Introduction
Literature review
Conceptualization of entrepreneurship
Institutions and entrepreneurship
Recent literature on entrepreneurship in Korea
Methodology
Results
The cognitive institutional pillar
Korea’s public and private sector education system
I believe that the education really matters in this type of [entrepreneurial] process because as a student, you are not asked to create or think of something from scratch, but rather you learn what’s given. And the exam that you do is multiple choice, so you are good at choosing, but you are not good at making something new. But startup is such a creative business. Sometimes, you need to think something from scratch if you really want to disrupt current businesses. But I think we are not trained to be entrepreneurs yet. (EP13)
Education is the problem. [Students] only focus on the KCSAT exam before graduation, [and] even after entering the university, students don’t acquire problem solving ability. (EP11)The Korean educational system […] is very efficient in terms of selecting, […] screening people. […] And this system makes people more efficient to take the exam. Not the real, you know, creativity or thought. So Korean private or public education always focuses on the textbook problems. How efficient (sic) we solve the test or how fast. And in other words, the people are afraid of answering the wrong question. […] But in real life […] you have to start again if you fail, but if someone is really afraid of failure and the education systems makes people afraid of making mistakes [...] [being] an entrepreneur is something about making mistakes over and over again until you finally find a solution. (EP2)
The emergence of entrepreneurship education
Because if you want to foster entrepreneurship among the students, I think the most important part is educating them about problem-solving ability and creative-thinking ability. But Korean education contents are usually for memorization. Not really suitable. So that’s why our foundation is trying […] we are actually making our own educational content. (EP7)
The 3-day lean startup program was also very useful […] because it felt more like a training, not teaching, not learning, but a little different, it wasn’t lecture-based, it was more experience-based. We really learned a lot about presentation and presenting our ideas. (E16)
The normative institutional pillar
Desirable career paths in Korea
So far, the common types of jobs in Korea are either you go for the big company, or you go for the government. Or if you’re retired, especially after the financial crisis, they are forced to retire. And they have to do their own job which is now called self-employed. (EP 2)
It’s really funny, but in Korea, if you have a safe job, if you get steady money, then it’s a good job in Korea. Like another good job is, [a] public job, is teacher, because it’s also paid by the government. (E16).
We’ve been in poverty, […] but the main way to get out of that was to put your head down, study, learn, […] make money, don’t starve. Job security. Not lottery. Job security for your family. That’s what success looked like. One generation above. And even these days that’s what success looks like to a lot of people. (E5)
And that’s because we have experienced [the] IMF [crisis]. We saw a lot of people […] losing their job, [going] bankrupt, not just bankrupt, they just owed a lot of money and committed suicide. And my family also had a really difficult situation, financial difficulties, back in 1998, when I was at second grade in middle school. We had a really tough time. So I understand when my mom is worried about my future when I tell her I just want to start my own startup. I understand. Because she experienced that. (E2)We had the IMF and, in that era, lots of parents turned their children into ‘chickens.’ They are so scared about losing their job. […] Our generation was the biggest generation that was pushed to get a safe job. (E10)
The societal ranking system and occupational choices
There is a word like ipsinyangmyŏng [i.e., rising in the world and gaining fame (author’s note)]. […] This is about […] getting success and going into the government. Means success before Chosŏn dynasty [1392 – 1910 (author’s note)], that concept of success still remains, I think. So, they want to go to the government and [become] a lawyer. Of course, it’s just prestigious and well paid. (E10)So they [i.e., Korean parents (author’s note)] realized that in order to get into those good schools and Samsung, the score really matters. So that’s why they are pushing them [i.e., their children (author’s note)] to get a good score and entering the good elite school, and after that, just go to the well-known company like the Samsung or become a high-ranked official in the government. And most people strongly believe that that’s the way to having a great life. (EP5)
But now the young people and young generation realize entrepreneurs are very different from those self-employed moms and pops. It’s more like a structured and more advanced type of doing your own business, which means you have to leverage technology and the money, I mean capital. And also, they are very professional people, right? (EP2)Korean society? Well… they are still arguing about it. Some people say startups are good, and some say startups are just second or third option when people fail to get a job in big companies. (E4)
