ID :
172752
Mon, 04/04/2011 - 04:13
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/172752
The shortlink copeid
Old challenges, new success of women entrepreneurs in Korea
By Lee Youkyung
SEOUL, April 4 (Yonhap) -- When Shim Yeo-lynn was replaced by her colleague with better English-speaking skills for a meeting with foreign clients, she did not just set out to hone her English skills. She founded a start-up herself.
After hopping from one English prep school to another and taking a series of one-on-one lessons from native speakers, she realized that there was no service that teaches how to communicate in the language that South Korea is particularly obsessed about.
"The entire country spends enormous amounts of money on private English lessons, and people take English classes at school for more than 10 years," the 31-year-old CEO of Speakcare said. "But we were still incapable of speaking when moments command. I thought something was wrong."
Leaving an employer like NHN Corp., the country's leading Internet company which perennially ranks high on the list of most-coveted workplaces for college graduates, to begin a start-up is a daring move in a country where people highly value job security, financial stability, prestige and other perks that come with working for big corporations.
For most women, particularly Shim, a working mom with a four-year-old son, a decision to leave a big promising company is all the more unusual.
Though the nation's quick adoption of smartphones in the last couple of years and the fast deployment of the mobile Internet are fanning a new venture boom in South Korea, the phenomenon is still a far-fetched reality for women entrepreneurs.
The number of registered venture firms in South Korea rose to a record 24,842 in January, higher than in the late 1990s Internet start-up boom known as the dotcom bubble. But only 7.3 percent of them were run by female entrepreneurs, according to state-run Venturein.
Data also shows that it is harder for women start-up entrepreneurs to sustain growth in their businesses for a successful initial public offering. Out of 1,227 companies listed on the country's tech-laden KOSDAQ market, only 1 percent, or 13 companies, were led by women last year, according to the KOSDAQ Listed Companies Association.
But the few women who have successfully led their start-ups through the early stages of their debut see this data as little or no indication of their future.
Starting a business of her own was a long-held dream for Shim, a graduate of Seoul National University, the country's top institution for higher education.
She was the only female member at her college venture firm club, where she met her husband and a colleague who both joined her in founding her online start-up.
Within less than a year, her company began to make a profit. Speakcare won a 300 million won (US$270,000) investment from a local venture capitalist, not a humble sum in South Korea's venture community.
Its service, helped by its unique feature of linking credible English teachers in the United States with people in Korea through daily phone conversations, is being sought-after by corporate clients who want to adopt its online curriculum for their employees.
Shim estimates that by the end of the year, the company will lure more than 2,000 subscribers, who, she said, will bring her 3 billion won in revenues.
Women entrepreneurs in South Korea said they rarely become aware of their gender in doing business, though they have almost never met fellow women leading enterprises.
Michelle Kim, the CEO of another fledgling venture firm called Socialinus Inc., which develops online games for social networking platforms like Facebook.com, said she has never received different treatment based on her gender beyond getting a little more attention from people.
"One of the managers from my company had a meeting with a vice president of Playdom, who was also a woman," Kim said, recalling one of those few moments when her gender was brought up to the surface. "The manager later told me that the Playdom vice president found it interesting and unusual that a chief of the Korean game company was a woman."
Other women said they found running a venture firm more of a liberating experience from the gender inequality still deeply embedded in Korean corporate culture.
"There were disadvantages of being a woman when I worked for a big corporation," said Shim. "Like standing through the end of weeknight office dinners and boozing sessions. I'm a nonsmoker, and male employees usually bonded during cigarette breaks."
Park Hee-eun, who left major online game developer NCsoft Corp. to found Ium Socius, operator of online matchmaking Web site i-um.net, said being a 25-year-old woman with a bachelor's degree from a well-known university has helped her break away from the stigma attached to the online matchmaking sites in South Korea.
Men -- sometimes even married men -- have been primary consumers for South Korea's online matchmaking market in the past, and online matchmaking Web sites have turned themselves into an unofficial channel for one-night stands and sexual encounters.
The reputation from online prostitution and adultery is the stigma that her budding start-up fought off to a successful degree, Park said.
"The common Korean women around our age are skeptical about resorting to an online matchmaking service" because of this stigma, Park said. "But ultimately, I had a belief that this service would do good for women."
With its cartoonish layout, Ium brands itself as a "healthy" online dating service for both casual dating and long-term relationships among its membership, which is not open to married men and women.
The company attracted more than 90,000 registered customers within about four months of its debut, mostly through word of mouth among college students, and it is already generating profit.
Sometimes the biggest challenge for these women entrepreneurs comes not from the enterprise but outside of it. They said female entrepreneurs with children face a harder time juggling family and work than their counterparts working for large corporations.
"NHN has its own nursery school. I sometimes thought I could send my kid there and live a more comfortable life" instead of starting a business, Shim said.
Eventually she thought that following her dream was setting a good model for her child. But childcare is still a tough issue, and she did not give up both.
"It is impossible to take time off and come back to the enterprise," she said. "I hope the government would help out."
Shim's mother moved in with her and her husband to take care of their son after they started the business.
The CEO of Socialius, Kim, said she thinks more women will be motivated to become entrepreneurial in the game industry as more of them go online to play games.
