In principle South Korea’s entrepreneurs are perfectly positioned to make the most of Asia’s rising middle class and the rebalancing of the global economy toward the East. The good business environment, large pool of skilled labor and world-class infrastructure also provide the country’s growing businesses with strong assets to build on. However, in spite of such facts, Koreans are still highly conservative in their opinion of entrepreneurship and risk-taking. The majority of the young people we met during our research trip, clearly considered employment with one of the large conglomerates to be the optimal future career path. Part of the challenge in South Korea is tackling the heavy stigma of business failure. Working in a safe, prestigious job for a large corporation or the government has long been considered a desirable career route. Business failure is particularly feared because bankruptcy laws focus on ensuring that creditors are paid, meaning that personal and business assets can be stripped away at struggling companies. In 2011 South Korea had only 1.8 new businesses per year per 1000 people of working age; this is less than half of the OECD average of 4.6
During our research in Korea we met with several entrepreneurs, and had the opportunity to understand more in-depth the reality of entrepreneurship in Korea. Among others we visited the high tech start-up SimLab and learned about their startup proces.