Social stigma against business failure
But how to face and how to leverage the failure experience is critical, but in Korea, we have the fear of failure, we can see this issue from two perspectives. First one is financial, and second one is social. […] Social stigma, I also think this is related to the financial breakdown. You go down in your life, so people say ‘See, he is financially broke, he’s not gonna do things, he’s just such a failure.’ He gets a stigma of failure. (EP13)If a company is insolvent, the owner loses everything. Not just financially but also socially, there is a bad connotation […]. That person is then regarded as a failed human being. (EP14)
The regulative institutional pillar
The joint guarantee system
And the traditional way of Korean startups financing their business is through joint guarantee. To finance your company, when you borrow money, the borrower should be the company, not you. But because you are related to the company’s destiny, if the company collapses, the duty of repaying is automatically transferred to the CEO. So, you become liable for that. It’s a unique institution, unique system in Korea. (EP13)
Every bank has been practicing this [joint guarantee system], personal liability for the founder, they have to succeed, otherwise, they will get in trouble. But even a good entrepreneur can fail. The government pushed to not use the joint guarantee system anymore. (EP11)As far as I know, in the past one or two years, even if you don’t have money, the opportunities to start a business increased and there are now many companies that invest in early stage. Therefore, those things [i.e., hardship through business failure caused by the joint guarantee system (author’s note)] have become less. The case of joint guarantee system that I mentioned before, it has changed recently, like one or two years ago. (E11)
Administrative and industry-specific regulations
I think founding your own company or a company is very easy, with the regulations […]. We just went to an attorney and asked that attorney to set it up, set the corporation, like Ltd., up. And then he did it, and then we started. We started researching and developing the machine. That’s all. (E1)
You know, in China, they adapt the negative regulations. Korea is still a positive regulation system. You know that Uber is illegal in Korea. AirBnB business model is illegal in Korea, because of the regulations. I’m not saying that we have to adapt to everything, but how can we have such innovative companies in Korea […] imagine that they would have started from Korea, they are already illegal. […] So many innovative businesses are illegal in Korea, why? It’s because the regulations cannot keep up with the innovations, that’s it. (EP6)
The government’s role in promoting entrepreneurship
It’s been crazy […]. Ever since the Creative Economy initiative, a lot of the Korean startups you see around you right now, at this hour, you owe it […] to the government initiative. [...] So the Korean entrepreneurship scene is really growing (sic) in the past two to three years because of the government’s role. (E5)This startup boom is kind of created, artificially created by this current government, because this government started about less than five years ago, and it’s one of their major agenda (sic) to boost startup activities. I think that’s good. They picked the right topic, and growing new startups is very important, very necessary for the Korean economy. (EP3)
2014 | - increase number of universities providing startup education programs (18 \(\to\) 23) - expansion of major projects, including Creative Economy-related funding (6.5 trillion KRW \(\to\) 6.55 trillion KRW), which comprises funding for “Offline Creative Economy Towns” (2.3 billion KRW \(\to\) 4.0 billion KRW, 1 \(\to\) 3 locations), “Endless Imagination Rooms” (1 billion KRW \(\to\) 2 billion KRW, 20 \(\to\) 40 locations), etc |
2015 | - increase the Creative Economy support (7.1 trillion KRW \(\to\) 8.3 trillion KRW) - develop a high-tech community in Pangyo (district in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province) - increase number of Centers for Creative Economy and Innovation (CCEI) |
2016 | Under Increasing Youth Employment Initiative - increase number of universities that receive support for their leading startup programs (28 \(\to\) 34) - merge similar programs of CCEIs and discontinue inefficient ones Under Developing Growth Potential Initiative - promote establishing ventures and startups by utilizing Creative Economy Innovation Centers - develop Second Pangyo Creative Valley - increase investment in TIPS (36.5 billion KRW \(\to\) 42.5 billion KRW) |
2006 | 2008 | 2010 | 2012 | 2014 | 2016 | 2018 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New investment | 7,333 | 7,247 | 10,910 | 12,333 | 16,393 | 21,503 | 34,249 |
No. of companies | 617 | 496 | 560 | 688 | 901 | 1,191 | 1,399 |
Korea’s VC industry is not mature, so the government needs to drive the VC market. But Korea needs to change in that regard. If the government. doesn’t give money, some VC will close, so the startups cannot get money, that is the problem. But even if some VCs vanish (sic), the good ones would survive. The government should give more money to good VCs instead. 10 years ago, the government needed to drive the VC industry, but not anymore. (EP11)