. You have this crazy idea that you think will change the world? You will likely find there’s not enough capital or other necessary ingredients that will let you build a business around that idea. So the next thing you do is to bring that idea to this established company. If they don’t understand what the heck you are talking about, they will basically tell you to get a real job. If they do see the potential, they will either try to rip you off by offering a cheap labor opportunity on an exclusive business deal, or copy the idea altogether.
Making business deals in Korea is extremely difficult — if not impossible — without knowing the right people or getting an introduction to the right person. It isn’t that Koreans don’t want the business. It’s just that they rely heavily on social networks that are established from as long ago as elementary school and stay intact all their lives. The networks create the foundation for a person’s social and professional life. That’s one major reason why Koreans push their children to go to a top university. The networks established in college will determine the opportunities a person gets in the workforce.