"The game industry, in particular, has few women. When I grew up, nearly all gamers around me were men except myself," Kim said. "But I think there will be more women in this field as social games are becoming popular among women."
SEOUL, April 4 (Yonhap) -- When Shim Yeo-lynn was replaced by her colleague with better English-speaking skills for a meeting with foreign clients, she did not just set out to hone her English skills. She founded a start-up herself.
After hopping from one English prep school to another and taking a series of one-on-one lessons from native speakers, she realized that there was no service that teaches how to communicate in the language that South Korea is particularly obsessed about.
"The entire country spends enormous amounts of money on private English lessons, and people take English classes at school for more than 10 years," the 31-year-old CEO of Speakcare said. "But we were still incapable of speaking when moments command. I thought something was wrong."
Leaving an employer like NHN Corp., the country's leading Internet company which perennially ranks high on the list of most-coveted workplaces for college graduates, to begin a start-up is a daring move in a country where people highly value job security, financial stability, prestige and other perks that come with working for big corporations.
For most women, particularly Shim, a working mom with a four-year-old son, a decision to leave a big promising company is all the more unusual.
Though the nation's quick adoption of smartphones in the last couple of years and the fast deployment of the mobile Internet are fanning a new venture boom in South Korea, the phenomenon is still a far-fetched reality for women entrepreneurs.
The number of registered venture firms in South Korea rose to a record 24,842 in January, higher than in the late 1990s Internet start-up boom known as the dotcom bubble. But only 7.3 percent of them were run by female entrepreneurs, according to state-run Venturein.
Data also shows that it is harder for women start-up entrepreneurs to sustain growth in their businesses for a successful initial public offering. Out of 1,227 companies listed on the country's tech-laden KOSDAQ market, only 1 percent, or 13 companies, were led by women last year, according to the KOSDAQ Listed Companies Association.
But the few women who have successfully led their start-ups through the early stages of their debut see this data as little or no indication of their future.
Starting a business of her own was a long-held dream for Shim, a graduate of Seoul National University, the country's top institution for higher education.
She was the only female member at her college venture firm club, where she met her husband and a colleague who both joined her in founding her online start-up.
Within less than a year, her company began to make a profit. Speakcare won a 300 million won (US$270,000) investment from a local venture capitalist, not a humble sum in South Korea's venture community.
Its service, helped by its unique feature of linking credible English teachers in the United States with people in Korea through daily phone conversations, is being sought-after by corporate clients who want to adopt its online curriculum for their employees.
Shim estimates that by the end of the year, the company will lure more than 2,000 subscribers, who, she said, will bring her 3 billion won in revenues.
Women entrepreneurs in South Korea said they rarely become aware of their gender in doing business, though they have almost never met fellow women leading enterprises.
Michelle Kim, the CEO of another fledgling venture firm called Socialinus Inc., which develops online games for social networking platforms like Facebook.com, said she has never received different treatment based on her gender beyond getting a little more attention from people.
"One of the managers from my company had a meeting with a vice president of Playdom, who was also a woman," Kim said, recalling one of those few moments when her gender was brought up to the surface. "The manager later told me that the Playdom vice president found it interesting and unusual that a chief of the Korean game company was a woman."
Other women said they found running a venture firm more of a liberating experience from the gender inequality still deeply embedded in Korean corporate culture.
"There were disadvantages of being a woman when I worked for a big corporation," said Shim. "Like standing through the end of weeknight office dinners and boozing sessions. I'm a nonsmoker, and male employees usually bonded during cigarette breaks."
Park Hee-eun, who left major online game developer NCsoft Corp. to found Ium Socius, operator of online matchmaking Web site i-um.net, said being a 25-year-old woman with a bachelor's degree from a well-known university has helped her break away from the stigma attached to the online matchmaking sites in South Korea.
Men -- sometimes even married men -- have been primary consumers for South Korea's online matchmaking market in the past, and online matchmaking Web sites have turned themselves into an unofficial channel for one-night stands and sexual encounters.
The reputation from online prostitution and adultery is the stigma that her budding start-up fought off to a successful degree, Park said.
"The common Korean women around our age are skeptical about resorting to an online matchmaking service" because of this stigma, Park said. "But ultimately, I had a belief that this service would do good for women."
With its cartoonish layout, Ium brands itself as a "healthy" online dating service for both casual dating and long-term relationships among its membership, which is not open to married men and women.
The company attracted more than 90,000 registered customers within about four months of its debut, mostly through word of mouth among college students, and it is already generating profit.
Sometimes the biggest challenge for these women entrepreneurs comes not from the enterprise but outside of it. They said female entrepreneurs with children face a harder time juggling family and work than their counterparts working for large corporations.
"NHN has its own nursery school. I sometimes thought I could send my kid there and live a more comfortable life" instead of starting a business, Shim said.
Eventually she thought that following her dream was setting a good model for her child. But childcare is still a tough issue, and she did not give up both.
"It is impossible to take time off and come back to the enterprise," she said. "I hope the government would help out."
Shim's mother moved in with her and her husband to take care of their son after they started the business.
The CEO of Socialius, Kim, said she thinks more women will be motivated to become entrepreneurial in the game industry as more of them go online to play games.
"The game industry, in particular, has few women. When I grew up, nearly all gamers around me were men except myself," Kim said. "But I think there will be more women in this field as social games are becoming popular among women."
