What Koreans do you know who made their own money and became rich?

What do you know about Kim Beom Su?

People think rich Koreans inherited their money from Chaebol.  That trend has changed these days with the increase of tech business people. In Korea new tech businesses pop up every year and some are now USD billionaires.   These days, Koreans have successful people they can look up to instead of Chaebols.  These rags to riches stories may inspire the young people of Korea.

One good example is the man who started Kakao, Kim Beom Su. He is the most successful internet entrepreneur. His love of online games and cyber communication has made him one of South Korea’s few self-made billionaires.  Currently his value is over $2 billion.  His parents were poor and Kim grew up not having very little.  His family of eight shared one bedroom in a poor neighborhood in Seoul.  He was the first in his family to go to university. He paid for his education himself by doing private tutoring.  This made Kim very driven in life and he soon got a job at Samsung’s IT unit.  After 5 years of working at the company he decided to start a company of his own.  He opened an internet cafe and started to develop online social casino games.  He created Hangame which later joined with Naver to create NHN. In 2010, he started KakaoTalk, which is now used by 75% of South Korea’s 50m people. At 2015.Kim ranked 92nd on the Richest Person In Tech list (2015). He is also ranked  the 11th richest person in Korea and the 628th Billionaire in the world according to the Forbes rich list.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=5, B=1, C=8, D=3, E=7, F=2, G=6, H=4

Some example sentences using the new words or phrases from the meaning of how they are used in the reading to help you understand better.

1. When my father died I inherited his business.

2. The trend with young people is to look like their pops stars.

3. Many new cafes are popping up in our neighborhood.

4. I looked up to my mother because she worked so hard to help us succeed at school.

5. Korea’s success is a rags to riches story. Korea has changed so much since the 1960s.

6. His piano playing inspired young people to learn to play the piano.

7. Steve Jobs was a great entrepreneur in the technology industry. He was driven to make the first personal computer.

    

    

    

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1. Describe a rags to riches story?

2. If you inherited a lot of money what would you do?

3. Are the trends of who is becoming rich in your country changing? How?

4. What tech business has popped up that you really like? Why?

5. What Korean business person do you look up to? Why?

6. Who inspires you? Why or how?

7. Would you like to be an entrepreneur? Why or why not? What would be hard about being an entrepreneur?

8. How driven are you to succeed at something?