From a newsboy…
Born on December 19, 1936 in Daegu, Korea Kim Woo Choong was the son of a provincial governor who graduated from a prestigious Ryonggi High School degree in economics from Yonsei University in Seoul. His father was the teacher of former President Park Jong Hee, who later “reciprocated” the teacher-student relationship by supporting Kim a lot in business.
Kim Woo Choong had to experience the hardships of life quite early when the Korean War broke out His older brother had to go into the army and little Kim (at that time was only 14 years old) had to play the role of breadwinner in the family. From then on, Kim Woo Choong learned how to cultivate courage to overcome the fear of hardship and try challenge.
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Kim Woo- Choong (Jung) was born on December 19, 1936 in Daegu, Korea. Graduated from Yonsei University Seoul.
Married and has 2 sons and 1 daughter. One of his sons died in an accident in 1990. > Wife Mr. Kim and Ms. Chong Hee-Ja were once branch managers of Daewoo Group, which still controls many local businesses including a hotel and a golf course. |
To feed his family every day, the boy must sell at least 100 newspapers. He beat other “competitors” by preparing change at home to save time returning money to customers and running very quickly to throw newspapers into stores first and then return to get money. And in just two months, Kim had “taken over the market” of other newsboys.
It was about that time. This hardship and hunger gave him the courage to live and taught him to love and bring love and happiness to others.
On days when the weather is bad, Kim doesn’t sell many newspapers and only earns a few cents for his family. When recalling that time, Kim Woo Choong wrote: “Those nights when I came home, my mother and younger siblings were all sleeping. Soon I realized why they were sleeping because there was only one bowl of rice and they had saved it.” it’s for me. My mother got up to feed me and said: “We’ve all eaten, you must be very hungry, eat quickly!”
I hid the drops of water. my eyes like my mother hides her tears. I lied and said I ate noodles on the way home and told my mom and the kids to eat rice.”
Kim Woo Choong was in high school. had to drop out of school halfway through a year because of economic difficulties. So when Kim returned, she began to struggle. But thanks to the encouragement and help of a teacher and a friend, Kim Woo Choong rose to prove himself and on the day of the graduation exam, Kim was one of the people with the highest scores.
…to a magician of the economy
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Kim Woo Choong in 1990 . |
Kim Woo Choong is a person with big dreams and ambitions. After graduating from university, he went to work a small trading company specializing in textiles and fabrics.
In 1976 he separated and established the Industrial Company Daewoo (Big Universe) with 5 friends with a meager capital of $10,000 and with a loan of $5,000 in a dirty little rented room in a corner of the building. Not long after, he acquired the right to operate all of Daewoo. And within just 10 years he was the owner of the largest building in Korea at that time Daewoo Center.
He started with a big idea: mass-producing shirts to sell to American retailers like Sears and Montgomery Ward. After struggling in the first stage, he finally achieved success.
Thanks to good relationships with both people In industry and government he did very well and bought many different companies. It cannot be wrong to say that Daewoo Group was built on the foundation of many acquired companies, most of which were in dire straits.
Mr. Kim back then was known as a magician in turning companies on the brink of bankruptcy into tireless money-producing machines. For a company with a 30-year history in the 1990s, Daewoo Group was ranked 2nd in assets and 3rd in profits in Korea, an unbelievable achievement for anyone.
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Kim Woo Choong 6 years after the day of escape. |
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Kim Woo’s book Choong translated released in many languages. |
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In 1989 Kim Woo-Choong’s autobiography The World Is Truly Big and There Are Many Things to Do became the world’s best-selling book. The book brings together the business experience of a person who “picked up” the “pieces” to create a large corporation, starting from a company of only 20 people to an international corporation. with more than 300,000 employees.
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1997 financial crisis It was the main thing that caused Asia to stagger and Daewoo Group to shake. At this time, the group was piled up in debt because of loans to expand the company in risky markets and industries.
In 1999, Daewoo corporation collapsed with a debt of up to 80 billion USD, many times larger than the recent collapses of US corporations WorldCom and Enron.
Former President Kim defected abroad immediately afterward. He was accused of fraud, corruption and bribing high-ranking officials in the Korean government. Investigators said he inflated the group’s assets by $41 billion to obtain illegal bank loans. He is also suspected of smuggling 20 billion USD abroad.
June 14, 2005 after nearly 6 years of hiding in many countries. Woo-Choong returned to his country and confessed. The founder of the Daewoo group left Hanoi, Vietnam, landed at Incheon International Airport, Korea and was immediately handcuffed by the police. “I will take full responsibility for what has happened. I really regret it,” Kim said. And his trial will take place within the next 20 days.
Part III: How Daewoo Group collapsed ?
Phan Vu Thuy Trang
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